Pipefish is about solving the problem of trusted recommendations and reviews. By helping users find people who share their preferences they remove the problem of questionable motivations behind a recommendation or review. They have just launched in the App Store. Their app carefully examines your Internet habits and preferences to figure out what you like and connect you to doppelgangers who like those things too. Check it out.
Pipefish has been collaboratively filtering the internet for its users since 2012 and is posted up in the penthouse of the Biltmore in Midtown Atlanta, GA, where we caught up with co-founder and COO Michael Mealling (@mmealling).
Your Pitch:
Pipefish is an anti-social network. The relationships we build are around a shared interest, not existing friendships. We all have some part of our lives that none of our friends can relate to. Whether it's cheesy sitcoms from the 80′s or the K-pop music craze, Pipefish lets you find and interact with other fans the way you want to, not the way Facebook insists that you do it.
Pipefish makes money by helping e-commerce companies do a better job of recommending products. The data the users give us never leaves our network and is never seen by Pipefish customers. We can help a company provide a personalized experience without exposing them to the liability of sensitive user data.
Owners:
John McAleer and Michael Mealling
Location:
817 West Peachtree St, Atlanta, GA 30308
Employees:
4- click here for more on the team
Founded:
July 2012
Funded or bootstrapped:
Funded
Price of Services:
Free to users. Customers are charged a monthly subscription fee based on the number of page views.
What Customers Get:
Our e-commerce customers get a personalized shopping experience for their customers without needing to modify their backends or collect sensitive tracking data.
How'd You Get The Idea For It:
Just frustration with not having anyone on our social network that we could talk to about the stranger parts of our lives.
What Collaboration Tools & Processes Do You Use:
Google Docs for shared editing of spreadsheets and documents, Hangouts for meetings, Asana for task management.
Where do you gain your insights from and how do you stay on top of emerging trends?
Laddering: Unlocking the Potential of Consumer Behavior by Eric Holtzclaw helps us understand the data from our customer discovery process. A company full of Internet geeks has a diversity of tools for keeping up. Twitter helps.
What's Unique About Your Company Culture:
Unlike many others in this space we don't view the user antagonistically. Everyone in the "data broker, tracking, ad networks" world views the user as some uncooperative resource that you hide from while you extract information from them. Pipefish users are our allies. We are working together to improve the web and help retailers not waste our time.
What You Need Most Right Now:
Partners willing to work with us in areas that we don't have the resources to work on: travel, fashion, food, etc.
Bonus Info:
Check out the Pipefish Movie Club & find all of your favorite films, as well as those few you didn't love quite as much. Have fun rediscovering all those movies you forgot about too by using the Randomizer or Time Machine, and then let them know what you think of each movie by using their rating system. On top of all that, they'll even show you other Pipefish users who enjoy the same great movies you do. Take a look.
Hypepotamus is a publication, housed in open collaborative space, where startup stories are living and told. The doors are open for students, developers, creatives and tech entrepreneurs willing to participating in the startup ecosystem. Hypepotamus is nonprofit, community supported and located at the historic Biltmore in Midtown, Atlanta.
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