Can you recommend a service provider?

Do your colleagues and peers come to you when they need advice on which consultant, accountant, or lawyer to hire? If so, that is valuable expertise that may not be on your resume. Take it online with Engage-a-Pro.

At various points in their career, every business person is faced with the task of hiring a service provider.  Whether it's an accounting firm, law firm, management consulting firm, or marketing agency, the buying process can be quite frustrating.  Finding the right service provider can be opaque, time-consuming and very imprecise given the many alternatives that exist that may be better or more cost effective.

When faced with this situation, most of us turn to colleagues and peers for referrals.  We've all gotten that email, phone call or LinkedIn message asking the same thing - "Who do you use?  Do they do good work? Do they offer value for money?"  And invariably the answers are mixed and reflect varying degrees of satisfaction.

Our new startup called Engage-a-Pro is aiming to tackle this problem.  It offers reviews of b2b service providers in a range of categories - Accounting, Law, Marketing, Consulting, Information Technology, etc.  Reviews and feedback are then structured around five key ratings:

1. Quality of the work
2. Timeliness of delivery
3. Clarity of communication
4. Value for fees
5. Impact on the business

For a business like Engage-a-Pro to thrive, user participation is a must.  If you can provide a review of a service provider in any category, we'd love to hear from you.  And, you'd be an early adopter of a new technology that is aiming to shake up a large industry that is ripe for significant change.

- JW

How to hire and manage consultants

I just came across an excellent article on how to hire and manage consultants.

Rightly, the article touches on a) problem identification, b) selection, c) and d) accountability.

You can read the full article here: http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2011/07/06/how-to-hire-and-manage-consultants/

We are LIVE!!!

As they say in the tech world - we just pushed to production.  Yay!

It took a year and several trips to 'The Valley', but v1.0 of Engage-a-Pro has finally been shipped.

Yes, it's not complete.  Yes, there are areas where it deficient.  Yes, the search engine could be better.  But, neither Rome (nor Google) were built in a day...

Most startups have three phases:
1) Building the product
2) Building usage
3) Building the business

We just started number two (and we're nowhere near done with number one).  Wish us luck.

- John W.

Founder Showcase - We're in the Finals!!!

I'm delighted to say that we made it to the finals of Founder Showcase.  That means that we will be among eight exciting new companies to pitch in front of up to 400 people (including many investors) at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus.

The process was pretty arduous.  After we made it to the quarterfinals (20 companies picked from 50 original entrants) we submitted another video pitch.  These videos were evaluated by a panel and 15 companies were chosen for the semifinals.  A rigorous selection process then ensued which involved submission of a third video, a phone screening interview and then ANOTHER video submission.

Anyway, we made it.  It's a big deal.  I've attended two Founder Showcase events in the past and have always come away very impressed with the quality of the companies presenting.

Maybe 2013 is Engage-a-Pro's year...:)

- John W.

Founder Showcase

We've just applied to present at the next Founder Showcase at Microsoft's Silicon Valley HQ on March 27th.  It's an awesome event that is well attended by the who's who of early-stage tech investors.

If you are reading this, do us a favor and give us your vote here: http://bit.ly/XyzDAh

Thanks :)

-John W.

2013 - Engage-a-Pro's big year

Engage-a-Pro has been under construction for most of the past year.  It's been a huge project to develop what we hope will ultimately become one of the destination sites for business users.  We're currently in private beta and will be transitioning to public beta sometime in the next month.  Things are just getting exciting...

Awesome new front page

We're going into private beta very shortly with an awesome new front page design :)