BestVendor – useful social network

With new startups launching every day to service business professionals, it can be difficult to keep up with what matches your personal needs and it can become tiresome to continually ask your Facebook friends what you should buy and how much you should spend (and to be asked), so New York startup, BestVendor has launched as the Yelp of vendor services.

The free online resource helps professionals to quickly find the best apps based on the recommendations of others, aiming to be the “social discovery” resource for all business products beginning with web, desktop and mobile applications, likely to expand beyond that as they grow.

In 2011, the company raised $600k in seed money which was funded in part by former PayPal CEO, Peter Thiel, later to announce a Series A round of funding to the tune of $3 million, a major vote of confidence in the business model.

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What is most intriguing about the service beyond its simple drag and drop methods that require literally no tech savviness is that users sign in with LinkedIn and automatically see the apps people they are currently connected with are using, along with their notes as to why they use it or even why the don’t like a particular product.

Right now it is primarily mainstream apps, but as more users join the nearly 6,000 user beta group, more products are added and the ecosystem grows. You can search other people as well as companies or browse apps by profession. It’s a time saver, money saver, and lets you ask people you already know why they like particular products rather than repeatedly spamming your entire network with helpless questions.

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