Wiselike, The Q&A Platform For Professionals, Picks Up $1.25M In Seed Funding

There is no shortage of Q&A platforms on the web. But today, a new startup with fresh funding is looking to repurpose the Q&A format into something more valuable for the asker, the answerer, and the general viewer.

Meet Wiselike, which has just picked up $1.25 million in seed funding led by GGV Capital, with participation from 500 Startups, GREE and more.

Here’s how it works:

Wiselike provides a web-based platform that allows users to sign up with their full credentials and expertise to share their knowledge with folks who have questions. These experts are invite-only, and users who wish to be experts can ask Wiselike for an invite to become a knowledge sharer.

The focus for Wiselike is on the professional realm, as opposed to a broad platform like Jelly or Quora. Moreover, Wiselike functions much like a social network in that experts can build their brand as influencers or thought leaders. Plus, users who ask questions can take a more targeted approach, finding the perfect expert to answer their query instead of opening it up to a large community.

At beta launch (today), Wiselike will host a number of experts including Susan Bennett (voice of Siri), Shanna Peeples (national teacher of the year nominated by President Obama), Charlie Ayers (former executive chef at Google), Josh Wurman (Storm Chasers scientist), and Aaron O’Connell (creator of the world’s first quantum machine).

In terms of making money, Wiselike sees an opportunity stemming from the content itself, which should be of generally high-quality given Wiselike’s invite-only format. Marketers and advertisers will be able to target certain profiles and Q&A pages with relatively high accuracy and founder Kyu Lee believes that will be a strong revenue generator for the company down the road.

For now, however, everything on Wiselike is free to use, with plans to launch a mobile product soon.

You can check out Wiselike for yourself right here.