InProfiler
Automatic Lead Profiling for Linkedin
Acquired
About InProfiler
InProfiler is an AI-Powered Chrome Extension that allows you to quickly determine whether the person behind a given Linkedin profile is relevant to your professional objective. It was primarily thoughts as an inbound-tool that would allow investors to identify promising founders in their networking requests. Later, I adapted the tool to also support outbound evaluations.
Why I built InProfiler
I had just quit my job at Holded and needed something to keep me busy. When a friend who's working in venture capital told me that it was difficult for him to filter out the relevant requests and messages in his Linkedin inbox, I decided to built a solution.
Tech Stack
InProfiler is built with vanilla React on the frontend and Django with Django Rest Framework in the backend and a Postgresql database. One of the app's main components is a Chrome extension, which is written in plain Javascript.
Why I sold InProfiler
I made a big mistake with InProfiler: I spent so much time on building the product while having 0 users, that I eventually got tired of the whole project. I don't remember the exact reason, but I couldn't be bothered to start looking for active users and wasn't interested in adding more features to the product. At some point, I randomly came across acquire.com and decided to try selling InProfiler there. I didn't have big hopes for a project that wasn't making any revenue, but after a few months of waiting a few people became interested and I finally sold it for a small amount.
Learnings
Building InProfiler I learned some technical stuff like building Chrome Extensions, but more importantly I learned that it's a terrible idea to invest a ton of time into a project without getting any traction on it. Also, it was a nice learning experience to go through the process of a micro-acquisition. I might write a separate post about this.