Miigle - The Social Network for Innovators from Miigle on Vimeo.
Miigle, a Los Angeles-based startup that aims to make entrepreneurship more accessible to the world, not just those with connections in Silicon Valley has launched an exciting new platform for innovators.
The brainchild of founders Luc Berlin, Josh Fester, and John Pavlick, Miigle enables entrepreneurs globally to showcase their startups or projects and get help from each other and the general public on any challenges they face, from building their product to acquiring users to raising money.
“Less than 2 percent of startups globally receive help from venture capitalists, angel investors, and accelerator programs combined. Relying primarily on these institutions creates a bottleneck that slows innovation and economic progress while putting at a disadvantage entrepreneurs who aren’t well connected. We can’t all move to Silicon Valley, nor should we. We created Miigle with the belief that collectively, as entrepreneurs, we are the solution to the challenges each one of us faces. We particularly wanted to make it easier for people interested in fostering innovation to get involved,” says Miigle’s CEO, Luc Berlin, a Pepperdine University Global Business MBA graduate who’s spent years working at pioneering Internet companies in Los Angeles such as Shopzilla and LegalZoom.com.
Miigle is re-engineering the complex, offline process of innovation into a collaborative, online ecosystem based on a global human network. The platform’s algorithm helps people easily discover and contribute - knowledge, feedback, talent, money, and even emotional support - to startups worldwide that pique their interest. “From a technology standpoint, we had to find the right formula. Our priority was to build a platform that’s easy to use yet very effective,” asserts Josh Fester, Miigle’s CTO, a Missouri native, and graduate of Missouri State’s CIS & Entrepreneurship programs.
"Being a bootstrapped startup we’ve faced our share of adversities. In many ways it’s helped us build our product because we could relate to the frustrations of other entrepreneurs. For example, when we unveiled Miigle at the LAUNCH Festival in San Francisco, a noted Silicon Valley academic told us we would never succeed because we weren’t part of their ‘Boys Club’. That’s the conventional wisdom we’re fighting,” affirms Mr. Fester.
Miigle differentiates itself by its emphasis on social collaboration between startups and the general public. Creating an account takes less than a minute, but is optional. The platform also integrates with popular startup sites like AngelList, Kickstarter and Crunchbase allowing those startups to create their profile on Miigle in just two clicks. “We’re building a community where startups work with each other and the public to overcome their challenges.
On other sites, entrepreneurs struggle to find good connections because it’s difficult to identify how one relates with a stranger. We developed an algorithm to improve the relevancy of connections between our members,” says John Pavlick, who is Miigle’s Chief Software Officer and also a Computer Engineering student at Purdue University. “Our focus is getting great startups worldwide the exposure and help they need, whatever it may be,” concludes Mr. Pavlick. Learn more about Miigle and join their community at www.miigle.com. For current news, follow @miiglers on Twitter.
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