It is called Peoplerank and it is the platform for publishing and sharing professional reviews that, in this first phase, will be open exclusively to Italian founders and investors. “This is an initial launch that we will officially do on Friday, June 14, 2024 to test all the functionalities, fine-tune any critical issues, and validate with an initial market test the product, which, again in this first phase, will be free of charge but accessible only to individuals who are eligible to participate in the project that we decided to test with the community of startup and enterprise founders and investors operating in Italy,” Andrea Zorzetto tells Startupbusiness who after leading Plug and Play’s operations in Italy and now co-founder and CEO of the startup that makes and runs Peoplerank.
Joining Zorzetto as co-founders are Jan Wirth, a German programmer with experience at Mercedes, various startups, and part of Entrepreneurs First in Berlin, and Victoria Antonovich, a Belarusian law graduate and experienced product and UX/UI designer who was head of design at Paralect, an American software house and startup studio.
“We were a stealth mode year before we got to this moment,” Zorzetto continued, “in which we developed the platform and refined the operating model. Basically it is a professional review site about people, a kind of trustpilot of professionals that helps make their professional reputation more transparent both to third parties and to improve their own ranking. Today reviews exist on everything but people, it is a very sensitive issue because it is related to criticism activity, both positive and negative, directed toward people, and there have been many attempts in failed in the past either because there have been overly complimentary drifts or because unpleasant situations have occurred. Our idea is inspired by the Google pagerank algorithm, so Peoplerank depends on what others think of you, the data comes from the users, the author is anonymous however the reviewers are reviewed so even though they are protected by anonymity we verify and analyze them. In addition, the user sees yes the reviews associated with each professional, but each professional also has access to a range of data that are not public and that become very useful to learn more about the market’s perception of the professional’s activity and thus be able to improve in a timely and effective manner.”
Of course as always happens it will be the actual field test that will allow co-founders to make the system actually effective, but it must be said that the project was designed to be really useful and then to be extended to other professional and geographical areas, so much so that the site, even in this its first launch version is available only in English: “Initially they will be a limited number of users and already in the pre-launch phase we found that most of the reviews are positive even if some negative there is, in the process of growth will be increasingly important the process of verification of reviewers – continues the CEO – . Obviously reviews are linked to actual presence of professional relationships, you will not be able to review a person just because you met them once at an event or if elements come into play that have nothing to do with professional activity, and it is precisely to fine-tune these aspects that we are doing this ‘stress-test’ starting with Friday’s launch from as long as anyone who wishes can request access which is subject to approval because, as mentioned, at this stage we are only targeting Italian founders and investors.”
According to the plans, the testing phase will ideally last throughout the summer period and then launch in September a larger version of the platform, which in the first phase will be free and then evolve into a freemium type model with some data and features that will remain free and others whose access will be paid for: “For future expansion from the tests we have done there are particularly interesting areas such as client-providers, people to hire, but also lawyers, journalists, consultants, corporate and then expansion abroad that could see Germany being the first market to go after Italy.”
Peoplerank under the startup whose official name is Apto is a startup under Italian law and has also already raised a first pre seed round that closed in April 2023 to enable the team to have the resources to develop the project, the round was attended by top investors such as Exor, Plug and Play directly from the US, the German fund APX / Heartfelt, Moonstone, BHeroes, business angel Luca Foresti founder of Centro Medico Stantagostino and now engaged in new entrepreneurial adventures and other business angels revolving around the Plug and Play community and the Poliferie community which is the voluntary association in suburban high schools founded by Zorzetto himself. “This was a first round aiming to raise 300,000 euros although it went beyond that, we had come to have commitments for about 400,000 euros but we decided to stop at 300,000 both not to dilute ourselves too much at this stage and to keep costs under control.”
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