Zentact Blog

Earlier this year, Eric Marcoullier approached me with an idea that he was working on with John Sampson and an engineer, Tim Rosenblatt, at Cloudspace. He called the idea the Auto-Rafer. As Eric explained it, I didn’t get it at first and I knew Eric was super busy with his company GNIP. The idea was to try and help people keep in touch with those people who mattered by sending links. It sounded too automated (perhaps the name) and I didn’t see the value at first. A few months later, I tried the prototype.

My wife, Tracey Brandt, and I have a small winery which she runs on a day to day basis. In the wine world, sales are often in-direct and relationships are important. For example, our winery sales to a wonderful distributor, Martin Scott, in New York. Martin Scott has sales reps who sell to restaurants and retailers. Waiters, sommeliers and others sell the product to consumers. Building relationships with everyone in that chain is important for our business.

Anyway, using the prototype, I added several of our clients in New York. These were people I had met on various trips, had dinner with and generally failed to keep in touch with. Within a few days, a name popped up, I emailed the wine buyer at a high end restaurant in New York, mentioned I had seen his name in the NYT and asked if he had tasted our recent vintage. He had not, asked for me to send a distributors sales rep and, voilà , our wine is back on the list.

As a result, I decided I had to join the team and now our product is nearly ready for a public beta. Join the waiting list if you want a sneak peak.