Noteleaf, a contact information aggregator for Google’s Gmail and Calendar apps, launched a number of new features for its text-messaging notification service today.
Noteleaf’s edge is that it doesn’t require a whole lot of extra work to use the contact information aggregator, co-founder Jake Klamka said. The online service automatically imports contact information about a name when a user types it into a Google Calendar entry. Noteleaf also sends a text message to the user with a link to relevant contact information 10 or 15 minutes before a meeting. That page pulls information from the contact’s LinkedIn profile.
The online service still requires users to sign up on the Noteleaf website. But after that, Noteleaf handles everything through Google’s oAuth application programming interface (API), which can access the user’s Google accounts. The company is also launching two new features for its program that come up on the text message profile page today. The profile page will show mutual LinkedIn connections as well as the three most recent tweets from the contact.
Noteleaf works in the background after a user signs up by using information stored in Google’s Gmail email service. Noteleaf browses the user’s Gmail and contact accounts for additional information about names typed into a Google Calendar entry. While it doesn’t work with Microsoft’s Exchange email and contact storage program, that might be coming in the future if Noteleaf is successful, Klamka said.
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While Noteleaf is free for now, and will remain free for the foreseeable future, there are a number of ways that it could make money, Klamka said. That includes starting with a freemium-style model that has become popular among enterprise 2.0 applications like Yammer, an enterprise-style social network, and Huddle, an online collaboration network. The most realistic revenue model is a monthly subscription for premium features, Klamka said.
Klamka and Wil Chung, Noteleaf’s other co-founder, have been working on the service since December and launched the service officially two weeks ago. The company launched as part of startup-incubator Y Combinator’s Winter 2011 class.
Noteleaf is also one of the first companies backed by angel investors Yuri Milner and Ron Conway’s new Start Fund. Each company in the winter 2011 Y Combinator class has the option to take a $150,000 investment from Milner and Conway (which caused a bit of a stink among angel investors who might lose the chance to invest in promising Y Combinator companies). Y Combinator typically invests between $15,000 and $20,000 in each company for the first several months.
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