Could Social Discovery Get Any Easier? Boston Startup Tagzidy Says Yes INTERVIEW

If you’re a long time reader of nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else” then you are well aware of how we feel about social discovery startups. To get coverage here on nibletz, you need to “bring it” if you’re in the social discovery space. SXSWi 2012 was all about social discovery, and since then, hundreds have tried to do something in the space.

Tagzidy, a New York startup, has created a social discovery platform that is extremely easy. In fact, if you allow it to, Tagzidy will help you discover people with like interests, wherever you are, and you don’t even need to take your phone out of your pocket.

Tagzidy has a couple of unique components. You can tag and be tagged by people you don’t even know when you’re in close proximity to them (again with your permission). If you’re already linked up with that person your experience is gamified with trophies, points and other nifty stuff.

One of the really exciting features about Tagzidy is it may even be the replacement for business cards that Florida startup Fethr is hoping to be, without any button pushing, or taking out your phone.

We got a chance to interview Daniel McCarthy the co-founder of Tagzidy, who does an exceptional job of describing his startup in the interview below:

Tagzidy is a FREE iPhone app and service, that gives you a totally new way to connect with your friends and people around you, automatically and geo-spatially while you’re out living your life.  It allows you to connect with and build your social network, in real time, by simply going out and being social, mostly without even having to take your phone out of your pocket.  Whether you’re at a party, professional networking event, hanging out with your friends, or just out on your own doing your thing, Tagzidy connects social people on the go, by placing you in an automatically taggable world.

The backbone of the location-based service is built on the premise of “tell us where you are, and we’ll do the connecting for you based on who’s nearby.” If you’re already friends, we’ll game-ify simply being around them with points, trophies and stats.  If you don’t know them, here’s a virtual intro and “tag” exchange, on us!  To understand the basic “tag” feature, you should know the 2 meanings of “tag” as both a verb and a noun.  When you and another user happen to be within each others’ tag radius, you automatically tag (v.) each other.  When you tag someone, you exchange and collect each others’ tagz (n.), which are like your personal calling cards or virtual business cards.

The “entourage” feature is also really neat.  An entourage is a location-aware, disposable hotspot that you assign a custom name and tagline to.  Create and join entourages with your friends & coworkers to brand your crew with a custom identity.  Use it to share and broadcast what you are doing with a particular group of people, use it to connect with other entourages nearby, or simply use it for a fun sense of customization and exclusivity while you’re hanging out with your friends.

Tagzidy is a 2 man bootstrap, founded by Daniel McCarthy and Ramesh Kumar, both based out of Boston, Ma.  This is both Daniel’s and Ramesh’s first tango in the startup world, but don’t let the lack of battle scars and war stripes fool you.  The duo has pushed Tagzidy to its version 1 launch with the power of 10 men… plus 2, with work ethic, fire and drive that walks the fine line between genius and insane.  There are many who would say that their obsession for Tagzidy and their mission has reached an unhealthy level… but Daniel and Ramesh would say it’s just right.  They are hungry, beyond passionate about what they are doing, and here to bring the heat and disrupt.

We are based out of Boston, Ma.

Thats a fantastic question, and I wish I could answer it with more first hand experience.  The truth is, we’re the new kids in school.  Ramesh and I have been living like shut-ins for the last year writing code and designing every free second we have had.  Based on what you read online about the Boston startup scene, it goes both ways (like everything else in the world).  Some say Boston is lagging behind NYC and Silicon Valley, some say the Boston startup scene is booming and rapidly on the rise.

What I can say from the limited time I have been able to put the hacking and designing on pause, and get into the trenches over the last month, is that it’s tough… just like everywhere else, I suppose.  It’s hard to get noticed when nobody knows who you are, most of your emails don’t get opened, and a lot of your calls don’t get returned.  Thats just the nature of the beast, and if you don’t expect and prepare for that, as well as embrace it and just love every second of the fight, than you probably shouldn’t be doing the startup dance to begin with.  I have met & communicated with a handful of really great people, though.  The people that care and want to help are out there… they do exist.  But to get back on track with the question, my final answer is: “I can’t wait until I can give a better answer with more first hand experience behind it, ask me again in a few months.”

