Meet Achoo, the company that wants to make bragging socially acceptable

You’ve had a great day, you’ve conquered the world and done extraordinary things, but how can you tell everyone without becoming a bore or a braggart? If you fancy cheering for yourself and your accomplishments, then Achoo, is for you.

Andrus Purde, co-founder of Achoo noted that designers use Zerply and developers use Geekli and he wanted to focus initially on freelancers and consultants to give them a place to shout out their achievements.

“Achoo grew out of Talentag, a startup I was involved with back in 2010″, says Purde. “It failed but got me thinking about professional networking and making it more special. After the rest of the team wanted to move on I got talking to fellow startup people in Estonia to get feedback on the new idea. Two of them liked the idea so much they wanted to co-create it.”

Nice and sneezy

On Achoo, people’s achievements take center stage. ‘Achoos’ or updates are statements of accomplishment can be tagged with skills, companies and Quora-like discussions. Currently there’s basic commenting available, but this has proven to drive engagement in closed beta. Naturally if people on your network appreciate your latest ‘Achoo’ they can show their approval with a rather apt blessing. (Achoo. Bless you. Get it?)

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So why the extraordinary name? Purde says points out that it is not easy to pick one, “We were looking for names that hinted at skills, talents or achievements and came up with an incredibly long list of mostly dull names. Achoo was one of the ‘mutations’ of  achievement. Initially we disregarded it as a .com domain was out of our budget range, but then started to like how we can use it throughout the site (eg. you can ‘bless’ rather than ‘like’ people’s achievements). We also like the memorability of the name and the metaphor that Achoo makes accomplishments spread like a virus. So Achoo it was.”

The company comprises three people and is bootstrapping. Purde’s design co-founder is Veiko Jääger, described as ‘a local mastermind’ and the CTO is literally very shy of any publicity and declined to be named. (This still remains a mystery but you can find the CTO here if you’re curious.)

“I’ve done marketing for Skype for almost 5 years, later Flattr, Pipedrive CRM and many other startups as a freelancer. So in the end I’m just scratching my own itch,” says Purde. Just the sort of startup enthusiasm we like to hear.

It’s not surprising that Purde is comfortable with brazenly stating his achievements and intention, after all, he may well be responsible for the rest of us being a little more proud of the amazing things we do but we’re too shy to crow about.

➤Achoo