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Contact management simply isn’t smart enough.
At least that’s the premise under which Kahoots was founded.
A "smart" contacts app, Kahoots is attempting to recalibrate the way contacts are organized in smartphones. Integrated contact applications on iOS, Android, and Windows arrange address books alphabetically by default, a method that seems logically sound, if a little traditional and unimaginative. Instead of this approach, Kahoots aims to organize and update contacts dynamically, causing them to appear based on their relevance to the user.
Once a user imports her contacts into the app, it organizes them in an effort to mimic “how you think.” Contacts are divided into categories including friends and clients, then subcategorized based on call and text frequency. Those contacted the most often are placed highest on the list, which is then ordered by decreasing amount of contact. (The company declined to reveal the specifics of how this is achieved.)
After contacts have been imported and algorithmically organized, the app promises to automatically update contact information for businesses and for individuals registered with Kahoots.
“With Kahoots, you own all of your contact information – if you update it, it updates for everyone,” said founder and CEO Nick Petit. “Our aim is to make sure that the contacts you put in Kahoots is correct and always up-to-date. To do this, Kahoots accesses data on over 65 million places in 50 countries. What this means to our users is two things: 1) when you update your contact info in Kahoots, it updates on your friends’ phones who use Kahoots, and 2) business contacts are always correct.”
(Petit didn’t elaborate on the data types the company accesses.)
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These features give way to what Petit posits as Kahoots’s most distinguishing feature: shared professional contacts. According to Petit, the app completes any missing, outdated, or incomplete contact information for a business contact using its data stores, then automatically categorizes this contact (his example: “Dr. John in your old contacts becomes Dr. John Robinson, Allergist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital plus website, address, emergency contact info” and is categorized under “Health”). Individual contacts can then share professional contacts with other individuals who use Kahoots.
“[Kahoots] provides access to trusted recommendations on who to use based on the character of people you know, not random reviews,” said Petit.
According to the company, users are free to keep professional contacts of their choice private, and that personal contacts are kept private by default.
“Our technology uses investment banking levels of security – this is twice what your current contact app uses,” Petit said. “Regarding privacy, you own your contact info, that’s always yours. All your personal contacts are yours as well...Kahoots only shares the local business that you approve and these are only shared with your personal friends in Kahoots.”
The company, which employs six, has raised $775,000, Petit said, $500,000 of which was contributed after the app won the Microsoft Ventures Pitch at 1871 last month.
Currently in private beta, Kahoots will continue to test “over the next month or two in preparation for a broader launch here in Chicago,” Petit said.
He anticipates integrating booking and payment services, professional recommendations for traveling users, and a CRM tool for business.
“Our goal is to get users to replace that old address book icon and...be your go-to app when you are connecting with the people that matter most to you, or to find that someone you need to know,” he said.
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