The Official nkdGuru Blog - know what we know

Thanks for your votes in the You Be The VC Competition!

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:30:00 +0000

On behalf of the nkdGuru Team, we want to thank you very much from the bottom of our hearts for all of your votes. We recently found out that WE ARE THE WINNERS of the contest.

We're not sure how many votes we ultimately received, nevertheless, we sincerely appreciate each and every single person who voted for us. It really means the world to us.

At the moment, we are also working to release a private alpha version of nkdGuru for you to use. Please sign up here if you haven't done so already.

We look forward to establishing nkdGuru as the largest online mentorship destination worldwide!

Thanks again for your support and helping make this happen.

- The nkdGuru Team!
www.nkdguru.com

Vote Online To Help Top 20 Finalist -- nkdGuru -- To WIN $1 Million In YouBeTheVC.com

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:43:00 +0000

nkdGuru ("Naked Guru") recently was chosen from thousands of start-ups to make the final 20 of a contest called YouBeTheVC

Now our fate lies in your ever-so capable hands, and we MUST ALL VOTE for the nkdGuru video by following this link: http://youbethevc.com/finalists ("YBVC"). Look for either "acharoo" or "nkdguru.com" and rate our video... We stand to win $1 million in funding for our company.

Voting starts on April 22nd and the polls close on April 30th. That's only 7 days to support our incredible cause, which helps students get ahead in school, work and life.

YBVC requires everyone to sign up in order to vote for the nkdGuru video. It doesn't require anything more than a few minutes and your good will.

The winner gets everything a start-up company could ever want and need. This includes support, funding, resources. The stakes are MASSIVE!!!

With your help, we can be the largest online student mentorship destination in the world -- your children will be using this in years to come!

We hope you get the idea -- this is HUGE for us! PLEASE give our video a 5-star rating! Please tell everyone you can count on to take part in the voting and help nkdGuru win this elite competition.

Vote for our video here
Thanks for your time and consideration.

-The nkdGuru Team!
www.nkdguru.com
nkdguru.blogspot.com

Woohoo...nkdGuru is in the Top 20!

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:20:00 +0000

In our last post, we mentioned that we were a part of a contest called You Be The VC where we were invited into the top 100 semifinalists out of thousands of startups. Well yesterday, we learned that we have been chosen to be in the Top 20 and we are ecstatic about this opportunity.

At this stage however, the competition goes public. Similar to American Idol, the public will vote for the best idea and the top 3 ideas with the most votes will win. This is where we need your support. We are working on a video pitch that will be posted next week Friday on the You Be The VC site (www.youbethevc.com) and we will be requesting your votes at that time. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Please stay tuned...

nkdGuru is a Semi-finalist!

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:18:00 +0000

Recently, nkdGuru has been selected out of thousands of startups and business concepts as one of the top 100 semifinalists for a contest called "You Be The VC".

Mark Modzelewski, founder of Bang Ventures, the investment firm behind the competition (see his interview on cnbc above), has put together a stellar panel of judges to review the semifinalists. They include - Marissa Mayer from Google, Leah Culver from Pownce and Curt Schilling of the Boston Red Sox. Their job is to filter the field to 20, and then open it up to popular vote, like American Idol.

In the end, the three entrepreneurs with the most votes will win seed funding and a package that includes an experienced engineering team in Poland and professional services from law firms and accounting firms like Deloitte and Touche.

Who knows what could happen, right? Let us know if you think our business idea is worthy to be one of the top 20. Either way, we think the world will be a better place with nkdGuru being a part of it!

We hope you think so too.

-The nkdGuru team!
http://www.nkdguru.com

Extending Private Invitations...

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:11:00 +0000

A few months ago, we opened the first version of nkdGuru to a private group of testers. During that time, we received some great feedback, and we would really like to thank all the individuals who participated. Nevertheless, we understand that there are many of you who are still waiting to access our platform, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and excitement. Over the next few days, we will begin to release our test software to more private users.

