The INK | p. 3 SS: Okay, consider me a full-fledged LinkedIn rookie. I have an account, I have a good handful of contacts, and I understand that it’s more about building business connections than a social media site. Other than that, I don’t know or use it nearly as much as I could. I get emails telling me to congratulate so-and-so on this promotion, that new title, a work anniversary, what have you, but don’t really know how to make the most of that. What is the Congratulator and how will it help me? JM: I noticed that messages like those started to proliferate about a year or so ago. It’s a nice experience as a recipient to get a bunch of those, like on Facebook when it’s your birthday. It’s actually quite nice. Whether you get those sorts of messages from people you haven’t heard from in a while, your friends… it doesn’t matter. The thing is, comments on social media profiles don’t really stand out. It’s nice to be among the chorus of voices, but it doesn’t really make much of a mark. When it comes to LinkedIn and business relationships, though, you do want to stand out. How it works is pretty simple: you, the sender, get a notification that someone did something awesome and worthy of congratulations. You go to the Congratulator website and log in with your LinkedIn credentials. The site looks at those worthy of congratulations and highlights them for you. You can use the search function, if say, someone was recently featured in an article on Forbes, for example. Click on them and you will be taken to a page that will show you the available options you can send. You click on your choice, enter your payment information, add a note to the recipient, and click to send. SS: So, let’s say I want to use it, but I don’t have an address for shipping? JM: The recipient gets a message in their LinkedIn inbox, they click the link, and they’ll go to The Congratulator to enter their shipping address, so there’s no need for the sender to have that information. One thing you don’t see on the site that’s good to a bunch of messages, but sending a physical gift definitely takes business networking to a whole new level! It requires a little thought and definitely goes above and beyond. JM: Absolutely, and it’s great for work anniversaries, too. If you are looking to increase employee engagement, like internal congratulations. If there’s a business gifting convention, it’s wine. When someone has a career success, you send them a nice bottle of wine. SS: Of course. It’s perfect, and especially around here. JM: Right. So we started looking at ways to make that happen, to connect the LinkedIn notification of a promotion, new job, or similar occasion, with wine. We talked to a few wineries and ended up hooking up with Peju. DB: I have an understanding of what consumers are looking for: wine meets yoga, meets music, those sorts of convergence. People like to be rewarded with good product and good experiences. Josh asked me to help be the bridge between his company and the wine world specifically, and I know Ian from wine world. JM: Ian knew Peju was very open to trying new things, that they pride themselves on being very forward-thinking. SS: So for now the Congratulator offers Peju wines as the only option. Will there be others? JM: We’ve had tons of interest from different wineries and wine organizations already; we’re talking to lots of folks to figure out who the next partners will be. We’ll be looking to add non-alcoholic gifts as well. SS: Right. Not everyone drinks wine. JM: Exactly. SS: So, what then? Flowers? JM: We plan on making it a highly curated experience for the user, not overloaded with choices for the sender. But there will be an option or two for someone who doesn’t drink, or in those cases when you don’t know that they’ll appreciate wine. DB: We will start to expand product eventually, where you’ll have a giver and a receiver of gift based on the professional world, or even maybe eventually beyond that professional/LinkedIn world. It could be something people use for birthdays, a condolence, as a medium to get people to start thanking, congratulating, appreciating each other… We’re taking a holistic view. LinkedIn happens to just be the bridge; The Congratulator happens to be the platform. It sounds crazy, but in this world of social media and all this connectivity, or of feeling so connected, we may have lost touch with real gifts and appreciation. It’s our deepest hope that we can sort of nudge people to get back to the basics of saying thanks or “I’m thinking about you,” “I appreciate your business” or “I would love to do business with you…” That is getting lost. It’s almost comic that in a world where we seem so abundantly connected by technology, we’re actually losing human connections like these. SS: I get exactly what you’re saying. It’s nice to imagine some human interaction or someone going an extra mile, whatever the occasion may be. So, is The Congratulator live now? JB: It is live now. For the moment, congrats.li is the URL, but that is a starting point. It will change as more partners – wine or otherwise – are added in the future. Oh, and I really have to give a shout-out to the LinkedIn platform folks who were super helpful throughout the process. There’s a pretty robust, wineloving culture there, which helped to get LinkedIn’s interest. SS: Excellent. I’m really excited to see where this all goes for you guys. I may just have to send my new LinkedIn connections a bottle of wine congratulating them on the success of The Congratulator! know, too, is that you can use BitCoin to pay for The Congratulator gifts. Also, none of the LinkedIn personal info is stored on The Congratulator after the session is ended. SS: This is such a cool idea! It’s great to get
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