Trendslate recently sat down with Andy Kim, co-founder of Los Angeles based Mingle . This interview covers the inspiration behind the company to the challenges faced by LA startups.

Trendslate: What was your inspiration behind Mingle?
Andy Kim, Mingle: This past April, I was standing in line at Costco. I had a few tax questions that I was thinking about and wondered if there were any accountants in line. Or what about inside Costco? There had to have been a few accountants there but there was no way to figure out this information. Then I noticed the girl in front of me was refreshing her Facebook feed every 1/2 second and also noticed a few others behind me w/ their faces buried into their smartphones.

Then it clicked. Why couldn’t professionals network with other professionals there through their phones?

2 months later, Mingle was launched.

Trendslate: How do you intend on monetizing Mingle; there are signs of virtual goods?
Andy Kim, Mingle: It was important for us to have a couple revenue models because well, we want to create a sustainable business. So ads? Hell no. I hate ads. Because we have created a professional social networking using location, there’s a ton of talent there for recruiters. In fact, we had a test where we had about 8 recruiters jump on Mingle and see they were able to find. In a matter of a couple hours, each recruiter had received over 8 resumes. To help expedite this and bring in revenue, we will build a core set of web-based tools for recruiters and companies to search for talent based on location. We’re already about to sign out first exclusive partner w/ a nation-wide recruiting agency. The recruiting angle is only 1 of 4 possible revenue models including something that will blow the market open. That’s in stealth for now but we’ll give TrendSlate a sneak peak when it’s ready.

Mingle Team from left to right (William Chu (CTO, cofounder), Andy Kim (CEO, cofounder), Andrew Ra (community manager), Charlie Ahn (Lead Architect, cofounder)

Trendslate: How have your past ventures contributed towards the traction that you have seen with Mingle?
Andy Kim, Mingle: Since August, we’ve had over 36,000 downloads and now approaching 500,000 introductions, messages and profile views. Our past ventures has helped us tremendously in our traction. We know what to do and not to do in terms of usability and overall experience. There are technical hurdles that are much easier to address because its familiar. But much of our growth has been completely organic. Two random Apple employees introduced themselves to Caffe Mac. And they didn’t know each other. Two days after that, our servers crashed. We were featured on the App Store. This was back in August and Apple has featured us once every month since. We believe its because we built a design & simplicity-centric solution to a problem that everyone has: how do you meet professionals wherever you are?

Trendslate: How has the LA tech community helped Mingle get to where it is now?
Andy Kim, Mingle: The LA tech community still has a long way to go. I believe it even falls behind NY. In SF, regardless of who you are, as long as your idea is great, have a team in place and have a great product, its simple to get connected. When people say they will introduce you, well, they actually do. Typically in the same day then that intro sprouts into a couple more. The SF community understands that the company you need to be afraid of is the group of 2-3 guys who are building something in their garages because that’s where true disruption occurs. Not so much here in LA. I have yet to come across a notable LA startup guy who delivers on what they say. And I have spoken to most of them. I have my own guesses of why that is but that’s an entirely different story Because of the ecosystem here, its tough to break through. We have 2 investors and one is from the Silicon Valley and the other, NY…that should say something. Until the ecosystem gets disrupted here, I don’t see it changing for awhile. There are a few incubators bubbling up and hopefully that will give birth to a new breed of entrepreneurs that’s willing to help the community. I know I am.

Tags   Andy Kim  app  mingle  mobile  startup