Need a real estate agent? An interior designer?
Local start-up Stik wants to help users find one by taking word of mouth referrals online. The Facebook-integrated website gathers reviews and testimonials on professional services, verifies them via social media, and serves them up to others searching for that same service. The founders moved Stik to Detroit in 2012, two years after it was created in San Francisco. Stik raised $2.3 million in funding earlier this year to expand their team.
StartUp The Conversation is an occasional series on Deadline Detroit that features local startups and small businesses. Deadline Detroit submits questions and businesses respond in writing.
What does Stik do?
Stik takes word-of-mouth referrals and turns them into a powerful online presence for local professionals.
How?
Professionals who help with high stake transactions -- such as mortgage brokers, insurance agents, and realtors -- create a Stik profile to give their past customers a one-stop shop to leave testimonials and review their services. Reviewers authenticate their reviews via Facebook or LinkedIn, making the reviews much more powerful. The professional can then easily display their reviews across their web presence -- Facebook profile, Facebook business page, on their website, and in their email signature.
How will you know its working?
Even more registered businesses and reviews! Nearly 200,000 local professionals and businesses have collected more than 2.5 million recommendations and reviews
How do you make money?
We make money via premium service subscriptions
What kind of change are you hoping your company brings?
Stik hopes to bring authentic and trustworthy experiences to online consumers. We do this by bringing word-of-mouth dialog online. Professionals gain the valuable opportunity to manage their online reputations and engage with past and potential clients. Technology is changing the way we operate -- Stik’s impact will be putting power back into word-of-mouth referrals by getting them across the web.
The Stik office during a "team building excerice" at Detroit Endurance Labs. photo via Twitter
Why Michigan?
Stik moved from San Francisco to Detroit in October 2012. Detroit presents an opportunity to choose from a wide base of development and design talent. There are great universities and feeders nearby, but still relatively few consumer web companies competing to hire the talent. Jay Gierak and Nathan Labenz knew they’d have the opportunity to provide a relatively unique career option for creative and gifted professionals in the area. Additionally, both co-founders grew up in the Detroit area, and were excited to move back, closer to their families.
What spurred that move -- why leave San Fran? Were you looking to move to Detroit specifically or were you exploring other cities as well?
We were attracted above all by the opportunity to hire great people in a major metro area without having to compete against all the Internet titans (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, etc) to do so -- a huge competitive advantage there.
We also had a relationship with Josh Linkner of DVP [Detroit Venture Parners, who provided funding for Stik] that proved instrumental to making the move possible. When we saw what they were doing downtown with the M@dison building and their redevelopment plans generally, we were immediately excited to be a part of it. We have grown from four to 21 people since getting here. Quite a wild ride!
Who are the brains behind the operation?
Nathan Labenz studied Chemistry at Harvard University. After graduation, he founded an online writing services company while traveling in South America, which ultimately fueled the fire to create Stik.
Jay Gierak studied applied mathematics at Harvard University. Before co-founding Stik, he worked at Morgan Stanley's technology investment banking group.
Stik is now 21 youthful, inspired, enthusiastic, gifted members strong. Having been M@dison building tenants since the move, Stik is currently in the process of moving into an office at 1520 Woodward Ave., where they will be sharing space with Detroit Labs. Stik loved being part of the collaborative space of the M@dison, but is excited about having more space.
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