This article was published on April 6, 2010

xs2.me – Like Reality TV for Tech Entrepreneurs


xs2.me – Like Reality TV for Tech Entrepreneurs

What do you do after you build a tech business up and sell it off to an Internet heavyweight?

Well Bart Jellema, The Next Web Australia’s Startup Person of the Year and founder of online coupon site Tjoos, which was recently acquired by NASDAQ listed Internet Brands, is about to do it all again but this time with an incredibly cool twist – he’s going to open design his new project.

But before I tell you more about what that means, let’s get into what the new startup will be about.

Bart’s new project is called xs2.me (“access to me”). The site isn’t up yet, but the plan is to create a useful contact aggregation and management tool.

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Here’s Bart’s explanation of it:

I have a problem. I have facebook, twitter, an iPhone, Outlook, LinkedIn and I use all of these to connect with people and communicate. It’s a mess. I don’t know who I’m connected with where. I never have someone’s phone number when I need it most. As I said, it’s a mess. To solve this problem I thought it would be cool if a website could get all the contact details out of all my accounts and de-dupe it. Then I would be able to tag my contacts (friend, business, ex-girlfriend, colleague) and setup a rule so that I automatically connect on LinkedIn with all my business contacts.

While the idea of an entrepreneur who has recently exited starting on another project isn’t something particularly novel, the way Bart is going about it is.

You see, he’s opened the whole process up completely and is looking for feedback along the way. It’s kind of like reality TV for a new project from a proven tech entrepreneur – completely transparent and open to compliment and criticism alike.

Here’s Bart’s take on why he’s doing it this way:

While I’m designering this start-up I’m planning to share lots of information on the process, because the more and the earlier I get feedback, the better the end result. Especially since I’ve met so many smart entrepreneurs over the last few years! I’ll be roughly following the StartupCamp formula, only spread over a longer time period. So let’s get started.

You can catch updates, and give all the feedback you want, on Bart’s blog.

While public feedback should be “interesting”, for me the greatest value will be to get into the mind of a successful entrepreneur and get a feel for his thought processes as he tries to build another tech success.

Can’t wait to see how this one pans out.

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