About us

What we are all about

One of the greatest feelings in life is scoring that hard to find item or getting your hands on that "thing" you just had to have. We know that feeling, we've been there many times ourselves. So with that in mind, we decided to create a marketplace that gives you the ability to do just that.

So what is trooQ? trooQ is the social marketplace. We give you a place to find what you are looking for, by giving you the ability to leverage your existing social networks to create networks of trusted people to buy and sell with. Not only do we provide you with the level of trust that helps make the purchasing process easier, trooQ is reliable, cost-effective and fun. And, who doesn't like a little fun!

A little history

Four score and seven years.....oh wait, that's the wrong story, our bad. trooQ started as an idea - an idea that there had to be a better way to buy and sell online. A way that was for the people, by the people. The inspiration was simple: Will watched his wife's frustration with the current marketplaces (they have 4 kids, so they have LOTS of stuff to sell, and lots of stuff they need; they're a little crazy, too) and a light bulb lit up. Some time (and several brain storming sessions) later, the idea was solidified. What came next was a miracle (well, close, anyways), Will and Bill (which we acknowledge would sound funnier if we were Bill and Ted, but still...) teamed up to bring the idea to life. There you have it, after countless hours of hard work, a lot of sweat and tears, and more than a few slap fights, we bring you trooQ. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

The team

Will Kern - founded trooQ along with Bill. An internet old timer, Will brings over 11 years of product experience to trooQ, and serves as the product guy for lack of a better title. Prior to trooQ, Will was the Director of Product Management and Marketing at Mixx.com. Prior to Mixx, Will spent 3 years at AOL, focusing on product management within the AIM product group. When he is not at work, Will enjoys spending time with his wife and four children (yes that is not a typo, you should see how many kids Bill has) and brewing beer (and, of course, drinking it too). You can always find Will blogging here and you can follow him on Twitter.

Bill Kocik - founded trooQ along with Will. Bill brings more than 11 years industry experience to trooQ, with a background in both systems operations and software engineering disciplines. Having worked for companies both very large and small, he knows what it takes to scale systems from day zero all the way up to the kinds of traffic most engineers never have to cope with (at AOL he was once responsible for a server farm with a sustained traffic level of over 10,000 requests per second, and has the hair loss to prove it). Once AOL's systems scaling guru, he has even gone so far as to apply artificial intelligence to the problem of predicting capacity limits. As an engineer, Bill has designed and written a diverse collection of products, from firewalls to modern web applications, has won awards for his work, and is a much sought-after engineer in the social networking and web space.