Our Story
Grow - Secure- Cultivate
The team at Aqqaint spent almost a decade working for the Federal government and in Defense Intelligence studying how social networks operate. Whether through online social media platforms, such as Facebook and Snapchat, or more organically between networks of friends and mutual acquaintances. We are fascinated by the trust leaps that we as human beings take each and every day in order to accomplish our goals. We have witnessed time and again how our social networks can be the determining factor between success of those goals or failure. We exist to make it simple for communities to connect, build trustworthy networks, and to leverage the strength inherent when groups of people come together with shared values, goals, and purpose.
Why?
Somewhere along our journey studying and dissecting what makes social networks tick, we uncovered a few universal truths. The first, is that the more trust a community shares not only between first-degree connections, but beyond to a second-degree connection the stronger that community is and the more they can accomplish. The second, was that we felt that each and every person deserves a platform to leverage the power within their community without sacrificing their privacy and data security. It's really that simple. That's when we set out to create the first social network for businesses and organizations that puts your data privacy first. Period.
How?
We took all that learned and got to work. We knew that whatever solution we created would need to be a mobile app. 90% of people are accessing their social network through a mobile device. Then we looked at how we could build a platform to foster trust and transparency while leveraging networks that are empowered through mutual connections. Finally, we implemented data security and ownership that puts all the control in the community owner and the members who make up that group. What we ended up with is a one-of-a-kind platform that supports a diverse set of communities across the globe.
It all began...
When Aqqaint Co-founder, Steve Garofano, traveled to Miami, FL on a week long business trip. On his way down he reached out to his former colleague, Nick Portlance. The two met at a local watering hole in Brickell to catch up. It didn't take long before they were reminiscing about their days working in the defense industry and some of the amazing times they both had. Then Steve laid out his idea to build a social marketplace that would empower individuals and communities to do more together through trust and privacy. Nick was sold immediately. Shortly after that initial conversation, Matt Park and Susy Hwang rounded out Aqqaint's founding team and the rest is history.