Quibb, a service that helps industry professional share and discuss relevant news items, is looking to finish up its seed round on Alphaworks, the crowdsourced equity exchange platform recently unveiled by betaworks.
Quibb represents one of the first companies to use the platform. The company has secured $650k from investors and is looking to close on another $100k through Alphaworks.
Quibb is a service built by Sandi MacPherson that helps people in a certain industry get to the most relevant news items each day.
“I noticed that that was how people were using Twitter,” said MacPherson, explaining the genesis of the project. “People were mostly following other professionals they respected, and most people were sharing news relevant to their profession.”
That said, she built a separate platform for these types of interactions that allow for easier targeting for your profession, as well as more structured discussion around those bits of news.
To be on Quibb, you must first be verified as an experienced professional in whatever industry you’ve selected. This way, you’ll actually be of use to the other users on the platform.
The service is entirely free, but MacPherson gives users the option to pay for a monthly subscription if they like the service. This doesn’t necessarily have any value-add or premium features, but it gives MacPherson a good sense of how many people are willing to pay for a product like this.
Right now, about 150 of the 11,000 users are paid.
Either way, however, MacPherson has no plans to force payment on users. She says there are other opportunities to look at for revenue, such as company profiles or sponsored content.
Quibb has been around for about a year and a half, and is completely bootstrapped until now.
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