Product manager & UX guy: Akshay previously was an Investment Banker in the software sector. In that avatar, while working with entrepreneurs he fell in love with entrepreneurship (and the idea of never working with people one hated). When his tenure as a banker ended, he started to work on his own venture. He was drawn to the recommendation space because he always had trouble finding good grits. He first launched GetComparisons which led to Awessome!. He blogs about the road taken at How To Launch a Startup and cusses often as @shaymus
Tech lead: Travis is a former molecular biologist (no, seriously). He previously performed research into the biology of cancer while working at the University of Chicago. Although a biologist, he has always loved coding. He is a self-taught programmer who loves contributing to open source and has worked on side ventures since high school. Few years ago he finally decided to leave research and pursue his lifelong dream of building a technology company. He first founded and built GymGenius.com, then joined Akshay (when he was working on GetComparisons) as the tech co-founder and continued in the role at Awessome!. Follow him on twitter here @travispew.
We are also the team that built GetComparisons.
Our Advisor:
Josh Breinlinger: Entrepreneur, VC and avid sailor. Currently a Senior Associate with Sigma Partners. Formerly spent 5 years at oDesk. Joined the company as the 4th employee and contributed to the company’s growth from almost nothing to 10M in monthly services. Find him tweeting fancy things @jbreinlinger.
Why we started Awessome!?
We believe it’s currently way too hard to find what you want. What if you wanted to buy a wetsuit, how long would it take you to figure out which one to get ? Or if you were travelling to a new place and wanted to about things to do there ? Or if you just wanted to go out for dinner and wanted to try out a new place. Think about all the work that goes into finding (or not finding) what you need.
The thing we rely on the most is recommendations from people we know. GetComparisons.com was our first attempt at solving this issue. We felt that this didn’t adequately solve the problem, so we went back to the drawing board. We wanted to build something that would be like our friend which we could turn to whenever we needed a recommendation.
With this desire in mind, we built Awessome!, a platform to share things that are awesome & useful with people you care about. For more insight on the hows & whys of this adventure, check out How To Launch a Startup, our founder’s blog.
