Ada on Startup Marketing (@adachen)

A new project

I’ve been so heads down working at my new startup that I’ve neglected to update my blog. Sorry guys!

A few months ago, I left Mochi Media and the world of games to start a new adventure with Connected, which provides contact management without the work. It automatically pulls in contact information from across your email, calendar and social networks and gives you the tools to proactively manage your network.

Why Connected? Because relationships are important

One of the key reasons for my original decision to join Mochi Media was because I just liked the founder and team, and could really see working with them. When I first met Mochi, they had just raised their Series A. I wouldn’t have been fortunate enough to meet them without an intro from my brother Andrew. That set the stage for the past four years. Relationships are important, and they touch every aspect of our personal and professional lives.

Our networks are global, and scattered all over the place

I’m excited about the contact management space because it’s a common problem, and only growing larger. We’re getting more and more spread out, and our networks are getting even larger through Facebook and LinkedIn.

I grew up in Seattle, went to school in Philadelphia and live in San Francisco. My network is scattered all over the globe. When you travel to another country, how do you know how to get around? Even worse, sometimes we don’t even know who we know.

Here’s a quick visual of what my global network looks like thanks to Connected.

Using information from Connected, we were able to reconnect with friends last summer from Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

It’s a painful problem to solve

Connected addresses a problem that I’ve had for a long time. In college, I kept an Excel spreadsheet of important people called Seattle contacts, and used that as a reminder for who I should have coffee with each summer. In moving down to the bay area, I had another spreadsheet with a list of companies and contacts, and data for who introduced me to who.

After I made these contact lists, I never looked at them again. They’re painful to update, and how do you stay in touch for the long term? I just added them on LinkedIn or Facebook and did my best to stay in touch.

How Connected solves these problems

We’re still early with Connected, but I’m really excited about the product. We’re focused on taking all the pain out of keeping your contacts up to date by pulling information from across email, calendar, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Using Connected, I can maintain a list of important people and set custom reminders to keep in touch. It also sends me custom alerts for birthdays and job changes so I’m always up to date. For travel and recruiting, I can search across my network by geography or job function. It’s built for professionals like me who care about their relationships but don’t need / can’t manage heavy-weight CRM tools.

Try Connected

Please give Connected a whirl, and let me know your thoughts! Click here to get started.

It’s been almost 6 months since I’ve posted an update. Yes, I fell off the blogging wagon once wedding planning kicked into high gear. It’s been a whirlwind year with first Mochi Media’s acquisition, running the second year of Flash Gaming Summit, and nearest to my heart–getting married! On April 24th, I officially tied the knot with Sachin Rekhi and I’ve updated my blog name to match.

Sachin and I had the task of organizing a multi-cultural wedding which involved 5 outfits and 2 ceremonies. We had a Hindu wedding ceremony, a traditional Western wedding ceremony, and during the course of the day I changed into Indian, American and Chinese dresses. We were even featured in a local paper about the challenges of blending wedding traditions.

Getting married was like an advanced exercise in project planning and efficient use of technology. To give you an idea, during the planning process we shared  53 Google spreadsheets and documents between us! Our (fortunate or unfortunate, take your pick) wedding party was presented on the big day with a large packet of timeline, tasks and details to make sure everything ran smoothly. All that aside, we couldn’t have made it happen without the support and love of our family and friends. Thanks everyone!