Editor’s note: Ben Tseitlin is an entrepreneur who has worked for several startups doing web design and marketing. He also indulges his entrepreneurial urges throught running a startup chocolate company called Benchic Chocolate. He is working with TechCrunch TV as a contributor.
Zerply co-founder Christofer Karltorp believes there’s a creative class (think designers, writers, photographers) that doesn’t think LinkedIn adequately meets their needs. They want to display their professional work in a more creative way. And more importantly, Christofer points out a trend that people of all industries are switching jobs faster than ever. Many have moved to shorter term projects instead of long-term jobs. Zerply helps these people showcase their portfolios and projects they’ve worked on.
Zerply also takes a shot at being a part of your reputation graph. It wants you to endorse people based on skills that you vouch for. Plenty of startups have tried to build a reputation graph before or are currently working on it, such as RG Labs.
With its well-designed profile pages and ability to link to your other personal/professional sites (Twitter, your blog, sites like Dribbble that showcase work) Zerply feels like something between LinkedIn and About.me. The important question is: are any of these features enough to make people want to use this over their existing LinkedIn or About.me (or similar) pages? In the interview, Christofer explains why he thinks people will choose to create a Zerply page.
Zerply is a 500 Startups funded company. It has also attracted quite a few notable people to create profiles: Evan Williams, Dave Morin, & Mint.com lead designer Jason Putori.