I sat down with Daniel Chu, the co-founder of SilkStart, to discuss his latest venture.

SilkStart is a social marketplace that enables associations to add value for their members by making it easy to network and find opportunities. By leveraging the power of the association’s members, the private marketplace becomes a reliable source for building relationships and finding trustworthy partners.

SilkStart is a powerful private social network for associations because they can setup their network to be either completely public, private, or a hybrid. This exclusivity assures members that people within the marketplace are the same caliber as the association itself.

The other killer feature of SilkStart is the marketplace which is currently not being demoed on their public beta site. This feature enables members to offer products and services to other members. By bringing this functionality within a private social network, members have confidence that they’re working with professionals. Much like Ebay’s seller rating system, user’s will be able to see which members have received positive feedback from other people they’ve worked with.

I met Daniel a few weeks ago at a TiE event. He immediately struck me as an excited entrepreneur with a lot of passion behind his idea. Since then I’ve discovered he’s a very hardworking young entrepreneur that will make a big impression on the local industry.

Embedded below is my interview with Daniel in which he shares why he started SilkStart.