Startups entrepreneurs are often dreamers, passionate about an idea that they believe will change an industry, or perhaps the world. But the co-founders of Yumety, a social networking platform for dreams, are passionate about what people’s sleeping minds produce, the fantasies, nightmares and daydreams that speak to our biggest wishes, fears and hangups.
The team at Yumety, Phani Nivarthi and Debasish Bera, certainly aren’t in it for the money. The pair work in finance, and in fact Mr. Bera demoted himself, grabbing a job a few rungs down the corporate ladder so that he would have some free time to work on Yumety.
Users input their dreams directly through Yumety or by allowing the service to scan their email, tweets and Facebook for specially tagged posts. Over time Yumety builds a profile of each user based on the language and content of their dreams. Then it matches them with other users that have a similar profile, allowing them to exchange advice and interpretations.
The business model is fairly straightforward. These users are revealing their deepest fears and desires. What advertisers wouldn’t want to offer a user who is constantly dreaming of a trip to Hawaii a discount code for a half price airplane ticket to Honolulu?
Ben and Jordan get the vision, but they aren’t sure that the team at Yumety has made it easy enough for new users to begin interacting with the service. Will the founders convince them otherwise?
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And if you need to catch up, here’s the premier episode of The Pitch.