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While Bill Jula's business harnesses how people use modern technologies, the origins of the model are distinctly aged.
In fact, the birth of Sarasota-based PROskore, a website that ranks business professionals' online influence, stems from a well-worn axiom. That lesson: A business that strays from its mission, even with good intentions, risks diluting its original purpose and message.
In Jula's case, the company, initially, was a business-to-business networking website, fastpitchnetworking.com. The website, founded in 2006, was an offshoot of an in-person networking group Jula launched in 2003.
Profitable after a few months, the website made money when members, who could access some features for free, paid for a premium membership that offered paid-only services — freemium, in Internet lingo. But to lure paid subscribers, Jula says the firm erred in providing too much, too soon. It had everything from a press release portal to a member-to-member advertising system.
“We were all things to all people,” says Jula. “But it wasn't entirely clear what we were trying to do.”
So Jula and his lead software developer, local tech entrepreneur Rich Swier Jr., formed PROskore to bring clarity to the business model. The site, proskore.com, is essentially a revamped and enhanced fast pitch. It ranks members, professionals in any field, based on a compilation of online profiles and off-line data. A PROskore member's tally, a fluid ranking, ranges from 1 to 100.
Klout, a website that bills itself as “the standard for influence,” was one of the first companies to get into the nascent field of grading people's online influence. San Francisco-based Klout has garnered national media attention, plus an investment from Kleiner Perkins, a top Silicon Valley venture capital firm. PeerIndex and Twitter Grader are other websites that offer score-based profiles of people's social media influence.
Jula, though, says PROskore is the only influence-grader that uses more than social networking. “In terms of measuring professional reputation, no one is doing that yet,” Jula says. “Our platform goes deeper than anything Klout has done.”
PROskore does that through a three-tiered approach, says Jula. The first tier is real-world experience, which includes jobs and education. Social media, which includes everything from LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers to a user's Klout score and blogging prowess, is the second tier. The third scoring element is a user's engagement on the PROskore network, which includes recommendations from other members.
The average PROskore score is in the upper 20s. Some members have scores in the 50s, and a few have hit the 70s and 80s. PROskore itself recently scored major points, with stories on TechCrunch, Mashable and VentureBeat, three leading tech blogs.
Jula says he's confident he can leverage that exposure, and the website's early success, into $2 million to $3 million in capital from local angel investors. But the firm, says Jula, might also seek venture capital funds, so it can get bigger, faster. Jula hopes to decide on a capital-raise plan by the end of 2011.
“We see an opportunity to ride this wave,” says Jula. “We can grow to be a player.”
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