The idea that eventually led to Tagzidy sprouted in 2010, out of this little “freak out” moment when I realized somewhere along the lines of human history, something went terribly wrong.  People were turning into cattle… and city life was turning into this emotionless, connectionless cattle stampede.  We have all this amazing technology to connect us, instantly, to people thousands of miles away.  But why is it that I am surrounded by 60 people every morning in a tiny coffee shop, and not a single person is even making eye contact?  And it’s the same people EVERY DAY!  Many of whom, I would probably get along with quite well.  A lot of them probably have a fantastic set skills and could probably be great connections to have in the business world.  I mean, let’s get real for a second people.  There have been monkeys in outer space, doing science experiments, transmitting stats and data back to earth… A celebrity has a red carpet wardrobe malfunction, and the entire world knows about it in less than 15 seconds… and I have to stand in a shoulder to shoulder line in a coffee shop with the same people every morning and am not able to connect with a single person there?

That was when I decided something needed to be done to better connect you to the people you spend your time around, both friends and new faces.  The pieces really started coming together, however, early 2011 when I figured out how it could be done, safely and in a fun way.  The model started off as a city wide game of tag, but quickly developed into much more. The name then came to me as a play on “Tag City” (Tagzidy), then came the model of not only tagging (verb), but collecting each others’ tagz (like a calling card or business card) when you tagged.

Fast forward through a crazy 15 month process of planning, finding my co-founder Ramesh and finally developing a working product…and here we are telling the story to Nibletz.  At version 1, we currently have the core model of a tag style game with your friends, a virtual intro and tag card exchange for people you don’t know yet, and the entourage feature to help better connect groups of people.  Plus a fantastic set of privacy controls which include making the social discovery aspect a toggle-able option and not forced down your throat, an amazing and innovative location method for unbelievable battery life, and a bunch of other smaller features to enhance the overall experience.

Hmm.. well most of Tagzidy is still secret sauce.  We really stripped it down to the bones to just get a solid core model for version 1, and we can’t go blabbing about the good stuff just yet (…but it is reallllyyyy good stuff).  However, out of what’s currently live, the secret sauce that we can turn into semi-public sauce is the location method.

We innovated a totally new way to use an amazing iOS 5 feature that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been done before.  And I say “semi-public sauce” because we aren’t going to dish out the nitty gritty of the method.  However, we can say that depending on your phone model, how old it is and how much you use it for other things, we are ranging from 30 to 50+ hours of continuous, accurate tracking on a single charge.  Mixed with moderate to extensive other phone usage.  Basically, if you are used to charging your phone every couple of days, you will barely notice a difference.

Bahahaha… The startup process is 90% encountering and solving dilemma after dilemma!  It’s not fair to ask for only one :)  But the one that jumps out at me is the lack of “available” tech talent in the area.  Don’t get me wrong, Boston has great tech talent.  However, they are in high demand and short supply.  If you can hack, hustle and/or design, live in Boston and are pretty darn good at what you do, you are most likely backed up with projects and can’t take on additional startup work, even if you wanted to.  I ended up stocking up on red bull and just teaching myself Adobe CS suite, UI design, and am still rapidly learning Objective-C and Xcode.  I’m no expert software engineer, that’s Ramesh’s department, but I know enough to help us keep on trucking until we can get some extra hands on this.

Figuring out how to survive on 4 hours of sleep per night.  There are only 2 of us, both still at our day jobs as well, to support & take care of families and be able to fund the needs of Tagzidy.  Those variables, thrown in with the fact that the back end of Tagzidy is incredibly complex, plus the fact that we still haven’t released the bulk of the features and the really cool stuff yet, does not leave much room for sleep in the equation.

Take a nap… Put away the Ramen noodles, eat a real meal again and take a much needed nap.  Haha, then after that I would find 2 more people and expand to a lean 4 person operation.  One more developer would really help us move along more smoothly.  Also, someone with a bit more experience in the industry who knows the space, maybe had a successful exit or 2, has raised funds and knows how to hustle.  As smart as we both are, we are also smart enough to not let our egos drive us, and realize that this is our first startup.  Eventually having someone on board with us, who has been around the block before would be an invaluable asset

We wish we could scream our plans from the top of a mountain.  But we’ve got to keep all the good stuff under wraps for a bit longer.  What we can talk about is that we are working on building for Android and then Windows phone, and we are going to be adding better integration for your current social networks.

The other stuff has to stay under the tarp for a bit longer… but it’s really, really cool… and quite disruptive!  You’re going to want to keep an eye on us.