As mentioned in our previous posting, we have added some great new developments based on your feedback and ideas to allow:

Grasshoppers to connect with Gurus for FREE (no strings attached); and

Provide the community with more resources, information and people to connect with to get advice, mentorship and much more!

As a consequence, over the last few months, we have decided to hold back on a nkdGuru wide release for the purpose of implementing these new features. Your voice really matters to us and we want to make sure that nkdGuru is strong out of the gate.

In addition to these new features, we want to respond to your feedback faster than ever. To do this, we have begun to re-write nkdGuru in a new dynamic programming language that will allow us to make changes and implement new features effectively and at the fast pace of users' demands.

In all, we think that these changes are going to create a much richer service that benefits all users. However, these changes will take some time to complete. As always, our team is going to work its ass off to bring you an amazing service carrying the world's top gurus as fast as we possibly can. I hope that you are as excited in using it as we are!

Thanks for your patience and continued interest.

-The nkdGuru team!
http://www.nkdguru.com

Implementing Your Feedback

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:17:00 +0000

In a previous post, we mentioned that everyone can’t use the site right now because; (1) we’re in a prototype testing phase and we’re working on fixing a number of bugs; (2) we only had two categories where Grasshoppers can connect with Gurus; and (3) we want to scale the system under control.

Well, as a result of testing over the past two months, we’ve received some feedback from users and are revising our platform and adding some additional components to make the nkdGuru experience even more meaningful.

They include:

· Additional features for Gurus to get advice and mentorship for themselves.

· Allowing Grasshoppers to connect with Gurus for FREE.

As we continue to work towards our alpha launch in the New Year, register with your email address so we can invite more of you as soon as we implement some of these changes. To all of you who have already registered, thanks for your interest and we appreciate your patience.

-The nkdGuru Team!

Students, Start Asking Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:57:00 +0000

Many of you have seen an advert of ours (see above), received a flyer on a bottle of water (see previous post), heard from a friend, met one of the co-founders, etc. and have been waiting to connect with Gurus on our platform. Well now, you can begin asking questions.

We are inviting students who are interested in going to law school or med school to start asking questions to our Gurus. We have profiles of a variety of graduate students from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, University of Toronto, etc. We are continuously working hard everyday at recruiting solid Gurus to join our community and provide you with the advice you need.

For those of you who are interested in other graduate programs and careers, we will be releasing a broad range of categories over the next few months, so make sure you subscribe to our blog and stay tuned to our releases. If there is a specific category that you are interested in, please contact us and we will ensure to eventually connect you with Gurus in that area.

Also, check out on our previous blog entry entitled “nkdGuru Features 1.0” that explains how to ask a question, and what you can do on our website right now.

We are still in a private pre-alpha phase so if you haven't received an invite, register here as a Grasshopper to get an invite to start asking questions. You should receive one in a few days after you register. Alternatively, if you know others who have registered on the platform and have already received an invite, ask them to send you one, and you'll get it much faster.

We look forward to seeing you online.

-The nkdGuru Team!

Asking Questions?

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:22:00 +0000

There are times when we all want to ask questions, and if it's not in your nature then I think you may be kidding yourself! It's important to ask questions, you can’t expect to go through life without asking questions!

For me it's simple, if I’m unclear on something I ask a question, I want to understand so I can then make informed decisions and even form an opinion. I need answers in order to do so.

Some people find it hard to ask questions for fear of embarrassment, but that shouldn’t be the case… If you have a question ask one of our Gurus or the Community of Gurus that we have on the site, as they can answer your questions. I wouldn’t be coy about asking questions, especially if you can get incredible insight into whatever it is you are struggling to come to terms with for example admission to Law School, or preparing for your MCAT exam…!

If you don’t ask you don’t get! Gurus are now on-hand to help you out, by answering any questions you have. One thing to note is that Gurus who are willing to help don’t want to answer ridiculous questions like “will I be rich before I’m 40?” or “what’s the weather like tomorrow?” I mean who asks those questions really? It's important for us to give you an idea of the quality of help at your disposal…!

