1Mind enters social discovery field with $500K

Bambi Francisco Roizen · August 1, 2013 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3113

Another mobile ambient awareness app emerges, with a twist

I've been following a couple of mobile discovery apps for some time. In 2011, we first covered Glancee, a new way to find Facebook friends who were nearby. Glancee was an eventual acqui-hire by Facebook in May 2012. At the time, I considered it a dating app with some novelty and potential, but skeptical about the ongoing use case.

Kismet also emerged from AngelPad and won a Vator Splash People's Choice Award in September 2012. Kismet, which has significant investors, such as Triple Point and NEA and a host of angels, was a mobile app to help you discover people around you. It then evolved to being an app to discover "friends" and not "strangers" around you. This past April, Kismet pivoted and became Blink, a group-messaging app that expires. 

Companies like Highlight, backed by Benchmark, SV Angel, and Crunchfund, and Sonar, funded by the Bing Fund, have all gotten some buzz. Yet none of these startups have really broken out as hits. 

That either means, the implementations just haven't been quite right or there's no utility in discovering like-minded people around you. 

1Mind is betting on the former. The Hampton, New Hampshire-based startup just formally launched Thursday. It was founded in March 2011 by Derek Dodge, the son of Don Dodge, a well-known figure among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who travels for Google checking out cool startups. Dodge also writes frequently, and we enjoy posting his stories on Vator. You can read Dodge's posts here. 

It also received $500,000 in seed funding and has friend-of-the-family MC Hammer supporting its efforts by helping to promote and market 1Mind through Hammer's fan base.

1Mind is basically a mobile app for Android and iPhone (though there's also a desktop version), for people to "express their interest and discover people like you," said Dodge. Sounds just like the aforementioned discovery apps, right? Well, yes. But often, it's all about the interface, and this one is pretty cool. 

When I first logged on to 1Mind, I was asked 16 personality questions. It felt like I was either shaping my profile for an online dating site, or providing details for a psychotherapy session. 

Questions asked were things like: Do you make up your mind quickly or over time.

 

As well as, whether common sense is reliable or questionable.

Then you get results. I'm 100% an introvert! That's a surprise. I'm usually 50/50. My personality test also didn't jive with my Myers-Briggs test, which at one point in my life was ENTJ. It also said that only 5% of the world population fit my personality type! It must be what happens when you have four kids. 

Once you fill out your profile, you land on your 1Mind page, which is a smorgasboard of games to play to give 1Mind more information about your personality. The game are simple. You're asked a question and you choose between two options. 

You can then toggle to the "discover" section to see who's like you and by what percentage.

Admittedly, the experience was quite fun. I learned I was a realist and I got to see who I was similar to. It's all about me. Who doesn't like services that focus on the self? At this point, the site has been in private beta so there are under 200 people that have joined. I feel very priviledged. The people you see is "everyone" and not just your friends, at least for now. 

Then you can drill in on a person and see why your compatible. You can even message them or play the games they played to see if you're even more compatible.

The question was: What was the purpose? Dating? I asked.

"We're not really sure what the monetization avenue is [just yet]," Dodge explained. "We're trying to connect you with people who are [compatible]. You can find really cool friends you want to go surfing with." Dodge also hopes that people will be intrigued by their evolving personality since each time they log in and play a game, their profile changes. Hence the people who are most similar also changes.

At the moment, people closest to you do not bubble up to the top. So the compatibility weighting is less about discovering people close to you, but rather people with the closest personality trait.

No doubt it's fun to see who you're compatible with and unlike other discovery apps, there's an element of asynchronicity that's more appealing than the ambient awareness apps that ping you everytime someone "similar" or a "friend" is nearby. With Glancee, I was pinged so often by random folks, it was only intellectually interesting as someone testing the service. But it did get a bit downright creepy after a while, especially knowing that another person might be looking at my profile and know I'm nearby. 

With an asychronous approach to exploring, there aren't alerts constantly telling someone to drop everything and check out someone. In other words, the annoyance factor isn't there. 

"On an average day, I'm in my routine: working at the office, maybe heading to a few meetings. If a push notification tells me "Person X is nearby," Person X has to be pretty interesting to me before I'll break from that routine and suddenly arrange to meet them. But additionally, Person X has to find me pretty interesting to agree to meet, or even to agree to exchange messages. There's a lot of friction there," said Kevin Stephens, founder and CEO of Blink (formerly Kismet). 

This is a positive thing for 1Mind, which isn't a location-based discovery app.  

"Where we’re different is we give users more freedom and more choice," said Dodge. "We do look at hometown and school, but we’re not geo-locating you, like Highlight. 

"The service is what you make of it." 

Derek Dodge is the son of Don Dodge, a well-known figure among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who travels the world on Google's dime checking out cool startups. Dodge also writes frequently, and we enjoy posting his stories on Vator. You can read Dodge's posts here. I didn't want to mention this up top since every time I'd refer to Dodge, readers might wonder which one I was referring to. 

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Bambi Francisco Roizen

Founder and CEO of Vator, a media and research firm for entrepreneurs and investors; Managing Director of Vator Health Fund; Co-Founder of Invent Health; Author and award-winning journalist.

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1Mind is taking social to the next level, Social Discovery. Facebook reconnects you to people you already know. 1Mind discovers new people most like you, people of one mind.

1Mind is the place to express your interests and discover people like you. Take the 1Mind Personality Test to learn your personality type, your strengths, and who is most compatible with you. Express your interests by voting on questions. The 1Mind Likeness algorithm calculates likeness scores based on your personality type and your votes on questions. The Discover page displays a rank order list of people most like you.

Derek Dodge started working on 1Mind while he was in college. There were
thousands of students on campus but he only knew those in his dorm or in his classes. Derek knew there had to be more people who shared his interests but there was no easy way to find them.  He built 1Mind to solve this problem, and help people of all ages all over the world to discover people most like them.

Recording star MC Hammer has always been interested in building communities and bringing people together. “Now more than ever we need to come together and focus on what we have in common. I am inviting everyone to join 1Mind to see what they have in common with me, and discover people all over the world who share their unique interests.” Said MC Hammer.

The 1Mind Likeness algorithm calculates a likeness score based on your personality type and your votes on questions. As you and other users vote on more questions your Likeness score continuously updates and becomes more accurate. The Discover page is a rank order list of people most like you. The Likeness scores are updated every day and the rank order list can change based on new users joining, and existing users voting on more questions.

Click on the profile photo of any person to see your Likeness score, and learn what you have in common. Compare your personality types, view questions you both have answered to see where you voted alike, or challenge your friends to vote on questions you have already answered.

Create your own questions by clicking on the + icon. Ask a question, choose two alternative answers, and select the photos that best represent those choices. Quickly discover what other people think and who voted like you.Invite your best Facebook friends to take the 1Mind Personality Test to see how much alike you really are, and discover unknown things you have in common. 1Mind questions cover topics that might not naturally come up in conversation, so you can learn new things about old friends.

1Mind is available on the web at www.1mind.com and as a native app on Android Google Play, and iPhone AppStore.

1Mind is the place to express your interests, and discover new people like you. Join 1Mind today and start discovering.

Contacts:

Derek Dodge, founder 1Mind

Twitter - @1Mind

Android App - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onemind&hl=en

iPhone App - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/1mind/id667010915?ls=1&mt=8

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Derek Dodge

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I'm a IT Professional and entrepreneur. My background is in programming, networking, system administration, and computer security. I was the Lead Support Engineer at VKernel, Founded 1Mind.com
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Don Dodge

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