Startups

This venture-backed mobile app wants to kill the business card

Contap lets users exchange contact information by pointing their phones at each other.

If Contap gets its way, you’ll throw away all your business cards.

The mobile app, run by a team that recently relocated from Boston, lets users exchange contact info by pointing their phones at another Contap user and holding down a button. Then users can choose how much info to share (email, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.).

If that sounds awkward to you (it did to us and we told founder Jason Craparo as much when we met him at the IMPACT conference this fall), Craparo said it’s a lesser evil than carrying around lots of little paper cards and passing them around. The team is also working on launching a wearable tech component.

Contap will launch publicly in January. The new version of the app is being built by Doylestown’s Brick Simple. (Brick Simple founder Det Ansinn is Contap’s acting CTO.)

The startup has raised more than $350,000 from Boston-based Provident Capital Partners, Craparo said. Contap is considering a freemium model for revenue, he said.

Craparo, 30, and his cofounder, Kip Taylor, 25, met while getting their MBAs at Babson College. They moved to Philadelphia to launch their business because they had family in the area and because of its proximity to other Northeastern cities, Craparo wrote in an email. They’re currently working out of Center City’s Seed Philly incubator.

Before getting their MBAs, Craparo was on the City of San Diego’s Equal Opportunity Commission and Taylor was in the National Guard. They both live in Center City.

Correction: Brick Simple's Det Ansinn will build future iterations of the app. The existing product was built by San Francisco-based developers. (12/17/14, 4:36 p.m.)
Update: An earlier version of this story said the app is now available for public download. Actually, Contap says, that's not the case. Wait till January. (12/17/14, 11:27 a.m.)
Companies: Brick Simple / Seed Philly

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