How to Build a Leading CRM: Interview w/ Founder of Connected - Sachin Rekhi.

Sachin Rekhi is a Founder and CEO of Connected, which is social CRM without the work for professionals and small businesses. It provides a powerful interface to manage your contacts without the data entry. It combines data from Gmail, Google Calendar, LinkedIn, Facebook and more to create a comprehensive view of all the contacts and conversations in your network. You can use Connected to manage your contacts with notes, tags, and reminders. Unlike other tools, it keeps this data up to date based on new connections, emails, and meetings across your services. The company is based in San Francisco and has recently closed a $500k round of funding.

Connected has been featured in numerous reputable sources such as Mashable, TechCrunch, GigaOM and many others.

Do you think the education you’ve invested in helped you on the road to success?

Definitely. I did my undergrad education at University of Pennsylvania, and hold a computer science degree from the engineering school and a finance degree from their Wharton School. Education has taught me a structured way to define a problem and break it into manageable pieces.

What was the “break point” or an AHA moment in your career that made you decide to build your own brand?

Personal relationship management has been an ongoing passion for me, and it’s a natural path for me to work on Connected. This isn’t the first time that I’ve explored the space; in fact, it’s actually the third iteration. I built two versions during my undergraduate in college, including Kontax, a personal contact management project for my senior design project.

In those earlier experiments, it became clear to me that just about everyone aspires to be better about managing their friendships and relationships. And it’s becoming an even greater challenge today, because we’re all moving around so often and changing geographies and jobs. The problem was, even if people wanted to become better managing their relationships, they didn’t have the patience and energy to do the work to input in every person they know, their latest information, and log every meeting or phone call they’ve had with them. It just doesn’t work. Connected is game-changing because it takes the data entry out of relationship management. It’s a social CRM for your professional life, which automatically pulls in data from your calendar, email, and social networks. When you create a calendar event, send an email, or add a friend on a social network, the information just appears in Connected. That way, people can focus on the important part — managing their relationships.

As a young professional, what were some of the mistakes that you made and what did you learn?

I think the biggest mistakes tend to be the times when I’m not actively learning and making mistakes. I’ve definitely looked back at a lot of the internal tools and projects that I’ve been building over the past few years and regret not taking the extra step to get them out the door and shared to the world. It’s important to release early and often, and learn from the mistakes that you can make to get better. Having real input and feedback can be very humbling, but it’s also one of the best ways to learn. Not making mistakes means that you’re probably not working very hard and challenging yourself.

How do you measure success?
Success for me is all about impact. I want to build useful things that people love.

What is one advice that you can offer to your readers?

Be purposeful about your life and career. Don’t do things just because it’s what is expected or normal. If you have a big goal, make sure that what you’re doing today maps to the path of achieving it.

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Top 10 Best Advice From Successful Entrepreneurs
Advice for Business Kids in College

What do you do for fun?

Watch movies, read blogs, start companies, work, exercise, and spend time with friends and my wonderful wife Ada.

Are you Mac or PC?

Even though I used to work at Microsoft in a past life, I’m a Mac.

What is your favorite gadget(s), software(s), website(s) that makes your life easier and more productive?

A few apps to rave about:

I use RescueTime to track how I spend my time. It helps me answer that question, where did the day go?

I use CloudApp for sharing screenshots – it’s really amazing. You don’t really realize how much better it is until you try it.

The good people at Flowtown also made a great app called Timely which I can’t live without for managing my Twitter account and sharing articles.

Who would you like to see featured here and why?

Jason Fried. The business he has build with 37signals is inspiring.

Ways to Connect with you:
Company: http://connectedhq.com
Blog: http://sachinrekhi.com
Twitter: @sachinrekhi
LinkedIn: sachinrekhi


From: http://ping.fm/fGHtB