“I have 6,000 contacts. Which ones should I be talking to?” asks Andy Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Pasadena, California-based startup Rexter. “It used to be answered by intuition, but intuition doesn’t scale.” Rexter’s answer is to plug into users’ social media profiles, Microsoft Exchange servers, and phone conversations and start listening. There, running silently, it reads emails, logs chats, and keeps tabs on calendars. Once you program Rexter with stated objectives—find new hires; raise more funding—algorithms that analyze the quality and freÂquency of your communications hunt for patterns buried in your exchanges with connections and suggest whom you should contact. Who’s relevant to your latest deal—and when were you last in touch? Who on your team has an in with a potentially valuable target?
Rexter—which costs $30 for individuals and $50 per interlinked user in group settings—also gathers formidable intel on your operations. “This gives you a deep dive into what [employees] actually do,” says Ted Simpson, a Los Angeles-based managing director of real-estate firm Avison Young. “Are they spending too much time cold-calling instead of relationship-building?” He describes Rexter as “the missing link between Salesforce.com, Outlook, and your Rolodex.”
That’s the newest sweet spot in the $20 billion-plus customer relationship management market, in which Salesforce tracks pending transactions, LinkedIn traces whom you know and how, and group-chat programs such as Asana and Slack seek to replace email as the best way to follow tasks and conversations. If those are partial maps of how work gets done and by whom, Rexter aspires to be Waze, and offer turn-by-turn directions to accomplish specific tasks.
Wilson was inspired to start Rexter after struggling to manage relationships as he helped launch more than a dozen startups as a founder and director of Momentum Venture Management, a Los Angeles tech accelerator. No tool could handle the pace and scale of tackling his many tasks, he recalls: “There was simply no good way to manage your social network for the benefit of a team.” In 2010 he set out to invent one, and he’s since raised $2.3 million from such angel investors as the former CEOs of Ticketmaster and paid search pioneer Overture. Today, Rexter’s competitors include RelateIQ—which was bought by Salesforce last year for $390 million—and Humin, a new app that adds context to your contacts list.
One seductive possibility for entire businesses using Rexter: comparing outcomes (deals closed, products launched) with the flurries of messages preceding them, revealing successful strategies that can be copied. That’s what Mark Madigan hopes. He’s the national sales director of the privately held insurance firm Risk Strategies. “We have very high hit rates when we get in front of clients or prospects,” he says. “But our struggle is getting enough meetings. How do we get more?” Rexter, he believes, will help.
Wilson readily admits that, within groups, the intelligence his software collects could be abused, but stresses there are protections in place to prevent managers and teammates from, say, reading others’ email. He’s hopeful customers will choose enlightened self-interest over undermining internal competitors. “In organizations where you eat what you kill,” he says, “we can help you kill more.”
» Folllow me on Twitter.
» Email me.
» See upcoming events.
Greg Lindsay is a generalist, urbanist, futurist, and speaker. He is a 2022-2023 urban tech fellow at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, where he leads The Metaverse Metropolis — a new initiative exploring the implications of augmented reality at urban scale. He is also a senior fellow of MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, a senior advisor to Climate Alpha, and a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategy Initiative.
----- | May 1, 2023
CityLab | April 25, 2023
The Line Is Blurring Between Remote Workers and Tourists
CityLab | December 7, 2021
The Dark Side of 15-Minute Grocery Delivery
Fast Company | June 2021
Why the Great Lakes need to be the center of our climate strategy
Fast Company | March 2020
How to design a smart city that’s built on empowerment–not corporate surveillance
URBAN-X | December 2019
CityLab | December 10, 2018
The State of Play: Connected Mobility in San Francisco, Boston, and Detroit
Harvard Business Review | September 24, 2018
Why Companies Are Creating Their Own Coworking Spaces
CityLab | July 2018
The State of Play: Connected Mobility + U.S. Cities
Medium | May 1, 2017
Fast Company | January 19, 2017
The Collaboration Software That’s Rejuvenating The Young Global Leaders Of Davos
The Guardian | January 13, 2017
What If Uber Kills Public Transport Instead of Cars
Backchannel | January 4, 2017
The Office of the Future Is… an Office
New Cities Foundation | October 2016
Now Arriving: A Connected Mobility Roadmap for Public Transport
Inc. | October 2016
Why Every Business Should Start in a Co-Working Space
Popular Mechanics | May 11, 2016
Can the World’s Worst Traffic Problem Be Solved?
The New Republic | January/February 2016
Fast Company | September 22, 2015
We Spent Two Weeks Wearing Employee Trackers: Here’s What We Learned
Fast Company | September 21, 2015
HR Meets Data: How Your Boss Will Monitor You To Create The Quantified Workplace
Inc. | March 2015
Which Contacts Should You Keep in Touch With? Let This Software Tell You
May 23, 2023
Fast Company & Siemens: The New Skills and Roles Transforming Manufacturing
May 10, 2023
May 08, 2023
CoMotion LIVE: The Future of Air Travel
April 30, 2023