Chances are you have some issues you need addressed, and so you should, you are working towards something, and you’re not quite there yet. You need people to connect with on your way to the top, and to be honest it's fun to network and meet people who are doing amazing things, things you are trying to do, people in a better position then you are so be in the know and broaden your horizons!!

Jay Williams,

Co-Founder

What Naked Truth Facts Do You Know?

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 02:14:00 +0000

The blunt truth is always better as it causes change, yet few share that type of information. Our platform is meant to attract people who will share that type of information with you.... nkdGurus!

Education first! It could be anything, share it with us by commenting to this blog. What interesting naked truth facts can you come up with?

Building a community of both Grasshoppers who ask questions and seek mentorship, along with Gurus who provide insightful knowledge based on experience and status is well underway, and our first priority is working with our users to strengthen our community. We have plenty of ideas and features we will be rolling out over the course of the year, and giving back to our evangelists, the people that contribute to the success of nkdGuru.com is what we are all about!! I’m on the record, blogging right now to tell you all… So get involved and watch this space!

-Jay Williams
Co-Founder

Sundays for Students

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:50:00 +0000

As much as students need guidance and access to academic and career related facilities like advisors and library archives, there isn’t so much Intelligence to support the huge demand for information.

It's no secret that career and academic information, social and personal info – School related advice is highly sought, everybody is on the hustle, and as a student; tapping into resources and services that come with the student territory is competitive. What should be practical is instead dressed up, formal and typically text book, like following a recipe! But in today’s sophisticated world, recipes just don’t work anymore. Now we have to bring more to the table in order to get ahead that involves not just what you know and who you know, but also getting out there (into the big wide world) and making things happen for yourself.

A nkdGuru is someone who knows what other people want to know! It’s the ability to tell things as they are, more importantly providing intelligence in naked form! To be frank it’s telling the naked truth!

Let’s say it’s compulsory for every student (college and university) to see a careers advisor before graduation. Surely the information provided will be based on training and knowledge of what prospective employers are looking for. I mean these guys tell us how many resumes to send out, tell us to go to careers fairs, and tell us to keep our options open, and expectations managed. All very well, but the simple fact is there are only a handful of amazing opportunities dished out in comparison to the amount of students working towards graduating with a degree and achieving the goal set out in our individual plan.

Truthfully it must also be said that there are many people with very different plans and missions in life, everybody has a story to tell, and each story always leads to a success.Point is, there are plenty of ways to score a dollar and become the next best thing, and with the right platform that we will be launching shortly, the right people servicing students with the naked truth. More students working towards graduation and a steady career path will be able to compete fairly, with a better chance of achieving their goals and progressing both academic and career wise.

Get online and catch up with buddies, do a bit of socializing and feel good about being a bit of an online social network-er!! More importantly touch base with nkdGurus, reach out to mentors… This should be the new Sunday routine for all students. I mean going through school is fun and all, but it’s also grueling, challenging, time intensive and very expensive! Surely a mentor dedicated to helping you blossom in your school days is a must…? Of course it is! Study time usually falls on Sunday’s shoulders - Make nkdGuru.com a Sunday thing too!!

-Jay Williams
Co-Founder

Why can't everyone use the site right now?

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:28:00 +0000

Some of you may be wondering why can't I access the site? Here are the reasons.

At least to start, we’re keeping some control over signups for a few reasons:

(1) our product is in a testing phase, and there are a number of bugs that we are working through;

(2) to ensure Grasshoppers have Gurus in areas that they have questions in – we want to make sure that if you come to the site as a Grasshopper, there are Gurus that can answer your questions;

(3) we’re only releasing a few categories that are of interest to some of you, therefore it wouldn’t make sense to allow access to the general public; and

(4) so that we can scale the system under control (what is scaling? It means that if a ton of people joined all at once at the beginning, then our site might slow down or crawl… and that would suck for everyone).

