Humin

Humin operated as a technology company with a mission to make digital interactions feel more human, primarily through its contextual contact management application. Founded in 2012 by a group of friends including Ankur Jain, David Wyler, Jake Medwell, Jonathan Shriftman, and Daniel Pourbaba, the San Francisco-based firm sought to overhaul the conventional, alphabetized address book. The company's core offering was a mobile app that replaced a phone's standard contact list, organizing relationships based on the context of how users naturally remember people—such as where they met, their profession, or mutual connections. This allowed users to perform intuitive searches like "met last week" or "works at Google."

The business model was centered on user growth, offering the application as a free-to-use service for smartphone users. Humin's primary focus was to become the default social operating system for phone users globally. The app aggregated data from a user's email, calendar, and social networks to build a comprehensive and context-aware master contact list, with all processing done on the device to protect user privacy. In addition to the main Humin app, the company developed "Knock Knock," a separate application that allowed nearby individuals to easily exchange contact information by simply tapping on their phones. This product proved popular on college campuses.

The founding team's journey was rooted in their shared vision to use technology to foster real-world connections. CEO Ankur Jain, son of InfoSpace founder Naveen Jain and a recognized entrepreneur from his time at the Wharton School, previously founded the Kairos Society, an incubator for young entrepreneurs focused on solving global issues. This background in connecting people and tackling large-scale problems directly influenced Humin's mission. The company successfully raised $15 million in a Seed funding round. In March 2016, Humin was acquired by Tinder, the popular dating app. The acquisition included Humin's intellectual property, technology, and much of its team, with founders Ankur Jain and David Wyler joining Tinder as VP of Product and VP of Partnerships, respectively. The move was a strategic one for Tinder to leverage Humin's contextual technology to enhance its own product roadmap and expand its international features. Following the acquisition, the Humin and Knock Knock apps were removed from app stores for new users, though they remained functional for existing ones.

Keywords: contact management, contextual search, mobile app, relationship management, social operating system, address book, user growth, data privacy, contextual computing, acquisition