Imagine you have several important business meetings coming up with people whom you’ve never met. You’d like to know more about these people–their company, their job function, their interests–so you can more easily build a relationship and make a great impression, but you just don’t have time to do the research.
Enter Charlie, the Chicago-based startup that delivers one-page reports on the attendees of your upcoming meetings.
Charlie connects with your calendar and syncs with your social media accounts. It then uses the names of the meeting participants found in the calendar to search over 100,000 sources, including Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It builds a profile from the information it finds, including anything that can help you build a relationship with the company or person at the meeting: recent blog posts, recent social media updates, common connections, common passions, company stats, company news, and more.
Charlie electronically delivers the profile summaries one hour before the scheduled meeting. Upon request, the service can also report on people not associated with a particular meeting.
Aaron Frazin, founder and CEO, came up with the idea two years ago when graduating from Indiana University because he was frustrated by the amount of time he was spending researching people he was meeting in job interviews. He ended up turning down a job offer to start the company.
He and his co-founder and CTO Rob Volk graduated the company from the DreamIt Ventures accelerator in Philadelphia and are now settled into a co-working space in Chicago.
The company has incredible momentum. Back in October, the company headed to market with $1.75 million from an initial round of seed funding. According to a company statement annoucing the launch, investors include Lightbank, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Confluence Capital Partners, Patrick Spain, and Apex Venture Partners’ Lon Chow and Armando Pauker.
Charlie promises to save you time and help you stand out in every conversation. Will you be giving it a try?
