Snooth was founded by Philip James (St Hughs MChem 1999).

Snooth is the world’s largest wine search engine and social network and is revolutionizing the way people choose wine.

Snooth was founded in November 2006 and closed its first round of funding in December of that year. Based in New York City, Snooth combines proprietary algorithms with the world’s most comprehensive wine database to accurately identify the wines best-suited to an individual.

Snooth analyzes a user’s unique set of interactions with the site and, using its recommendation engine, leverages this digital fingerprint to generate highly-personalized wine recommendations. Snooth also interprets wine queries more naturally than most search engines and optimizes the relevancy of search results, by incorporating semantic search elements into its core technology.

About Us

Snooth has two Oxford connections:

Philip James, Founder. After graduating, Philip worked for Merrill Lynch in London, before coming to New York to get his MBA at Columbia Business School. After graduation he worked for an online wine retailer as their Exec VP.

Kabir Soorya (New College MCompSci 2010 - expected), worked for Snooth during the Summer of 2007.

Obstacles

Getting traction on day 1: like any other social network, there’s no value to an individual user until other users are already on the site. Trying to create that first core group is a bit like trying to sell the first fax machine.

Successes

Crossing 1 million ratings proved to be the tipping point for us. Now, when we write to a winery or wine store they know who we are, and are ready to work with us. We spend most of our time managing the flow now.

Further Details

• Visit www.snooth.com
• Read the Snooth Blog
• For more information email us at info [at] snooth [dot] com