Ask HN: Review my startup – Credo360, a measure of personal credibility • Hacker News Board

Ask HN: Review my startup – Credo360, a measure of personal credibility

#1

Post by yanni79 » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:36 PM UTC

What it is:

Credo360 is an open reputation system. It is like a crowed-sourced credit score, where the score is based on ratings and reviews you get from people you deal with. It works very similarly to reputation systems on eBay or Airbnb – but Credo reputation is not tied to a marketplace. Instead, it belongs to you as a person. You can use Credo whenever you need to deal with someone you don’t know. This will help you keep your privacy and avoid scams.

The platform is currently up and running here: https://www.credo360.com

Why we are doing this:

We want to incentivize honest behavior between people. In one-off P2P transactions, there is perverse incentive for people to try to cheat each other. For example, there is a strong incentive for me to sell my flawed iPhone to someone on Craigslist because I know that after I get the money, you won’t find me and you won’t be able to affect my reputation.

This perverse incentive could be removed if there is a “reputation trail” that follows people through all their transactions (regardless of the platform or medium). And that’s exactly what we want to achieve with Credo. Basically, we want to incentivize people to behave honestly, even with strangers, and we think this would lead to a more honest and efficient society.

What we are looking for:

Any feedback is appreciated, but we are specifically interested in the following: 1. Feedback on the idea itself 2. Feedback on UI/UX 3. Any suggestions on how to grow the platform

The last one would be especially appreciated as the value of platform grows with the number of people on it. We’ve already got to about 1,200 users by working with some buy/sell/trade communities on Reddit, but hoping to accelerate the growth.

Re: Ask HN: Review my startup – Credo360, a measure of personal credibility

#2

Post by sharemywin » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 6:24 PM UTC

1. how do you handle disputes?

2. shouldn't I own my reputation and not you?

3. what if someone steals my identity?

4. How do you verify identity. how easy would it be to steal pictures and pretend to be others?

5. What happens when you get really big and kick me out of the system and all I get is form emails telling me I'm out of luck?

6. what if I suck in one category but I'm really good at something else. should someone that sucks at dating be denied a home loan or job?

Re: Ask HN: Review my startup – Credo360, a measure of personal credibility

#3

Post by sharemywin » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 6:26 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #2

1. how do you handle disputes? 2. shouldn't I own my reputation and not you? 3. what if someone steals my identity? 4. How do you verify identity. how easy would it be to steal pictures and pretend to be others? 5. What happens when you get really big and kick me out of the system and all I get is form emails telling me I'm out of luck? 6. what if I suck in one category but I'm really good at something else. should s…

Don't get me wrong I like the idea and a lot of others will probably like it too. But, look at Facebook and Google they can't handle the responsibly they've been given. People are falling though the cracks.

Re: Ask HN: Review my startup – Credo360, a measure of personal credibility

#4

Post by irakliy81 » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 7:12 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #2

1. how do you handle disputes? 2. shouldn't I own my reputation and not you? 3. what if someone steals my identity? 4. How do you verify identity. how easy would it be to steal pictures and pretend to be others? 5. What happens when you get really big and kick me out of the system and all I get is form emails telling me I'm out of luck? 6. what if I suck in one category but I'm really good at something else. should s…

Hey - one of the founders here. To answer your questions:

1. An important thing to point out is that people can't review each other unless there is a confirmed financial transaction between them (so, dating example from a different question won't apply). But if you and I had a transaction that resulted in a dispute, we'd both write reviews for each other. Then, someone looking at my profile would have access to both reviews (the one I wrote for you, and the one you wrote for me), and would be able to see both sides of the story.

2. Yes - our long-term solution is to move this to a blockchain-type backend. For now, it is a centralized database to get to market faster.

3 & 4. We use a number of things to verify identity - social media profiles, banking info, and knowledge-based-authentication (more info on this is here: https://www.credo360.com/help#verifications ). In fact, your "identity" is a big part of your overall score. So, you won't be able to get to a very good score without having established Facebook/LinkedIn profiles, or doing a KBA. Pretending to be others would be pretty difficult. You can of course create a "fake" profile with someone else's picture, but unless you can verify this profile with established social media accounts with the same name, and pass through KBA, this fake account won't get a high score. Also, if someone discovers that the account is fake, we'd immediately suspend it.

5. Once we move to a blockchain-type backend, that shouldn't be an issue

6. The primary metric we are trying to measure with our score is whether you are an honest person, and I think it carries over from one category to another. It is not about whether you are good at something, it is more about whether you keep your word.