September 28, 2012
Today's Entrepreneur: Todd Fast
No. 1 mistake: Not seeking enough feedback
Today's Entrepreneur is Todd Fast, co-founder and CTO of Conga. Splash SF finalist Conga discovers the social relevance between people - whom you should know, within a group, at an event, or wherever you are. Its science applies sophisticated machine learning algorithms to understand the underlying factors behind your professional relationships.
I am a(n):
Entrepreneur
Companies I've founded or co-founded:
Conga, Inc., Zembly.com (intrapraneur)
Startups I worked for:
NetDynamics, Conga
If you are an entrepreneur, why?
I want to invent something cool.
My favorite startups:
Conga (my baby), IFTTT (the Web as your API), Key Ring (great business model(s))
What's most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?
Most Frustrating: The existential angst.
Most Rewarding: Putting innovation into motion.
What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs make?
1. Not seeking enough feedback. 2. Paying too much attention to feedback.
What are the top three lessons you've learned as an entrepreneur?
1. The market, like nature, is not fair by any measure.
2. If you waste something, you'll wish later you had what you wasted.
3. It's what you *don't* do that defines you.
(Want to be profiled? Just fill out your Vator profile and we'll find you! Or you can email newsroom@vator.tv)
Kristin Karaoglu
Woman of many skills: Database System Engineer; SplashX event producer; Author of Startup Teams
All author postsRelated Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
Conga
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Brief description:
Conga discovers the social relevance between people - whom you should know, within a group, at an event, or wherever you are.
Brief highlights:
Our science applies sophisticated machine learning algorithms to understand the underlying factors behind your professional relationships
The problem or opportunity:
The value of social networks is stalling. They have become saturated with "the people we may know."
“New insight, experiences, and capabilities…come from “the edges of our social networks.” (John Hagel et al., For Ways to Use "Pull" to Increase Your Success, HBR 4/22/2009)
"People we should know," is a hard - yet important - problem. Conga's science is able to accurately predict and recommend new relationships.
Conga does Social Discovery and People recommendation as a Service. Companies from large to small are finding the need to make recommendations between people. From global technology forums to local social application services, the people matching/recommendation function has become a ubiquitous need. Conga is the platform that meets this need with science.
By focusing on the recommendation science and making the recommendation results available through our API, we give developers access to better technology more quickly and at lower cost than they can achieve on their own.
Competitive advantage
Social relevance is typically relegated to a "people you may know" algorithm in such social networking sites as LinkedIn and Facebook. Other companies in the social discovery space rely on fact matching such as "you both like Lady Gaga and follow Barack Obama" as their basis for social recommendation.
Conga uses applied science by identifying a pool of ~100,000 factors that characterize the motivations behind your social connections and train the Conga social relevance engine. No input more than the linking social networking sites is required of the user.
Conga is the first platform solution to the problem of predicting social relevance.
Our team includes serial entrepreneurs (founder, Ribbit), stellar CTO (chief architect for Platform as a Service at Sun Microsystems), and PhD entrepreneur neuroscientist as chief scientist.
Crick Waters
Joined Vator on
Tall enough that most people get a Crick in the neck talking to me at a stand-up party. Starter, creator, builder. Competitive masters swimmer. Husband and father of two. Ribbit co-founder.
Todd Fast
Joined Vator on
Senior technical leader and entrepreneur. Co-founder of Conga, Inc. Previously, Chief Architect for Platform as a Service (PaaS) at Sun Microsystems, and CTO and founder of zembly.com.Related News
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