Kyle
You’ve probably been hearing more and more about personal brands lately, and that’s a good thing. Years ago, the contents of your personal brand typically fit on one or two sheets of quality 8 1/2 x 11 paper. If you were really lucky you had that really heavy paper with the lawyer finish. Resumes were about the only personal brand identifiers available. If you were in media that could be complimented by a head shot, with your resume on the back.
Nowadays with the web, photos, movies, and hot graphics your personal brand can tell a lot more of your story. Your personal brand can include your work history, education, likes, recreational activities, heck even pictures of your dogs and your cats. Now, personal brand is all about you.
Sure there are personal branding sites out there like about.me however Toronto startup Konekt.me is hoping to make their mark by offering an even easier to use platform and a method of uploading that will knock our socks off.
Konekt.me is based in Toronto and part of Project Rhino. We got to talk with Neil Martin one of the co-founders of Konekt.me in this interview below the break.
What is konekt.me?
Konekt.me is a new social platform that makes it easy for anyone to establish a personal brand online. It combines a personal portfolio with an interactive CV to give a complete picture of who you are.
The concept is to provide you with a single landing page (ie. konekt.me/kylesandler) where you can showcase everything from your eduction and work experience, to your unique skills, opinions and creative talents.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Konekt.me was founded by Neil Martin, Jeffrey Howard and Rares Crisan in 2011. All three met while students at Queen’s University, and now live and work in Toronto, Canada.
Neil Martin grew up in Ottawa and is an avid guitar player. He has a BAH in Film & Media Studies from Queen’s University. Often jokingly referred to as the “Steve Jobs” of the team, Neil is a perfectionist with an incredible eye for detail. He oversees all design aspects of the platform, as well as all social media, marketing and PR initiatives.
Jeffrey Howard was born and raised just outside of Toronto in Mississauga, Ontario. He studied Geography at Queen’s University and is a master networker. An entrepreneur from a young age, Jeffrey’s first business involved undercutting vending machines by bootlegging pop cans from his hotel room on a school trip.
Rares Crisan was born in Kluge, Romania, moved to Canada at the age of three and now holds a degree in BioMedical Computing from Queen’s University. Rares loves a challenge, which led him to row for the Canadian National team, medaling at World Cups and World Championships. At Konekt.me, Rares is the primary developer and spends his days fretting over lines of code, logic puzzles and behavioural use cases.
Where are you based?
The Konekt.me team works out of Project:RHINO, a new office sharing space located at the corner of King and Bathurst in Toronto’s vibrant King West neighborhood.
What problem does Konekt.me solve?
Konekt.me makes it easy for anyone to establish a personal brand online. We’re able to do this by embracing two ideas:
1) A personal brand is more than just a resume. It includes everything from your education and work experience to your skills, opinions and creative talents.
2) Having to visit multiple sites to see everything listed above is a convoluted and time-consuming process. People need a single landing page that does it all.
So whether you’re a student, creative professional, tradesman or pro athlete, Konekt.me allows you to easily present yourself the way you want to be seen.
We’ve seen other portfolio services out there, like for musicians there are plenty of EPK sites, is konekt.me the first place for any kind of portfolio?
We think of Konekt.me less as a portfolio site and more as a tool for managing your personal brand. The majority of portfolio sites have a specific set of features that make them great for a particular audience (bands, graphic designers, photographers etc). But what if you’re an artist and a musician? Or a photographer who also writes poetry? Or maybe you’re someone who isn’t fortunate enough to have a portfolio site dedicated to your skill, like a chef, web developer or tradesman.
With Konekt.me, we’ve stripped things down to a core set of intuitive features that make it easy for anyone to showcase their full range of skills and creative talents, no matter what those might be.
Another issue facing many portfolio sites is the problem of over-customization. Too many options can often be overwhelming and result in a sloppy or cluttered portfolio. On Konekt.me, we’ve embraced the philosophy that even someone without any design or coding skills whatsoever should be able to have a great looking portfolio.
Is there going to be a cost involved for the user?
No.
If not what is your plan for monetization?
For the time being, our primary concern is with building a platform that looks great and is easy to use. That’s very important to us, as well as our investors. We want people to love using Konekt.me. That said, there’s definitely an opportunity to introduce some premium features down the road. We have some ideas we’re pretty excited about, but we’re not rushing into anything.
What is your secret sauce?
People are going to be blown away by our content uploader. Whether you’re uploading work from your hard drive, linking to other sites, or importing directly from platforms like Vimeo, YouTube or Soundcloud, creating new portfolio entries will be fast, simple and intuitive. We obsess over simplicity. The fewer clicks, the better. This means you can spend less time building your portfolio, and more time focused on the things you love to do.
What’s one lesson you’ve learned in the startup process?
We learned early on that survival as a startup means the ability to adapt. You have to be excited about change. No matter how great your ideas is, there are going to be things you didn’t think of. Aggressively seek out feedback. Reach out to people in your industry, but also in other industries. Fresh perspectives are key. Sometimes the best feedback comes from people who don’t work in your space.
When will Konekt.me go live?
We’re currently in pre-registration mode, so people can visit Konekt.me to sign up and reserve their username. We’re aiming to go live with a beta version later this summer.
What’s next for konekt.me?
Without giving too much away, we’re very excited about mobile. Being able to instantly access your entire portfolio and CV on-the-go will provide a lot of value to our users. More announcements to come!
Linkage:
Connect with Konekt.me here and reserve your spot
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