As a former marketing consultant, Daniel Russell has experienced first-hand the stunning dexterity with which bosses can ruin a meeting.

At one consulting meeting with a big hotel company last summer, his Go Fish Digital team got to exchange some interesting thoughts with the company’s vice presidents. But then the CEO made an impromptu appearance. He “stood up and started talking and all of the vice presidents suddenly changed their mind,” said Russell.

It’s precisely to avoid that kind of self-censorship that Russell founded Attentiv, an SaaS app that collects anonymous feedback and live surveys during business meetings.

The interchange of ideas can be more frank when they’re submitted anonymously, Russell argues. “Everybody could anonymously respond so that they wouldn’t be embarrassed if they only did half their goal,” he said. “People feel a little more loose participating.”

And, if someone comes up with a revolutionary idea, the meeting leaders “can push all of these results back out there to everybody in the meeting” and discuss them.

Attentiv is live today, after operating in open beta since March. It has garnered close to 300 users, including people from The New York Times, Microsoft and Ernst & Young, Russell said.

Attentiv is run out of UberOffices Tysons Corner by Russell and his three partners, Brian Patterson, Mike Moriarty and Dan Hinckley.

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