Besomebody team, photo courtesy of the company.
“We’re building a mobile platform that connects people based on shared passions,” Kash Shaikh said in a Youtube video at a company event.
Besomebody will enable people around the world to explore, enable and unleash whatever they are passionate about whether it’s creating graffiti or music or rock climbing.
Besomebody will also provide a platform for experts or what it calls “Passionaries” to teach others who are passionate in their fields. The experts will be judged on a rating system. The startup makes money from a fee a charges to the passionaries for referring clients.
“We want to enable everybody to live a dream,” Shaikh said.
Last week, the Austin-based startup closed on a $1 million seed stage-funding round from The E.W. Scripps Co., based in Cincinnati. The company must meet key milestones to receive all of the money.
“Passion is the most overused, underserved word in human history,” Shaikh said in a news release. “Every single one of us knows the power of following our passion, but 99 percent of us don’t go all in on it. A lot of the reasons are internal, and our movement hits those head on. But the systems and structures around us don’t help. The world isn’t organized by passion, and we are changing that.”
Previously, Shaikh worked at Procter & Gamble and GoPro. He quit his job last year, cashed out his retirement savings and has been spending the last 16 months building his brand and platform.
“The community that #besomebody has built organically is remarkable,” Adam Symson, chief digital officer at Scripps, said in a news release. “They’ve built a powerful and authentic following through quality content, storytelling and audience engagement. While #besomebody is building community exclusively through today’s most interactive platforms, this has been the mission of Scripps for the past 135 years.”
