Connecticut Startup Deets: Create And Interact Groups From The Best Place Possible

Everyone likes groups. Whether you’re old enough to remember the days of MMC groups on AOL or you came along at Yahoo Groups or even Google Groups, groups make it easy to keep like minded people together to share important information, and nowadays photos, events and content.

I love what you can do with the groups that are automatically built around Facebook events. You can communicate with those people going to an event, plan the event, interact with people at the event and then after the event. You can share videos and photos with these people and share your important contact information with the entire group or individually.

A startup in Connecticut with a great entrepreneurial/startup pedigree has set out to build a mobile platform that lets you take those same qualities that make Facebook groups and events so great and productive, and applied it to the most important list of people that you have, your contacts.

Deets was founded by Linda Miller who was the first in at Priceline and Hotwire where she was instrumental in building the foundation that we all use today to book hotels. The other co-founder is Luke Scott who has a creative background with top clients like Kraft, Bob Greene and HobNob Wines.

When you put the two together you get a very robust, but aesthetically appealing app and web based platform that is intuitive, and easy to use.

Deets breathes the same life and functionality you get from Facebook groups and other popular social sites right into your list of contacts. It basically gives your contact list/address book a new life, a new purpose and a new meaning.

Now you can set up groups of family members, friends, colleagues or event attendees. If you’re getting married and want to set up a group for the bridal party, go for it. If you’re releasing a record and want to set up a list of fans and promoters, done. Not only are these groups set up for sharing the same way you can socially, but it’s done from the privacy of your computer or smartphone and from there you can set up your degrees of privacy. It’s one of the most robust platforms for sharing we’ve ever seen.

Forget about the 850 friends you have on Facebook, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that you actually know the contacts in your contact list and now you know your deets.

We got a chance to talk with Scott about deets. Check out the interview below.

What are deets?

deets is a mobile communication platform that lets users sync and share the right information with the right people

In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)

Hey grandma, we built this really cool mobile productivity application that lets people easily create groups, for the purpose of sharing important details, like phone numbers, addresses, pictures, event information and relevant messages with people in a private and timely manner, right from their phone, or computer.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

Luke Scott – Creative and Digital Director with almost 15 years experience running his own award-winning agency (madisonmott.com) and developing breakthrough marketing efforts for clients like HobNob Wines, Kraft, and Bob Greene, to name a few.

Linda Miller – first in at priceline.com and Hotwire. Lead the product development team for the Hotel vertical and launched to market at both successful internet start-ups.

Where are you based?

Westport, CT with a satellite office in Los Olivos, CA

What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?

Happening and thriving. We are a zip code away from priceline and kayak, and are sandwiched between a major economic push for innovation in both Stamford, with the conversion of the old City Hall to the iCenter, and New Haven, which is heavily promoting start-ups and incubation.

How did you come up with the idea for deets?

We saw the need for people to communicate more efficiently, more productively—to share the right info with the right people. Not with everyone, all at once.

We started by addressing the very real challenge of keeping our different and disparate contact details up to date. We knew that a product built on the auto-synchronization of address book intel would make our own lives that much easier, and deduced that a consumer market demand would follow.

Unlike so many of the other “one to many” apps that exist, we then added a layer of customized profile development, per group. Share personal info with your family and friends, professional details with business contacts, and so on.

We also sought to leverage the very palpable wave of privacy concerns and anti-social media sentiment that are part of today’s digital society. We built a platform that protects users and their information, that recognizes the need to tell a few people something personal, in a few seconds, and then get on with one’s life.

In that way deets is really meant to streamline our dealings with life’s busy logistics, so that we can get offline and focus on the part of our lives that has nothing to do with a smartphone or a laptop.

Get the info you need, when you need it, from the people that matter.

How did you come up with the name?

Luke did that! deets = urban dictionary for “short for details”. A perfect fit!

What problem does deets solve?

Filters out the current noise of communication coming to us from all channels; email, voice mail, texting, gaming, dating, etc. We created one platform that allows you to connect and contact productively, through organized, private and secure groups, with full synchronization of contact information. It’s better than group texting, way better than email, and totally different than social media.

What’s your secret sauce?

Our features. You can have multiple profiles on one platform and share what you want with a particular set of people. You can sidebar message in a collaborative group. You can create a confidential group where the members can’t see anyone other than the creator (like a big BCC). You can set push notifications on/off by group; so if the annoying Aunt keeps messaging in the family group – you can turn it off while keeping your Project Management Team messages on for red alerts!

Are you bootstrapped or funded?

We bootstrapped for a year and are funded by Angels and Connecticut Innovations for a total of $1,525,000. This paid for the design, development and market launch of product to market in August, 2011 for iOS and Web. Currently, we are building on Android for cross platform communication and business engagement.

What’s one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?

Finding amazing talent. We have hit it big time with our team!

Who are some of your mentors and business role models?

Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Malcom Gladwell. And many seasoned executives, entrepreneurs, past job experiences/colleagues, new relationships. Our Advisors are wonderful and our Board is stellar.

What’s next for deets?

Android release in January, as well as another round of funding to take it to the next level and promote this software to business organizations who are looking for productive mobile communication with privacy and security and business rules/logic already in place.

 

Linkage:

Really you need to try deets so go here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup interviews from “everywhere else”

Speaking of “everywhere else” we hope to see you here

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