So please bear with us during this phase. Thanks for your patience in advance.

In the mean time, register with your email address and we'll send you an invite to start using the site.

-The nkdGuru Team

Telling the Naked Truth

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:22:00 +0000

Looking for answers can be a real hassle. I’m gonna keep this post keen on students because this is a massive subject to start talking about. Students will always have to do research; answering questions by asking questions and combining research and knowledge to breeze through exams and onto a prospering career. A career very exciting and outlandish, or indeed something traditional and equally big pimping!

So how do we go about obtaining information? There are plenty of online and offline ways to do so like using Google, or going to your local book store – Using the school (college/university) careers services and its library, or using a question and answer (qna) service like About.com or Yahoo Answers – I reckon there’s a good few examples we could use, but I’m hoping you know where I’m coming from…

Its no easy task to get answers we look for; they are buried in books at the bottom of the ocean… But may be there’s an old theory book lying around? Or more practical… Why not pop down to the careers services department and talk to a guidance counselor… That’s supposed to be the designated place to find answers and most certainly advice for the more serious concerns we need addressed!

If only we could just pick someone’s brain and get more than just advice on what to do, what to think about, what to take into consideration and the usual intel! It wouldn’t hurt to get some honest, clean-cut, flawless advice… Naked Truth! The kind of guidance only a mentor could offer, wisdom beyond the books, the trawling through search engine results, the careers advisors that left school years ago, and the friends that have their own exciting and outlandish plan to tend to.

Access to a resource where college and university students can keenly seek insightful intelligence from younger, more in-touch individuals – Lets call them Naked Guru’s is totally available given today’s technological advances – Let me quickly give examples; Facebook, MySpace (read my blog – http://jwthenkdguru.blogspot.com for more info on that topic) have already demonstrated their pull – LinkedIn, and other networks that enable us to promote ourselves worldwide. In doing so, nkdGuru.com offers an entrance to naked Guru’s who could provide the naked truth to eager students who are already massive internet evangelists (without fail - the Internets biggest fans!)!

Well now it is here, different to Yahoo Answers where questions and answers are general and trivial – instead you can really be in the know, gain some proper “food for thought”, no “sugar-coated”, “round the houses” chit chat – Its never been made available until now. If you know how to be a naked Guru check out http://nkdGuru.com and sign up to be a Guru. If you’re not quite there, but you want to be able to access Guru’s to connect to for guidance and mentorship - Helping with academic and career development - Sign up as a Grasshopper!

-Jay Williams
Co-Founder

nkdGuru Features 1.0

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:39:00 +0000

Hello Gurus! Welcome to the nkdguru.com prototype! The goal of nkdGuru is to provide students with expert and specialized advice that only elite graduate students can offer. Basically, this is a way to find out all the secrets that students need to know (right now) to get into the top medical, law and business schools in North America.

To ensure the validity of our Gurus, it is essential that participants sign up using their university/college email address. The foundation of the service revolves around the quality of questions answered, so your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Now, on to the nkdguru.com features.

Create a profile. A detailed profile is the most ideal. That way, Grasshoppers will know more about you. The better a Grasshopper can understand and relate to you, the more likely he/she will ask you a question. Our goal is to create a mentoring relationship as perfect as possible. Also, in the coming months, nkdGuru will allow Guru profiles to be viewed privately by your Guru friends.

Invite 5 friends and get 4 free credits that you can redeem later for money. Go to your profile page, and invite friends that you think will be great Gurus. The invite box is located on the left side of the page.

Answer questions. There are two ways you can do this:

- Check out your inbox for questions asked by Grasshoppers. These questions will either be asked directly to you (private), or they will be questions posed to all the Gurus within a specific category.

