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Since we met Genevieve Thiers shortly before her midVenturesLAUNCH award presentation, we were already impressed by her reputation as the founder of Sittercity (America's first company to revolutionize babysitting online and recent purchaser of Sitters.com).
A self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur (in addition to opera singer), Genevieve and the other half of her dynamo couple-preneur team, Dan Ratner, are back with Contact Karma - a private, social media, vendor search engine, currently in beta. Thiers brings the same ambition and motivation to Contact Karma that made her trudge through Boston during college distributing 20,000 flyers recruiting babysitters, eventually leading to close to 2 million current users on the website.
In this interview, we learn what influenced their newest startup, the best way to launch a company, which demographic they're targeting, where Contact Karma goes from here and how women entrepreneurs can use their gender to their advantage.
midVentures: The story of how you began Sittercity is legendary. What is the story behind Contact Karma?
Genevieve Thiers: My husband Dan and I are a couple-preneur, and we love disruptive ideas. We ran Sittercity.com for nine years together, and it was a blast!
However, we know in our DNA that we are founding entrepreneurs, and also serial entrepreneurs, and so Contact Karma was a very natural progression for us, when we decided that Sittercity was in great hands and that we could move on.
Contact Karma was born based on a very frustrating personal experience Dan and I had with our house. For several years, our entire second floor ceiling would leak. We're not just talking a part of the ceiling...we're talking the whole ceiling. Water would come out the ceiling fan, wind down the drapes...it was a nightmare. It also seemed to happen at random. We spent $5000 trying to fix the problem, before a neighbor said to us Oh, that's easy, it's just a $200 fix. The seals on the back door on your fourth floor are not watertight - all the units in the development were defective. We spent a bunch of time and money figuring it out, too. Two days later, the issue was fixed and we never had a leak again. So we spent $5000 on a $200 issue, and began to wonder...is there anyone else that's had this happen to them too? Had a problem where the answer was right under their nose and they just did not know who to reach out to and when? That's also the origin of the slogan: Common knowledge is power.
mV: Briefly describe how Contact Karma works.
GT: Contact Karma is a combination of a social network, review site and coupon site. Searching for a new vendor, like a plumber, electrician, doctor, OBGYN or even just a restaurant for Friday night? Contact Karma instantly allows you to see who your friends use, and how they feel about them. Like/Love/Dislike icons help you see your friend’s views on a vendor, and the Updates page on the site allows you to see frequent updates as friends change their opinions. The site’s Suggest and Request features also allow you to either request help from all your friends when you’re searching for a specific service provider, or suggest a vendor that you particularly love to them.
Contact Karma is a very private network. Privacy settings allow you to set your vendors to be shown to Everyone (all Contact Karma site consumers and vendors,) Friends Only (just your friends,) and Just Me. Lists allow you to organize vendors that you have that all belong in a certain category, like Wedding, New Baby, New Home or Starting a Business. Not only can you create your own lists—you can browse your friends’ lists too!
Finally, vendors can post discounts that you can use towards their services—you’ll see discounts of anything from 30%-55% from vendors on the site eager to convert you into a customer. Gathering Karma Points through adding friends, adding vendors and buying offers further increases your discounts, since you can convert them at the time of buying an offer into anything from another 5%-20% more off.
mV: Who is your target demographic?
GT: This is a product aimed at high net worth individuals, primarily female, who are making big purchases. Their household income is 100k plus, they own a home, have kids and pets, are super-connected...and have a need to be very hooked in when making big purchases like a doctor, home improvement vendor, or something similar. They're the ones who are currently picking up the phone or sending an email blast when they want something.
mV: Will advertising ever get in the way of honest feedback?
GT: Actually, one of the fantastic things about Contact Karma is the inability to game the system. When a parent is leaving a review for her friend network, only her friend network can see it. Which means that there's no way for a business to create a bogus email and give themselves a glowing review...they would have to be connected to her as a friend to do that, which is unlikely.
The entire philosophy behind Contact Karma is karmic power...what goes around comes around. If a service treats a consumer badly, they head on and update their friend network privately, and this will automatically lower the group's opinion of the vendor. It is not only possible to post a negative review about a vendor to your friends, it's just as normal as posting a positive one. So vendors really are on the line to provide the best possible service, so as to stay in the good graces of their customers on the site, but also the network of friends that that customer is connected to (which represent more customers).
mV: Tell us where Contact Karma goes from here. What are the next steps? Any additional features in the works?
GT: Contact Karma is in beta right now. It's been fun to test! We believe in a very lean approach to launching a company. Do an initial focus group, use that to put up a skeleton site, then focus group again, use that to determine the version 1 site, and then build that and test one final time to figure out your upcoming 2.0 version. It's a very efficient process, so we're adding in new features and changing functionality left and right, actually. It's a very intense time, and fun!
mV: Anything additional that you'd like to add?
GT: Well, we're thrilled to be on the road again. We're especially pleased with the Sittercity team, who have done such a terrific job of taking over the growth of the business. Our new CEO, Martin Clifford, is truly phenomenal, and he's got great people around him. Our executive team has been with us for years and they know the company intrinsically, inside and out. It's such a relief to move on knowing that our first company is in good hands and growing like a weed.
mV: Being a female entrepreneur, you are a rare breed. What tips can you give aspiring female entrepreneurs?
GT: My main tip to female entrepreneurs at the moment is just not to underestimate women's issues that you see in the marketplace that present an opportunity. With Sittercity, I saw a nine-months pregnant mother flyering for a sitter and realized how much people just underestimated that need. With CK, again, it's an underestimation of how critical it is for busy moms making high-value purchases to have an instant knowledge of who their network uses. No problem is too silly to solve!
I had a female entrepreneur come to me the other day very embarrassed that she might have come up with a way to get nails to dry faster. She did not realize that if she created this product, I would spend only 5 minutes drying nails instead of 25, and save 20 minutes in my day...to go off and do more disruption. That's actually very powerful. There's not been a lot of focus on women's issues traditionally since there's a sense that we will just figure them out quietly on the side...let's start to drag those issues out into the limelight and make them big business! They certainly are. I want to see more and more female disruptors entering the marketplace...there can't be enough of us right now.
It also creates a natural advantage over classic, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are overwhelming young and male. A woman can recognize and solve problems most of them don't even know exist.
