Quewey: business Q&A startup pivots, now offers professional networking matchmaking

One local startup’s old idea is another’s new venture.

Quewey, the business-focused Q&A site, recently pivoted to offer a professional networking matchmaking service.

If the idea sounds familiar, it’s because a Philly startup has already tried it. Before Pinterest analytics firm Curalate was Curalate, it spent about two weeks testing out a networking matchmaking service called DrinkedIn. [Updated, see below]

Co-founder David Luk says that Quewey, which launched last March and raised funding over the past year, had between 1,000 and 2,000 users, but there wasn’t enough activity on the site. Around the end of June, the team tried developing a private Q&A network based on employee benefits but Luk says benefits brokers weren’t willing to adopt the service.

A few weeks ago, the three-person team decided to change focuses again, this time taking inspiration from Curalate‘s former identity.

Luk, who’s friends with Curalate CEO Apu Gupta, has Gupta’s blessing for taking another swing at the model, Luk says. As we previously reported, DrinkedIn was hot during its brief existence with several hundred sign ups and national press. The real problem was that Gupta’s team didn’t have the technology to match people up so the process was grueling. Luk says he’s got an algorithm to support the idea.

Here’s how Quewey works now: You sign up with your LinkedIn account. Quewey matches you up with three professionals who have roughly the same seniority and work in similar fields. You go out with them.

The company is calling the networking set-ups “queweys.”

Luk says he’s just trying to gauge interest for the service now. In fact, when we chatted with him, he was out doing the whole street-team thing in Center City. His office is still based in Rittenhouse Square.

Updated 8/20/12 to correct the amount of time Curalate spent trying out DrinkedIn. The team spent about two weeks as DrinkedIn, not a few months.