Crux is a platform that has introduced a novelty in the group communication. Their innovation consists of the fact that within a group you can set up a new subgroup.
The founders of this new platform are: Juan Carlos Perez and Jordan Knox.
Juan Carlos Perez, as CEO, has previously built and led companies including a social e-commerce platform, a social network for Hispanic Americans, and a luxury real estate agency in Los Angeles. As CMO, Jordan Knox is a talented and creative marketer who has led marketing teams in the tech and political campaigning industry.
The two of them met by chance in 2013. They began to reveal their shared passion for technology products, global marketing, and entrepreneurship. Behind them is a team of experts in the field of business, technology, finance, and real estate. This team is from MIT, The Wharton School, UConn, Harvard, Phoenix, and CSUF.
“We are on a mission to improve human connection between groups of people all over the world; so we brought on board unique individuals who shared the same vision and values that we have as a company” says Perez.
Crux is a platform that allows you to communicate in a more organized, easy, and efficient manner. It gives possibility to your groups to have more topic-based conversations by separating your groups most talked about topics into different threads. You can personalize your group chats, called stack on this platform. You can do this, by adding a photo to represent your group and by choosing your group’s specific privacy settings. When you enter a stack you can view all of your group’s topics. Tapping on a specific topic takes you into that specific group conversation. Once in a conversation thread, you can also easily swipe left and right between your group topics.
With Crux you also have customization of how new threads are created within the group and by setting member privacy options. Crux caters to the unique needs of organized groups, in particular groups such as college and high school students, sports-related groups and family/friends. Now your group’s communications are all in one place, organized into threads, available everywhere, and totally customizable.
Perez and Knox came up with the idea to create something new and useful, due to the lack of innovation in messaging apps. They were visiting various campuses to interview students of different colleges and interaction with them helped a lot in building up Crux.
It is normal that, on the way to the final creation, there were difficulties. There are a ton of problems in group messaging, so it was a challenge simplifying the product while addressing the pain points. Another hurdle was building a unique product that would compete successfully on the market with its diversity. The market is completely saturated, so they had to make it very clear how they are different from the rest.
Crux is solving many problems that exist in group messaging. Group conversations can quickly get cluttered with many different topics being discussed in one place. Each messaging alternative on the market gives you one thread to talk about a million different things. Texting between an iPhone and Android devices are fragmented. Conversations using Facebook Groups are spotty, and are only available to Facebook members.
There is a lack of admin moderation tools when it comes to being a leader of an organized or ad hoc group. Their unique threaded solution to group messaging, allows us to position Crux as a group conversation app that delivers a higher level of user engagement than the traditional flat message structure in messaging apps currently on the market.
Crux’s main competitors in the messaging market are Whatsapp, Facebook Groups and Messenger, iMessage, and GroupMe.
First goal for Crux founders is to penetrate into universities across the country. They have a plan to go more aggressive to international market after finishing their first task. Their target audience are college and high school students.
Crux can be monetized on two ways. One model is by creating brand channels to communicate with users (in-app brand experiences, e-commerce, presence marketing). The other model is by introducing freemium subscriptions. Offering free and paid service tiers and providing a tool set for groups of all sizes and requirements.
Crux is a network that is still in its infancy and much of it is expected. You need to be among the first to use this platform.
To know more, visit: http://crux.la/
