By Alana Piper

The application is the brainchild of Nabil Meralli and Daliso Zuze, both entrepreneurs and recent MBA graduates of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. The idea arose when Zuze received a text from a friend asking for help deciding on a new mobile phone. “I started to think that there must be an easier way to categorise the expertise within one's social network,” Zuze recalls, “so that any question about a decision could be sent to the right people who could quickly respond with trustworthy advice.”

Zuze and Meralli set to work creating an application that brought the power of social network technology to bear on the latent wisdom, expertise and experience of friends. Users simply type a question into their mobile phone or PC and the Chuzer engine directs it to those friends it ranks as having the highest relevant expertise. The user then receives several recommendations, and the ‘expert’ whose answer he or she chooses moves up the community ranking for that subject. In this way, expertise is progressively analysed and ranked to ensure that questions are always sent to the right people.

“We hope Chuzer will change the way people go about the decision-making process,” commented Meralli. “What gives the venture such promise is that as more people use Chuzer, the wealth of information will provide an answer, supported by the expertise of trusted friends, to just about anything. Therein lies the true value of Chuzer.”

Meralli’s vision for Chuzer is supported by recent developments in the social network market and Google’s purchase of US-focused Q&A application Vark.com for $50 million.

Meralli and Zuze are not the first entrepreneurial partnership to meet at Saïd Business School’s MBA programme. “Start-ups are something of a Saïd tradition with a number of very successful companies now established around the world,” commented Zuze, also a member of the Oxford Entrepreneurs group at the University. “The School is known for its strength in entrepreneurship teaching and research, and for the practical support and experience it gives to students with entrepreneurial ambitions. In our case, the Oxford MBA, and particularly its inspiring Technology and Innovation Strategy elective, has been invaluable, and provided the very best framework for building a tech company like Chuzer.com.”

Zuze also praises the annual ‘Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford’ event at the School which brings together students, senior tech entrepreneurs and funders to discuss innovation in the sector. Last year Meralli and Zuze followed in the footsteps of companies like Google and Twitter by presenting their concept for Chuzer at the event and received invaluable feedback on their plans. Zuze describes this experience as “truly inspiring and encouraging for all would-be technology entrepreneurs”.

To view the site please visit www.chuzer.com.

About the author

Alana Piper is a Communication Officer at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

About Saïd Business School

Established in 1996 the Saïd Business School is one of Europe’s youngest and most entrepreneurial business schools with a reputation for innovative business education. An integral part of Oxford University, the School embodies the academic rigour and forward thinking that has made Oxford a world leader in education. The School has an established reputation for research in a wide range of areas, including finance and accounting, organisational analysis, international management, strategy and operations management. The School is dedicated to developing a new generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs and conducting research not only into the nature of business, but the connections between business and the wider world. In the Financial Times ranking of MBA programmes (Jan 10) Saïd is ranked 16th in the world. It is ranked in BusinessWeek’s top 10 business schools outside the USA (Nov 08) and in the Wall Street Journal it is ranked in the top 25 business schools in the world (Nov 07). In the UK university league tables it has ranked first of all UK universities for undergraduate business for the past six years in The Guardian and in eight of the last nine years in The Times. For more information, see www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/.