Ed: Great idea, there are some things you just can’t express or demonstrate on your Linkedin profile and profiles are often embellished.
Webcred.it allows you establish a record of projects you have worked on and the role you played which is confirmed by the company or project. There is no mechanism on Linkedin to provide this verification of both skills and your actual contribution.
In my case I have run about 10 tech projects that were either short gigs or experiments which are not really suitable to list on Linkedin as a separate jobs which would make sense to list on Webcred.it.
Often as a freelancer you might not be directly working for a company but have contributed to the actual product they released, yet remain hidden in the background.
Interestingly as we have seen with large startups such as Facebook, there are often forgotten founders who have been wiped from the company history, wonder if Webcred.it will keep these in place or grey them out slightly.
This is actually a pretty big opportunity which could be extended to all types of engineering, civil, buildings, aircraft, vehicle design, science and other products and projects.
| Startup Name | Webcred.it |
|---|---|
| What problem are you solving? | Verification of skills and project participation for tech workers: with increasingly complex tech projects and people in more specialised roles than ever before, there’s an abundance of behind-the-scenes experts who are never publicly recognised. |
| What is your solution? | At Webcred.it, we believe everyone deserves recognition. Not just the superstars, but the back-office experts, the testers, the project managers and the two-week contractors – everyone involved should be able to share in the credit of a successful project. Webcred.it is the world’s central ‘about us’ page – part archive.org, part IMDb and part LinkedIn. It’s a permanent record of the tech projects you’ve been involved in, listing the specific role or roles you and your colleagues played. You can list the ‘deep tech’ behind your project – the actual tools you used to get your job done – including the kind that can’t be determined from looking at the source code. Finally, Webcred.it provides a whole-of-project ‘Ask Me Anything’ forum, to discuss the big ticket issues facing technology professionals today: why did you choose that technology/stack over another? How did your project methodology interact with your remote workers? how did your design team stay so well connected with your dev team? |
| Target Market | While the ‘general tech public’ are the ultimate customer, the user base is for all technology professionals – most specifically, the behind-the-scenes experts currently without a voice/forum/platform. |
| How will you make money? | Classic freemium: it’s free to use, free to join and add your content. There is a very minor subscription offer for PRO membership – and increasing tiers for Companies and Technology Providers. |
| Tell us about the market & founders, why is this a great opportunity? | Attribution is something that even Marc Andreessen planned for in the early Netscape browser/editor, with a default ‘Author’ attribute for every web page. The internet far more complicated that now – yet the tech sector still relies on un-proven personal resumés and un-tested claims as a person’s bona fides. Digital provenance is vital to the entire tech sector, both for proof of a person’s credentials, but also for personal recognition – and the W3Cs PROV standard, while comprehensive, is overly complex unless tied to a simple platform with a strong network effect – Webcred.it. Andrew Ballard & Will Malak have realised that the problem of attribution starts with a very human need: the desire to be recognised. Be it for fame & fortune, or just something to be able to show your grandkids – it’s nice to get the credit you deserve. |
| Founders Names | Andrew Ballard (AB) & Will Malak |
| What type of funding has the company received? | Self Funded |
| Website | http://webcred.it |
| Twitter Handle | @webcredit |
