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New website Crystal knows all about you

Reade Pickert
epickert@tennessean.com

Crystal knows you, whether you know it or not.

Crystal is a free website with additional subscription features. It works to promote better communication through personality profiles, Gmail tools and relationship predictions.

"Imagine that you're an executive or manager trying to hire or manage this team. You can see who will naturally get along together, who will probably have some sort of conflict that needs to be worked out," Crystal founder Drew D'Agostino said. "Crystal has the ability to tell you that, even if they haven't met each other."

Founder Drew D’Agostino’s profile on Crystal

Nashville-based Crystal uses all available public information — Twitter, LinkedIn, reviews and more — to match any person on the Internet to one of 64 personality types. These personality types allow the website to create a general personality overview and specific communication tools when working, speaking or emailing with that person.

For $19 a month, users can have the Gmail tools, or "social spellcheck," as Crystal users refer to it. In the same way spellcheck highlights a misspelled word, Crystal highlights phrases that may lead to miscommunication. Some people like short emails, while others prefer friendly emails.

"The long-term vision for these email tools is that they could be as important for email as spellcheck, so you're not going to send something without knowing how the person likes to communicate first," D'Agostino said.

Marcus Whitney, president and co-founder of JumpStart Foundry, was one of the earliest supporters of Crystal. Whitney subscribes to the Gmail tools and the $49-a-month relationship predictions.

"We use it to get a quick read of what the personality types of people are," Whitney said. "It's not something that we totally depend on, but it's something that we use to think about team dynamics."

The website has received some negative feedback, but Crystal has an "opt-out" policy for any person who prefers to not be on the website.

"We have a very strong focus that Crystal's value can't be one-sided," D'Agostino said. "It can't only give value to the person sending emails; it has to give value to the person receiving them."

Although the opt-out policy is available, most people are not aware the website exists. Crystal has done no promotion and has been self-funded since its inception, but close to 100,000 users have still discovered the communication website.

"I think what Crystal is doing is more so than automating email communications to each other," D'Agostino said. "It's really just making sure that you don't miscommunicate with the person you're emailing."

Reach Reade Pickert at 615-259-8836 and on Twitter @Readep.

Link: https://www.crystalknows.com/