Wakie (YC W16) Connects Like-Minded Strangers to Share Advice and Experience

by Y Combinator3/3/2016

Existing friends and family networks are who we often turn to for advice, or to talk about tough topics. But sometimes it’s easier — and more eye-opening — to talk to someone you don’t know at all.

Wakie is a company launching out of our Winter 2016 class that has created a friendly community of people who help each other by sharing their own life experience. The startup has built an app for iPhone and Android that lets you set any topic you want to discuss (work, relationships, traveling) and get an anonymous voice call from someone with a similar interest in seconds. It’s like having millions of friends who are available 24-7 to talk candidly about any subject.

TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear wrote about Wakie in an article last week:

“Behind the scenes [Wakie] …is building machine learning tech based on user profiles,
the subjects its users have answered calls on, and feedback after each
call to help Wakie become better at matching callers.

‘We use machine learning to learn the life experience of each user
and to provide better matching for any kind of question,’ explains Wakie
CEO Hrachik Adjamian, who, along with his brother Tatul, founded the
company. ‘We believe that artificial intelligence (AI) is too far from
being a replacement for human company so we are building AI made to
solve the problem of how to find real human intelligence.’

Adjamian says that although Google is good at searching for
information, it often falls short for more nuanced discussions or where
seeking the opinion of another human is preferable and works best in
real-time.”

Read the full story here.

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  • Y Combinator

    Y Combinator created a new model for funding early stage startups. Twice a year we invest a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200). The startups move to Silicon