Ex-Googlers crowdfunding a marriage between Wikipedia and Pinterest: Heipile
Jasson Schrock and Srividya Sriram were Googlers who worked on the YouTube side of business. Jason is a science-lover and travel addict who was raised in rural New York State while Srividiya is an Indian in love with beautiful designs who worked in Silicon Valley for four years. Both of them have had an entrepreneurial bent and when Jasson bounced of the idea about Heipile with Srividya, they were keen to get the project off the ground.
What is Heipile
Pronounced as Hay-Pile, the product is huge in scope and intends to bring together the concepts of Wikipedia and Pinterest to create a place on the internet for new ideas and thought-sustaining information. Heipile intends to effectively expand a person's information universe in this age of information overload. “A lot of good content remains hidden. For instance, if you're searching for 'Mahatma Gandhi', you'll come across sources which give you almost the same information. What Heipile intends to do is to bring the holistic information about the subject on one page from where you can navigate,” says Srividya.
Heipile helps compile, curate, and connect information from around the web to support different perspectives on a vast array of concepts, ideas, issues, and stories. One can explore these perspectives by choosing which topics one is interested in viewing. This is how Mona Lisa will look on Heipile:
Crowdfunding
The entrepreneurial duo are trying to crowdfund the project via Indiegogo and have managed to raise close to $7000. “We're still away from our target but we have enough to get started on the product. The ambition is huge, equivalent to creating a layer over Google but we want to take it in our stride,” says Srividya. The aim of the crowdfunding campaign is to hire, find support on the business side, host launch events and also to pitch to investors after the beta launch.
Heipile has a well compiled Indiegogo page where anyone can contribute. And here is the launch page of the site.