A Social Network for the Common Man - That's Kaleio
When you think of a professional social network you think of LinkedIn, right? But, let's say you are a Firefighter. Important job. Would you be on LinkedIn? Nope. Let's face it, the 250 million people on LinkedIn are not in the trades, public services or firefighting. We interview Jim Riley, founder of Kaleio(Ka-Lay-Oh), who has created the first professional Social Network for everyone else. In Jim's estimate, over 3 Billion others are in the worldwide workforce. Jim talks like a tech 'Robin Hood' as he is fighting for a better tech world for the everyday person. He has been a serial entrepreneur for many years in other industries and fields. His "outsiders" lens has helped this first venture into technology for Jim. Listen to our podcast as we talk with Jim about Kaleio and starting a tech startup with a distributed team with little or no experience.
Professional Social Networking for Everyone Else
" I felt there was not a space for people to connect based on their actual trade or industry or specialty other than a LinkedIn which tends to be more white collar- more professional networking. I set out to try to figure out, how do we interconnect with people every single day and how does that turn into a tool that we can use to better our work life."
"We give you industry specific news every day. We have journalists that upload news into your newsfeed every day. Another way we create engagement is through our Solutions Page - Solutions is an open forum question and answer page that allows you to ask questions to industry experts or people that may have an expertise in a certain area that maybe you don't...With Solutions...let's say someone wants to build a website I connect them with people in the site that may do that and now we have created community or an introduction of people that didn't exist before."
"We try to knock the walls down, so if you are interested in Venture Capital and you are interested in that field and you want to get into it. So you may want to connect with people in that industry. You can asked to be connected with those people and create a relationship with someone outside your industry or scope. We encourage that as well"
SocialGreg's Uptake
After talking with Jim and reflecting about LinkedIn. Jim is absolutely right. Most of trades and interest groups are still on BBS. He has an interesting opportunity to connect the "common man." LinkedIn is not interested in this market as well and with 250 million people in their social network - "they're done" as Jim puts it. A potential 3 billion total market size isn't bad to take a crack at. I believe what helps Jim is his fresh set of eyes into the IT tech field and his entrepreneurial "can do" attitude. Most of us have interests outside of our work area, so give it a try. Maybe you can find fellow motorcyclists, triathletes or your next field like nursing.
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