Frequently Asked Questions
Q1.What is Vintro?
Vintro is a new digital marketplace open to everyone. It allows Creators who have great ideas, products, or services to connect with a global network of the world's most sought after leaders across a wide variety of fields (“Reviewers”).
Vintro is unique because responses are guaranteed, and Reviewers commit to providing insightful critiques, thoughts, and steps forward for every opportunity they see. Reviewers also have the option to get involved with a Creator if they are interested by the idea they were presented with.
Q2.How does Vintro work?
A Vintro is a “video introduction”.
A Creator submits two minute introduction video to Reviewers of their choice selected from the platform.
Reviewers have a maximum of 14 days to watch the video and to give their audio or video response to the pitch video, via the Vintro App. The total process usually takes around 5 minutes for each pitch.
Creators receive insights, critiques, and next steps amongst other things. Also, Reviewers have the option to open a chat with the Creator and get involved further if they are intrigued by the idea.
Q3.Why are you rolling out now?
Given the unprecedented economic situation the world faces, businesses and entrepreneurs will need a lot of support to grow and rebuild. For that reason, we are accelerating Vintro’s rollout now to enable access to as much support and as many resources as we can.
Q4. Who is the Vintro team?
The Vintro team is a team of highly motivated group of students and alumni from The University of Chicago. The team comes from diverse social, economic, and geographic backgrounds. Vintro is led by Noor Sugrue, who founded Vintro in January 2018.
In addition, the team is advised by a small number of business leaders, former politicians, entrepreneurs, and academics.
Q5. Who’s on the platform?
Reviewers who control significant resources. "Resources" may include capital, knowledge, connections, experience, opportunities, audiences, decision-making power, facilities, products, influence, and more.
Reviewers are some of the world’s greatest business leaders, corporate executives, entrepreneurs, industry experts, venture capitalists, philanthropists, celebrities, academics, and more. These people are virtually impossible to access for the vast majority of people who need their time, attention and feedback.
Q6. Why isn’t access to these people free?
Access to a high profile person’s time, attention and feedback is never free for anyone. There are always hard costs associated with lost time and opportunity, from travel and food to rent and transportation. There is also the cost of being on the wrong path for a long period of time, and potentially the cost of ultimate failure. Access and time is never free.
At its core, Vintro’s economic rationale and value proposition is that it provides access to a Reviewers’ time, attention and feedback less expensively, and more efficiently than can be achieved in the physical world.
Decision makers want to see new ideas from new people, but they are justifiably afraid of having their time wasted. Due to this risk, decision makers wall themselves off from strangers and only engage with ideas that come through people they know, referrals, and other badges of credibility. The current system of access is predicated on already belonging to the “right” social circles, or counting on serendipity to be granted access to the decision maker who control the necessary resources.
Historical circumstance and serendipity are very inefficient methods of regulating access to the necessary capital, opportunity and resources for innovators. For the first time ever, Vintro is opening the access to the inaccessible, for everyone is finally getting their shot.
Q7. Who are the Creators, and how will they use Vintro?
Creators are those with ideas, products, services, or opportunities that use the Vintro platform to connect with Reviewers. Creators usually seek advice, referrals, sales, or investment. The Creator may be at an early stage, or be more established and looking to scale.
We recommend that Creators select more than one Reviewer to approach in order to maximize the chance of finding a partner and to get an array of advice and guidance.
Q8. Why is there a difference in cost by Reviewers?
Reviewers set their own prices for their time based on the value of their time and many other factors. The laws of supply and demand will ultimately set the market prices. Presently, more than 70% of the Vintro market is priced between $25 and $300.
Q9. What are the two methods of payment on Vintro?
There are two modes of “payment” on Vintro. A traditional monetary payment as well as an "alternative payment" system. We also allow the Reviewers to quote a "price" for providing their time, attention and feedback, not only in units of currency, but rather in charitable service hours done to a cause, or causes, determined by the Reviewer. In other words, a Reviewer can say, I'm $XYZ for around 5 minutes of attention and feedback, or if you work 20 hours in an orphanage, teach inner city children math, or volunteer to feed the hungry, I'll watch and give feedback to your pitch for "free". The Reviewer amplifies a few minutes of their time into huge amounts of good being done for those less fortunate. This obviates the need for money. A "Creator" can "earn" their shot by doing good. In this way, there are no excuses due to capital for being excluded from access to those who control and decide how opportunity and capital are distributed. We hope that the Vintros for Volunteers program can become a revolutionary paradigm in democratizing access to the previously inaccessible people, enabling all Creators regardless of purchasing power to work with the right person to move their ideas forward.
Q10. Who are your competitors?
Vintro does not have any direct competitors, although there are various conventional human networks that connect companies with investors, and firms with experts.
Q11. How does Vintro work for Reviewers, how do they manage requests?
A Reviewer will receive an email notification that a Creator would like to reach them.
Once notified, the Reviewer commits to spending a few minutes recording their responses to the Creator within a 14-day period via a video or voice message on the Vintro App.
At any point, a Reviewer can recuse themselves from a pitch if they feel it’s necessary.
The Reviewer can also indicate whether they are willing to open a chat and get involved further with a Creator. If a Reviewer is unavailable for any reason, they can indicate on their profile that they are unable to take requests for a period of time.
Q12. What is the Vintro privacy policy?
Vintro takes privacy and security extremely seriously and will always protect all data vigorously. Besides necessary information sharing with vendors of key functionalities such as payouts, Vintro does not share users’ private contact information with any third party both inside and outside of the Vintro platform. The only people that can access pitches on Vintro other than the Creators and content moderators, are those to which the pitch has been explicitly sent.
Q13. Can you access Vintro from anywhere in the world?
Vintro removes historical barriers to reaching people. No group in the world has a monopoly on the creation of brilliant ideas. For this reason, it is important that Vintro can be accessed around the world.
For answers to any other questions, please contact: press@myvintro.com
