Cosying up to strangers is a painless way to network if you can Shhmooze

STARTUP NATION: SHHMOOZE STARTUP APP:IT'S SOMETHING most professionals will freely confess to hating, but networking is nonetheless a necessary evil in most jobs. Anything that can reduce the pain involved is likely to be welcomed – at least that's what the creators of Shhmooze, a new professional networking app, are hoping for.

Set up by husband and wife team Mehdi El Gueddari and Michelle Gallen in Belfast in April 2010, Shhmooze is a smartphone app that allows you to check in at an event, see who else is attending and then “wave” at them informally so you can make contact.

A self-confessed conference junkie, Gallen, who in her former life worked as a copywriter and in e-learning, came up with the concept for the app after one too many painful networking experiences at such events. “I used to ask myself: ‘Why am I talking to some bloke about his kidney operation?’ I found it difficult to find the right person of interest to me at these events,” she recalls, adding: “To me it’s just hard work and painful, and I thought there must be a better way.”

So Shhmooze was born, aiming to act as a bridge between the social network you have created online and the real world environment of a conference. It enables event attendees to quickly, easily – and discreetly – work out who they want to connect with at the event.

It’s now set to get even more user-friendly. On the current version you must build your own profile, but on the new app, which will launch shortly, it creates a smart profile for you. This automatically brings in your public information stored, for example, on LinkedIn.

You can then update it to highlight specific points of interest, depending on the event you are attending. So if you were attending the Dublin Web Summit launch this week, for example, with the help of Shhmooze you could see all your LinkedIn and Twitter connections attending. And if you wanted to meet them in person, you could send them a secure message through the app to organise it.

But it’s not just for people you are already familiar with. “It’s also a way of finding people you don’t know,” says Gallen, adding you can check out peoples’ profiles beforehand so you will have something to start a conversation with. So there should be no more of those awkward conversations about the weather.

“It takes only 10 seconds to look at their digital profile – it’s a lot less hassle than talking to them and figuring out if they’re interesting or not,” she says.

Still in the pre-revenue stage, the app is currently available to download for free, but Gallen hopes it will be possible to sell a branded, premium product to large conference and event organisers.

To achieve this goal will require extra funding and resources. To date, Shhmooze has taken a “boot-strapper” approach to funding. “We even sold our car to make this happen,” notes Gallen, adding the company has had “excellent” support from Invest Northern Ireland and has helped support itself from additional consultancy services it has engaged in. To date, the Shhmooze app has facilitated over 40,000 networking sessions between more than 10,000 users of the app.

Now, however, the duo are ready to engage in a bit of “shhmoozing” themselves as they set out on a fundraising roadshow. In this regard, the couple are currently spending time in London, “figuring out the angel investor scene”, but have also been talking to investors in Dublin and Paris.

They are also faced with a critical decision in the next phase of growth for the company. If they get the funds they require to expand and take on a team permanently, should they base themselves in Dublin or London?

“With tech start-ups in the industry we’re in, you can build a fantastic product in Ireland and find amazing people to work with. But then you’ll have to fly your sales team over to London, which is where the customers are.”

Gallen hopes London will offer some decent business opportunities with conference organisers. After that, Paris and the US are next on the agenda.

“London is a major conference venue in Europe, but Paris is the second largest in the world,” says Gallen, adding the fact her husband is French should help them secure business in this market.

So far so good for Shhmooze, which has won a rake of awards, including “the most useful app” category at the Nokia Digital Awards. The real challenge for the start-up, then, will come in coming weeks as it sets out to secure funding and then tries to move out of the pre-revenue stage and start making money.

As Gallen says, they have now built a great product. “But moving from a great product to one that pays is tough,” she concedes.

“We’ve had quite a bit of recognition, but now we want to see the new app out there, revenue coming in and investors coming on board.”

START-UP NATION

Shhmooze,

smartphone app

It takes only 10 seconds to look at their digital profile – it’s a lot less hassle than talking to them and figuring out if they’re interesting