You’ve spent a lot of time getting out there, meeting people, building your network. But who do you need to talk to today – for one reason or another – and how do you sift through the hundreds, if not thousands, of contacts to get to the right people – whom you already know? The signal to noise ratio has become deafening.
Face it: we’re ready for the next Society, and the good news is, you’ve already done the legwork. nextSociety (xS) is a smart networking app that unlocks the full potential of your existing connections. nextSociety scans your iPhone and LinkedIn contacts to help you to identify your 150 most relevant contacts, depending on your current objectives, whether you’re planning a trip or just need to do some specific networking closer to home. CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Peter Stebe is here to explain how the company is connecting the dots.
Tell us about the product.
xS helps professionals and entrepreneurs quickly identify the most relevant connections in their network, based on their professional interests and business specialties. By filtering connections based on relevance, xS allows users to categorize, organize and focus on staying connected with key contacts.
With professionals in mind, the app is based on LinkedIn to initially focus on business connections. It’s designed to maximize “same place, same time, same interest” opportunities within existing networks.
How is it different?
xS notifies users about relevant contacts before they travel so they can book meetings in advance in cities they are visiting. This feature differentiates xS from GPS-based networking apps by allowing professionals to “network smarter,” by planning strategically before a business trip.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
Our target users are defined as a busy professional between the ages of 22 and 45, who maintain social connections above 300 across more than one network. A premium user is expected to pay $20 a month. In the US alone, the professional networking market is valued around $1B.
What is the business model?
We are going with a freemium approach. We will launch some premium features that our users have to pay a monthly subscription fee for. The basic tool will always be free of charge. Also we are exploring corporate and university premium channels.
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within 6 months?
We’d like to introduce the next set of features (events and news networking opportunities) and grow the user base to 10,000 users within the next 3 months.
If you could be put in touch with one investor in the New York community who would it be and why?
Fred Wilson. We like his investment philosophy in networking based opportunities.
Why are you launching in New York?
This is our home market, where the idea was born. Also, we are targeting busy professionals and this market has the highest density of professionals.
How did you come up with the name Next Society?
We were thinking for the next generation and came across an article from Peter Drucker that talked about that. It used the term nextSociety and we felt that was pretty fitting.
