In 2006, the summer after Jake Klinvex’s freshman year at the University of Rochester, he interned at his uncle’s company, Select International. Jake was pinned the task of contacting current and potential clients through email so the company could do business with them. Jake noticed the emails he sent were boring and the clients probably get these kinds of requests all the time. He wanted his request to stand out. He thought, “What if we send a video rather than a lengthy email?”
Now, in 2006 YouTube and other forms of social media were not as popular. The iPhone had not been released, and video quality on flip phones were very low. It was a little more of a task to take a video. Jake got a camera, set up a website, and figured out how upload videos here. He had his uncle, who was the CEO of Select International, speak in the video. Once completed he created a unique link for the video, and sent it to their clients.
They immediately noticed a huge turn around in responses. Clients loved the videos, being able to listen rather than having to read, hearing from the leader of the company rather than a message from an intern, and sensing the personality in a lengthy business message.
Jake ran with this business idea. His sophomore year, he transferred to Villanova University where he worked on improving, what he called, Persontation. He wanted to be able to attach the video right in the email rather than linking it, to eliminate a step. Jake wanted the video to feature text and slides, images and files. Computer science was not his specialty so he got a group together to figure out what he was not able to accomplish.
Before graduating, Persontation gained a new client, eMoney Advisors. The CEO was intrigued by the idea and invited Jake, and his 2 other teammates to Napa Valley to present about Persontation. A
fter this conference, eMoney bought out Persontation, surprising the team of college students. They accepted jobs here following graduation to further their invention.
After a few years, Jake left eMoney Advisors, moved back to Pittsburgh, and connected with an old high school friend. The two of them started an app called LoyalTree, a play on words for “loyalty”. This app was a reward system. It printed a QR code on your receipt that you scanned with your phone. So many points got you some kind of reward. Many Pittsburgh restaurants bought into this, but so did the Pittsburgh Penguins. If you’ve ever been to a Pens game you may have used the app “Pens Points”. This was the app created by LoyalTree. This spread to other restaurants and sports teams, and in 2016, 10 years after the invention of Persontation, LoyalTree was acquired by a Boston Company, SessionM.
Jake took a boring task during his college internship, and made it exciting for all parties involved. Some interns would have just done what their boss told them to do and then moved on, but Jake recognized what he was doing was not effective and changed that. What’s interesting is this wasn’t a problem Jake was wrestling with in his daily life, and come August he would have never had to worry about it again. In addition, Select was not asking for innovation or a special way to reach out to clients, but because Jake was unhappy with the lack of responses he got, he created a new professional internet video product that would change the way businesses connect.
This is a very interesting story. Jake was looking for some more excitement in his summer internship, so he came up with a brilliant idea to interact better with the customers. He was willing to put in the extra effort to make a great system, and therefore create a better response rate for his Uncle’s company, and for many other companies later on. It also probably earned him a good amount of money. This is a great lesson for us. Colossians 3:23 says, “whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” We need to put our best effort toward whatever we do, because it is for the Lord.