Team GroupSmack

We're a brand new startup that wants to empower anyone to be a judge and establish community rankings for any topic. In the process, we want to incentivize groups around doing, not just telling or liking. We think there are a lot more interesting judges out there than just those seen on dance contests or food challenges on television. We're currently based in Portland, OR and Washington, DC.

Meet the team:

Wyatt

Last year Wyatt's workplace gave him a pedometer and had each branch report daily pedometer steps to determine the champ. He thought a platform that would support any such thing on a per capita basis would be cool. He claims his hometown of Olympia is the best city in the world for launching great female rock bands, baked geoducks and winter sunsets. Wyatt has a BA from Willamette University and MA from Columbia University.  Please share any comments or smack at Wyatt@GroupSmack.com

Jonathan

Jon is a serial entrepreneur and web developer who has worked in developing cellular based restaurant paging, dynamic content push systems, healthcare consulting services, and political analysis applications. He also is integral to Thinking Economics, an interactive technology based curriculum, and served on the national board of Secure our Future, a group for social security reform. He claims his hometown of Klamath Falls produces the most high school distance running prodigies per capita in the nation. Jon has a BA and MBA from Willamette University.

Brian

Brian is a web developer, consultant and capitalist who has worked on NQ Systems, ZipBird and Qmania among others. His homepage BrianRoesler.com regularly crashes from over-demand and has been nominated for two academy awards. He claims his hometown of Lake Oswego has the highest running average score in the decreasingly popular game Submit! in the quad-county region. Brian has a BA from Willamette University.

Paul

Paul is a startup and baked goods enthusiast who regularly attends discos. If there is a river in the vicinity, Paul rafts it- real hard. He claims his hometown of Storrs is the healthiest mid-major metropolitan city in the United States of America. He thinks the Internet will be very popular. Paul has a BA and MPA from the University of Connecticut.   

And please stay posted.  GroupSmack is brand new and this is the prototype for much more to come in the realm of judging claims, winning bragging rights, ranking anything, collaborating around common challenges. We have big ideas and hope you'll hop on for the ride.  If you’re lucky there could even be prizes…

“When you measure something and have a competition surrounding it,

it creates a strong incentive to do more of it.”–Peter Orszag

And be sure to check out our blog