SocialSci.com – Software to further science

March 29, 2010

In an earlier post, I mentioned how I decided to work for a Boston venture capital fund and my hope to contribute to the development of great technologies and expansion stage companies that really make our world better. To continue on this theme, I want to bring some attention to startups that are creating software to help make scientific research better. Hope that these will help speed fundamental and applied research which will eventually lead to real applications that improve our lives.

A company that I am very excited about is still in beta mode: SocialSci.com. The founders’ see some big, unsolved issues with the organization of scientific experiments, especially those that require human inputs such as psychological experiments or sociological surveys. To address those, they are looking to use some of the time-tested techniques from the social media playbook: creating a community of survey takers, experiment participants and experiment helpers, allowing people to create their own test-takers profiles as such, and allow sub community to coalesce around experiments or research projects. By making these scientific studies available online, SocialSci.com help both the researchers and interested participants to find each other, get connected in the most convenient way and collaborate in new ways, in the name of scientific research. Clearly, this is just the beginning of a more ambitious platform for online scientific research organization and management. Once there is a critical mass of users on the site, it will be come an essential destination for all researchers as well as participants.

I see a lot of potential for SocialSci.com. The founders are smart guys who are eager to learn and are very open to new ideas. I think they can take this idea far given that there is such as big market for it, and with the right business growth strategies, they will be able to really make a difference in the way scientific studies are done.

Chief Business Officer at UserTesting

Tien Anh joined UserTesting in 2015 after extensive financial and strategic experiences at OpenView, where he was an investor and advisor to a global portfolio of fast-growing enterprise SaaS companies. Until 2021, he led the Finance, IT, and Business Intelligence team as CFO of UserTesting. He currently leads initiatives for long term growth investments as Chief Business Officer at UserTesting.