Newport Harbor High Schoolgraduates form online company Purely Inc. to provide hassle-free classified listings.
By Amanda Pennington
When Cameron Sinclair and Matt Glover graduated in June 2000, Sinclair said he didn’t think anything new would be invented this century.
“Basically, everything will be the same,” he told the Daily Pilot in a June 2000 profile article. “I don’t think anything is going to be coming out.”
The Newport Harbor High School grad didn’t anticipate that he and Glover would come up with a fresh idea themselves.
It may not be necessarily characterized as an invention, but the pair recently launched Purely Inc., a new take on classified, home, job and other listings.
Their first websites – PurelyInc.com and PurelyHomes.com – are now available for people to post their home listings as well as learn about the company’s corporate identity.
Frustrated with what they thought were hard-to-use, often cluttered and sometimes expensive classified websites for jobs and homes, the pair decided to provide a user-friendly alternative for people who didn’t want to sift through the spam and listings that didn’t pertain to them.
“It’s really frustrating. A lot of those sites are very cluttered and many of the listings are just bait-and-switches,” Sinclair said.
The idea was born out of necessity. While looking online for jobs, homes, cars and other items, Glover said the majority of hits he got were spam, if he got any response at all.
The difference? Glover and Sinclair have real people who plan to go through every listing they receive, making it tough on spammers.
Users can also look forward to not being pestered by pop-up or banner ads. Glover and Sinclair have a different advertising model.
If a real estate agent wants to have their home listed first in any given search, they’ll pay for that top listing. Users can also pay to have a sponsored link on the page.
But that’s all. People who are searching for a home – and eventually a job, a car, news, shopping and the other sites the pair plan to launch – don’t have to pay a dime for the service, and the person who posts, if they don’t want top billing, doesn’t have to pay anything to put up their information.
This can be especially important for the job-listing site they plan to set up soon. Many career and job search sites can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a company to post a job opening. Posting on PurelyJobs.com will cost nothing, except if the company wants that top spot or wants a sponsored link.
The websites are simple and seem to be quite user-friendly. There are straightforward links that eventually, the founders hope, will have many listings.
Glover and Sinclair plan to launch PurelyStocks.com, PurelyNews.com, PurelyReviews.com and PurelyTickets.com, along with a slew of others, in the future.
Sinclair said he was always a closet “computer geek” and has worked in the technology and computer industry. Glover has a business degree specializing in finance and entrepreneurship. Glover also worked as a project manager for a real estate company and has experience in marketing.
The two have self-funded the whole operation, so they have tried to spend as little as possible on Purely Inc. They are focusing on each site individually so each is the best it can be, Glover said.
“The team develops ideas on each site independently,” Glover said. “That way there are new ideas flowing all the time.”
They also are smart enough to know they can’t do it alone and have recruited other smart young people to help them on their way.
Their tech consultants – all in their 20s – have worked with Chapman University and Microsoft and specialize in security and other start-up companies.
And they’re looking for more high-energy people who want to build the company with them.
“We just want to build something simple and great and give back to our community and computer users,” Sinclair said.