Students, Start Asking Questions

Many of you have seen an advert of ours (see above), received a flyer on a bottle of water (see previous post), heard from a friend, met one of the co-founders, etc. and have been waiting to connect with Gurus on our platform. Well now, you can begin asking questions.

We are inviting students who are interested in going to law school or med school to start asking questions to our Gurus. We have profiles of a variety of graduate students from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, University of Toronto, etc. We are continuously working hard everyday at recruiting solid Gurus to join our community and provide you with the advice you need.

For those of you who are interested in other graduate programs and careers, we will be releasing a broad range of categories over the next few months, so make sure you subscribe to our blog and stay tuned to our releases. If there is a specific category that you are interested in, please contact us and we will ensure to eventually connect you with Gurus in that area.

Also, check out on our previous blog entry entitled “nkdGuru Features 1.0” that explains how to ask a question, and what you can do on our website right now.

We are still in a private pre-alpha phase so if you haven't received an invite, register here as a Grasshopper to get an invite to start asking questions. You should receive one in a few days after you register. Alternatively, if you know others who have registered on the platform and have already received an invite, ask them to send you one, and you'll get it much faster.

We look forward to seeing you online.

-The nkdGuru Team!

Asking Questions?

There are times when we all want to ask questions, and if it's not in your nature then I think you may be kidding yourself! It's important to ask questions, you can’t expect to go through life without asking questions!

For me it's simple, if I’m unclear on something I ask a question, I want to understand so I can then make informed decisions and even form an opinion. I need answers in order to do so.

Some people find it hard to ask questions for fear of embarrassment, but that shouldn’t be the case… If you have a question ask one of our Gurus or the Community of Gurus that we have on the site, as they can answer your questions. I wouldn’t be coy about asking questions, especially if you can get incredible insight into whatever it is you are struggling to come to terms with for example admission to Law School, or preparing for your MCAT exam…!

If you don’t ask you don’t get! Gurus are now on-hand to help you out, by answering any questions you have. One thing to note is that Gurus who are willing to help don’t want to answer ridiculous questions like “will I be rich before I’m 40?” or “what’s the weather like tomorrow?” I mean who asks those questions really? It's important for us to give you an idea of the quality of help at your disposal…!

Chances are you have some issues you need addressed, and so you should, you are working towards something, and you’re not quite there yet. You need people to connect with on your way to the top, and to be honest it's fun to network and meet people who are doing amazing things, things you are trying to do, people in a better position then you are so be in the know and broaden your horizons!!

Jay Williams,

Co-Founder

What Naked Truth Facts Do You Know?

The blunt truth is always better as it causes change, yet few share that type of information. Our platform is meant to attract people who will share that type of information with you.... nkdGurus!

Education first! It could be anything, share it with us by commenting to this blog. What interesting naked truth facts can you come up with?

Building a community of both Grasshoppers who ask questions and seek mentorship, along with Gurus who provide insightful knowledge based on experience and status is well underway, and our first priority is working with our users to strengthen our community. We have plenty of ideas and features we will be rolling out over the course of the year, and giving back to our evangelists, the people that contribute to the success of nkdGuru.com is what we are all about!! I’m on the record, blogging right now to tell you all… So get involved and watch this space!

-Jay Williams
Co-Founder

Sundays for Students

As much as students need guidance and access to academic and career related facilities like advisors and library archives, there isn’t so much Intelligence to support the huge demand for information.

It's no secret that career and academic information, social and personal info – School related advice is highly sought, everybody is on the hustle, and as a student; tapping into resources and services that come with the student territory is competitive. What should be practical is instead dressed up, formal and typically text book, like following a recipe! But in today’s sophisticated world, recipes just don’t work anymore. Now we have to bring more to the table in order to get ahead that involves not just what you know and who you know, but also getting out there (into the big wide world) and making things happen for yourself.

A nkdGuru is someone who knows what other people want to know! It’s the ability to tell things as they are, more importantly providing intelligence in naked form! To be frank it’s telling the naked truth!

Let’s say it’s compulsory for every student (college and university) to see a careers advisor before graduation. Surely the information provided will be based on training and knowledge of what prospective employers are looking for. I mean these guys tell us how many resumes to send out, tell us to go to careers fairs, and tell us to keep our options open, and expectations managed. All very well, but the simple fact is there are only a handful of amazing opportunities dished out in comparison to the amount of students working towards graduating with a degree and achieving the goal set out in our individual plan.

Truthfully it must also be said that there are many people with very different plans and missions in life, everybody has a story to tell, and each story always leads to a success.Point is, there are plenty of ways to score a dollar and become the next best thing, and with the right platform that we will be launching shortly, the right people servicing students with the naked truth. More students working towards graduation and a steady career path will be able to compete fairly, with a better chance of achieving their goals and progressing both academic and career wise.

