Adrian Scott is founder of Ryze, a business networking community. Ryze catches users’ interests by offering many useful search and networking tools not seen elsewhere. We chatted with Adrian about his business and plans for the future.
What is Ryze?
Ryze is a business networking service that helps people grow and leverage their networks of contacts. We enable networking through a web site, our primary focus, and also through Ryze business networking mixers held in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London and Palo Alto. We were nominated for a Webby Award.
Why is it effective?
I think our effectiveness has been the accumulated result of a lot of little things. We started off with an initial member base drawn from a networking mixer I ran starting in 1996 called the Web of Finance. I think this initial population was a significant help in creating an effective site. Many people are drawn to the site once they see that real business people who’ve had significant accomplishments are a part of it. We’ve also tried to structure the interactions to encourage positive remarks and helpfulness, rather than, for instance, debates and flaming.
You offer folks a number of ways to interact — guest books, private messages, chat. What patterns of usage do you see?
The most active communication area of the site is guest book postings. Private messages are generally used for extended conversations, introductions, business dealings and arranging meetings, so they are less frequent but more involved. We haven’t done much with chat at this point, our current implementation is not very useful yet.
You also offer offline events. Can you say a word about the interplay of online and offline services?
We definitely see changes in the traffic patterns around our events. People ask each other if they’re going to be at the upcoming event. People also invite new members to Ryze in relation to the events. After the events, you can see people signing each other’s guestbooks saying that they enjoyed meeting at the event. I think the offline events provide a nice grounding to the network in that several percent of the members see each other each month. This helps keep interactions ‘real’ and positive.
How do you make money?
Our primary revenue stream is subscriptions. To access special features, such as advanced searching and time-saving displays of information on multiple people, our members pay $5-10 per month. Paid members can also navigate through the network in a neat way, by seeing which members share connections with them by interest, employer, or common friends. A huge amount of functionality is available for free, such as private messaging between members, which is often a paid service on other commercial sites. We have a smaller revenue stream coming from events, and have sold a small amount of advertising in the past, but our main focus is on subscriptions.
What are your hopes for Ryze a couple of years out?
I hope we’ll be able to serve a much larger network of members, and in a way where they feel like they’re experiencing quality interactions. For instance, we’ve already had occasions where members have moved from one city to another, and the bulk of their network in the new city forms through fellow Ryze members.
We’ll continue to build out our infrastructure and the services we offer to make new things possible for our members, present and future (who will hopefully comprise the bulk of our membership two years out). It’s particularly neat when we can combine people and data in new ways. There are a lot of inefficiencies out there in networking, so it will be an enjoyable adventure.
