BETHESDA TECH FIRM COBRAIN WANTS TO HELP YOU FIND WHAT YOU CRAVE

NEW APP

PROMISES TO

MAKE YOU A

SMARTER

SHOPPER

You may be used to large companies like Facebook and Google wanting to know everything about you to help boost advertising revenue. Their argument is that such data will improve your online experience, and create products and services tailored to your needs and interests.

Now a Bethesda-based startup, Cobrain, is betting consumers would like to turn the tables on Big Data, and use it to their own benefit. Cobrain is a new app for internet, iPad, iPhone and - in January - Android, that promises to use shopping data from you, and others who share your tastes, to steer you to the products you actually want.

Cobrain founder Rob McGovern was the man behind the successful employment site Careerbuilder, and now wants to create a "co-brain" of artificial intelligence based on consumer preferences. Drawing on multiple, like-minded shoppers at once will not be unlike the efficiency of the Quad Core Processor in today's iPhone, McGovern argues.

How does it work?

Once you download the app, Cobrain will use your email shipping notifications and e-receipts to analyze what you buy, where, and at what price. Then it will direct you to what it believes the best matches are for that next sweater or pair of jeans you are shopping for. But beyond that, it will also compare your preferences to other Cobrain users. By identifying others with similar preferences, Cobrain will draw on that data in the belief that if they like something, you probably will like it, too.

Now wait just a minute, you say. Won't the app just steer me to products merchants want to sell? And will merchants have my personal shopping data?

No, and no, say Cobrain. The firm is promising that merchants have no influence over product recommendations, and that your data will be encrypted, and never shared or sold to others. Of course, other private tech companies are already scanning your email, just without having made the promises Cobrain is.

Cobrain currently has 300+ merchants participating, and you've likely heard of them: Free People, Macy's and Nordstrom are on the list (and all 3 just happen to have stores at Bethesda's Westfield Montgomery Mall). But while Cobrain is entirely free to use, it will be the cost-free middleman in the electronic transaction through the app.

Cobrain concludes you'll crave
this Free People dress - and
knows you have a "super fancy
flower pattern" dress from Macy's
in your closet

You'll search for jeans, and Cobrain will steer you to 5 pairs it concludes you will crave the most. Then you order directly from Free People or Macy's, via Cobrain.

Cobrain can let you know when the
apparel you want is on sale

Right now the emphasis is on apparel and fashion. Merchants can be large department stores, or small boutiques. But as the platform and data grow, the formula could work for any type of consumer goods.

What do you think about this app, how it will utilize your information, and the potential benefits or drawbacks?

Cobrain is a company to watch, not only to see if the app catches on, but because it is based right here, at a time when large firms are declining to move to Montgomery County. Until the county addresses that reality, our economic fortunes rest on startup ventures and entrepreneurs like Cobrain and McGovern.

Images: Cobrain