Get online and catch up with buddies, do a bit of socializing and feel good about being a bit of an online social network-er!! More importantly touch base with nkdGurus, reach out to mentors… This should be the new Sunday routine for all students. I mean going through school is fun and all, but it’s also grueling, challenging, time intensive and very expensive! Surely a mentor dedicated to helping you blossom in your school days is a must…? Of course it is! Study time usually falls on Sunday’s shoulders - Make nkdGuru.com a Sunday thing too!!

Register as a Grasshopper.

-Jay Williams
Co-Founder

Why can't everyone use the site right now?

Some of you may be wondering why can't I access the site? Here are the reasons.

At least to start, we’re keeping some control over signups for a few reasons:

(1) our product is in a testing phase, and there are a number of bugs that we are working through;

(2) to ensure Grasshoppers have Gurus in areas that they have questions in – we want to make sure that if you come to the site as a Grasshopper, there are Gurus that can answer your questions;

(3) we’re only releasing a few categories that are of interest to some of you, therefore it wouldn’t make sense to allow access to the general public; and

(4) so that we can scale the system under control (what is scaling? It means that if a ton of people joined all at once at the beginning, then our site might slow down or crawl… and that would suck for everyone).

So please bear with us during this phase. Thanks for your patience in advance.

In the mean time, register with your email address and we'll send you an invite to start using the site.

-The nkdGuru Team

Telling the Naked Truth

Looking for answers can be a real hassle. I’m gonna keep this post keen on students because this is a massive subject to start talking about. Students will always have to do research; answering questions by asking questions and combining research and knowledge to breeze through exams and onto a prospering career. A career very exciting and outlandish, or indeed something traditional and equally big pimping!

So how do we go about obtaining information? There are plenty of online and offline ways to do so like using Google, or going to your local book store – Using the school (college/university) careers services and its library, or using a question and answer (qna) service like About.com or Yahoo Answers – I reckon there’s a good few examples we could use, but I’m hoping you know where I’m coming from…

Its no easy task to get answers we look for; they are buried in books at the bottom of the ocean… But may be there’s an old theory book lying around? Or more practical… Why not pop down to the careers services department and talk to a guidance counselor… That’s supposed to be the designated place to find answers and most certainly advice for the more serious concerns we need addressed!

If only we could just pick someone’s brain and get more than just advice on what to do, what to think about, what to take into consideration and the usual intel! It wouldn’t hurt to get some honest, clean-cut, flawless advice… Naked Truth! The kind of guidance only a mentor could offer, wisdom beyond the books, the trawling through search engine results, the careers advisors that left school years ago, and the friends that have their own exciting and outlandish plan to tend to.

Access to a resource where college and university students can keenly seek insightful intelligence from younger, more in-touch individuals – Lets call them Naked Guru’s is totally available given today’s technological advances – Let me quickly give examples; Facebook, MySpace (read my blog – http://jwthenkdguru.blogspot.com for more info on that topic) have already demonstrated their pull – LinkedIn, and other networks that enable us to promote ourselves worldwide. In doing so, nkdGuru.com offers an entrance to naked Guru’s who could provide the naked truth to eager students who are already massive internet evangelists (without fail - the Internets biggest fans!)!

Well now it is here, different to Yahoo Answers where questions and answers are general and trivial – instead you can really be in the know, gain some proper “food for thought”, no “sugar-coated”, “round the houses” chit chat – Its never been made available until now. If you know how to be a naked Guru check out http://nkdGuru.com and sign up to be a Guru. If you’re not quite there, but you want to be able to access Guru’s to connect to for guidance and mentorship - Helping with academic and career development - Sign up as a Grasshopper!

-Jay Williams
Co-Founder

nkdGuru Features 1.0

Hello Gurus! Welcome to the nkdguru.com prototype! The goal of nkdGuru is to provide students with expert and specialized advice that only elite graduate students can offer. Basically, this is a way to find out all the secrets that students need to know (right now) to get into the top medical, law and business schools in North America.

To ensure the validity of our Gurus, it is essential that participants sign up using their university/college email address. The foundation of the service revolves around the quality of questions answered, so your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Now, on to the nkdguru.com features.

1. Create a profile. A detailed profile is the most ideal. That way, Grasshoppers will know more about you. The better a Grasshopper can understand and relate to you, the more likely he/she will ask you a question. Our goal is to create a mentoring relationship as perfect as possible. Also, in the coming months, nkdGuru will allow Guru profiles to be viewed privately by your Guru friends.


2. Invite 5 friends and get 4 free credits that you can redeem later for money. Go to your profile page, and invite friends that you think will be great Gurus. The invite box is located on the left side of the page.


3. Answer questions. There are two ways you can do this:

- Check out your inbox for questions asked by Grasshoppers. These questions will either be asked directly to you (private), or they will be questions posed to all the Gurus within a specific category.

- Hunt down your own questions by accessing the “questions tab” in the main menu (this feature will become more important as more categories roll out and overlap. For example MBA and Investment Banking).That’s it for now. Test out nkdGuru, and send us your feedback. More posts regarding new features and updates will be coming soon.

-Justin
Director of Product Development