What Is Chain.ly? BizSpark Member Bruno Ligutti Explains

We asked Bruno Ligutti, a BizSpark member and founder of Chain.ly, to explain his startup company, a social network that matches people who need help with other people who can help. 

By Bruno Ligutti

Chain.ly is a social network matching people who need help with people who can help, through chains. Chain.ly brings trust and added value to the old concept of chains, and helps viralize people’s needs through their social graphs and in a broad array of categories, such as finding missing people, lost pets, and even a job.

 

We look to disrupt how people help one another worldwide, and we envision taking Chain.ly to developing countries lacking the institutions and infrastructure to bring hope to those neglected and forgotten. We envision the middle and wealthy class using Chain.ly to help those with fewer opportunities.

 

We are a team of two co-founders –Bruno Ligutti and Arif Mahmood. Bruno serves as the lead software engineer, whereas Arif serves as the main investor and business strategist. We also outsource work to an additional engineer. We have released our first public prototype and validated hypotheses with a small group of users, following a lean methodology. We are close to release our next version, and we are driven everyday by our love to help the world. We trust we will get there step by step, and Microsoft BizSpark and Windows Azure has surely accelerated our efforts.

Here is our napkin sketch, which started up the whole thing: