A Frustrating Process
With Credo360 we want to make interactions between strangers simpler, safer, and less stressful. But what do people do now? How do they go about figuring out whether they can trust someone they’ve never met? And why can’t they just stick to these approaches?
Well, the simple answer is that the approaches available now have their problems. Let’s start with a familiar example: you want to buy something on Craigslist (or any other classifieds site). To make the example even more concrete, let’s say this “something” are concert tickets. After searching for some time, you find exactly what you want — YAY! Next step, you reach out to the seller. If you are cautious, you probably use a “spam” e-mail address that you keep exactly for such situations. If not, well, you’ve just shared your full name and your personal e-mail with a complete stranger.
After some back-and-forth, you agree on a price. Now the seller, being cautious, asks for a link to your Facebook or LinkedIn profile — they want to make sure you are a real person. You hesitate, but still send a link to your LinkedIn profile. Now, the stranger has your full employment history too. If you sent them a link to someone else’s profile — well, the joke’s on them.
Time to arrange a meeting — but where? You can’t meet a complete stranger in a back alley somewhere while carrying a bunch of cash. So, you decide to meet at the bank — a safe public place with money-on-demand services to boot. The only thing, the bank closes at 5pm — so, you need to get off work earlier — inconvenient but not fatal.
Finally, you meet the seller (hopefully they show up). At this point you’ve already exchanged phone numbers, so that you can text each other when you’re at the agreed spot. Now, you have just a few minutes to inspect the tickets and pay the money. You may even have to take a gamble, against your better judgement, if the seller or the tickets look somewhat questionable (you really want to go to that concert!).
What do we have on the balance? A complete stranger now has your name, personal e-mail, employment history, and your phone number as well. Not to even mention the hassle and anxiety associated with the entire process. But the worst thing — what if the tickets are fake? The stranger is gone, and so is your money — there is virtually nothing you can do to get your money back.
But wait! — you say, there are many online marketplaces created specifically to address this problem. For example, eBay for selling things, AirBnB for renting out apartments etc. These marketplaces have ratings and reviews, and sometimes they verify identities of people so that you don’t have to. They even handle payments — though, sometimes, for a fairly sizable fee. This is all true — but, unless you are really active on these marketplaces, you probably don’t have an established reputation with them. How many people out there have more than a handful of eBay ratings or AirBnB reviews? And sure, even one review from a year ago is better than nothing — but, to be honest, not by much.
The way we see it, the problem with these marketplaces is that they are fragmented. Meaning, your eBay reputation has no relevance on AirBnB and vice-versa. This also means that the reputation you build on these marketplaces belongs to them — not to you as a person. If at some point, you decide that AirBnB sucks and you want to move to a different site for all your apartment renting — you have to start from scratch. So, all the time and effort you spent building your reputation on AirBnB have pretty much been in vain.
We believe that it shouldn’t be this way. So, we designed Credo360 specifically for you to be able to build your reputation in one place, and then be able to take it anywhere you wish.
