Ryan Schilling
Champaign, IL (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal
Social Network Platform Startup
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Startup
Location:
Champaign
Industry:
Technology/Web
Year Founded:
2011
Number Employees:
1-10 people
Business Stage:
Growth (not profitable)
Entity Type:
"C" Corporation
Description:
We are a stealth EnterpriseWorks Incubator company developing a social networking platform that provides an easy and innovative way for people to explore their neighborhood and connect with neighbors and businesses.
Successful social networks are centered around existing offline social streams. Facebook for friends and family. LinkedIn for colleagues. Twitter for people of interest we follow. Who are our neighbors and people in our community?
We are the social networking platform centered on the local offline social stream.
Social networks have changed how we communicate with our friends, family and colleagues. We are building an innovative platform which allows people around us to communicate in a new way.
The opportunities to connect are very compelling because they are people around the neighborhoods and communities we live in.
--There are two families with kids the same age that live 4 blocks away. Why don't they know that?
--Paul, 5 houses away is a huge Cardinals fan. But no one knows to ask him about the Cardinals when they see him.
--Everyone is talking about the high school football game.
--Mary Ellen and Joe just celebrated their 40th anniversary.
Why don't we know these things?
The social stream is becoming polluted. Are businesses, acquaintances, work colleagues really my friends? Do I want all of these people in my private family pictures? Why do I get tweets about a great restaurant in L.A.? Why do I have to check-in when I always go to the same places?
Successful social networks will amplify the segmented offline social streams by providing deeper connection through feature sets that create specified relevance and context.
Our platform centers on the local offline social stream connections with neighbors and neighborhoods that already exists with a feature set that enhances the local social experience. Our innovative platform allows users to connect and reconnect with neighbors and community members we already know and meet others we don't know but would like to meet and be neighborly with.
We have multiple email accounts for different streams of information and communications. We will also have separate accounts for our separate social streams and relationships. We will begin canvassing a small targeted community with a soft launch this fall. We are planning a tier 1 city launch spring of 2012.
The social network allows us to connect to our friends, family and (URL removed) now our neighbors!
FOUNDING TEAM:
A recognized technologist with patents filed and management experience at Ebay and Nokia.
A business developer and second time founder with previous experience managing a team of 110 employees and $15M in revenue.
A professional development firm coding our beta product.
We expect to add two university faculty members with specialities in cloud computing to more formal advisory roles.
INVESTMENT:
The general angel experience among the network of startups we know has been very positive. So we have decided to raise an angel round before vc. We are raising money to build out a US based development/design team to perform our first beta testing and a local soft launch this fall. We expect this to be a great opportunity for angel investors to invest early and have a substantial exit. We are seeking angels interested in convertible debt with a discount at conversion in our next round.