The concept, which aims to bring transparency and a sense of empowerment to the rock-buying experience, came about nearly two years ago, when founder Ajay Anand got engaged in summer 2015. "The process of spending such an exorbitant amount of money was so painful, I was shocked no one had done something about it." It remains an antiquated experience: walk through NYC's Diamond District and you'll be heckled to check out various jewelers' bling selections as Anand recalled to us with a shudder (much like you might be accosted hard to buy cheesy T-shirts and shot glasses in a touristy area of a Caribbean beach resort town). Or, you could attempt to comparison-shop online, basically just on Blue Nile, a.k.a. the industry's last big business model innovation (an e-comm option for diamond shopping), which happened a full two decades ago, Anand pointed out. His day job was, and still is, running Syst Mapp, a company that builds enterprise software used by the U.N. in 50 countries, and he tapped some of his colleagues there to launch Rare Carat.