- Hunt down your own questions by accessing the “questions tab” in the main menu (this feature will become more important as more categories roll out and overlap. For example MBA and Investment Banking).That’s it for now. Test out nkdGuru, and send us your feedback. More posts regarding new features and updates will be coming soon.

-Justin
Director of Product Development

nkdGuru Features 1.0

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:41:00 +0000

Hello Grasshoppers! Welcome to the nkdguru.com prototype! The goal of nkdguru is to provide students with expert and specialized advice that only elite graduate students can offer. Basically, this is a way to find out all the secrets that you need to know to get into the top medical, law and business schools in North America. So ask REALLY hard questions!

To ensure the validity of our Gurus, all participants must sign up using their university/college email address. The foundation of the service revolves around the quality of questions answered. So Grasshoppers, you can be confident that your gurus are the real deal. If you see a Guru with a Harvard Law Degree together with a Harvard MBA, we’ve made sure that those are the actual facts.

Now, on to the nkdguru.com features.

Create a profile. In the coming months, nkdguru will allow grasshopper profiles to be viewed privately by your friends and new mentors.

Browse through the profiles of the gurus. See which ones are great fits to answer your questions.

Invite 5 friends and get 2 free questions. Go to your profile page, and invite your friends. The invite box is on the left side of the page.

Start asking questions. There are three ways to ask a question.

· Go to your inbox, and click on the “compose a question” link located to the right of the page.

· Type in your question at the text box located at the top right hand corner of every page.

· Go to a guru profile and type in your question in the text box located at the left side of the page.

When asking questions, they can be delivered in two ways.

· To all the gurus in a certain subject (guru community)

· To one specific guru at a time.

When you ask questions to the guru community, multiple gurus may offer to answer your question. Just choose the guru that’s right for you.

That’s it for now. Test out nkdGuru, and send us your feedback. More posts regarding new features and updates will be coming soon.

-Justin
Director of Product Development

nkdGuru Launches its Prototype!

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 10:26:00 +0000

Today, we’ve launched a private prototype version of nkdguru.com. Many of you have registered as a Grasshopper (those who need advice) and as a Guru (those who provide advice) and have been waiting to get access to our site. Well, now you will! Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be inviting the people who have registered to begin using our platform.

Grasshoppers – you will be able to start asking questions to Gurus in our first two categories: (1) Law school; and (2) Med school. We encourage you to invite 5 of your friends, so you’ll receive 4 FREE credits to ask questions.

Gurus – you will be able to start answering questions and giving advice, building your reputation and status so that you can begin earning money, and ultimately providing a solid community of Gurus who tell the naked truth! We also encourage you to invite 5 of your law school and med school friends, and we’ll give you 4 FREE credits to put towards increasing your status. Please note that your profile is private and only viewed by students who are interested in connecting with you, so feel free to share all of the information you think Grasshoppers would like to know.

Given that we are still in a prototype phase, this period is also to squash all of the bugs that may arise from various operating systems, browsers, browser configurations and user experience. Please contact us if you find a bug.

For those of you, who do not have an invite, register at www.nkdguru.com and we’ll send you one. (TIP: To get immediate access to the site, ask someone who is already “in the know” to invite you).

We hope you like it!

Stay tuned for more information. Feel free to subscribe to our blog so you will automatically be updated with everything that’s going on at our company.

Please share your thoughts with us.

Enjoy,

-The nkdGuru Team!
nkdguru.blogspot.com

Sneak Peak of what our site looks like!

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 05:40:00 +0000

Here are some screenshots to give you a glimpse of what our site looks like:

For Grasshoppers:

For Gurus:

We look forward to hearing your thoughts about the platform soon!

Have you seen our flyers?

noreply@blogger.com (Andre Charoo) — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:36:00 +0000

For those of you who got a bottle of water as seen above, we hope you enjoyed it! We also hope you did well on the MCAT. Look forward to seeing you connect with our med school Gurus shortly. To serve you better, make sure you share with us what school(s) you're interested in getting into when you register as a Grasshopper. Good luck!