Uppd Case Study
About Uppd
Uppd was a social game that allowed users to challenge friends to "out-talent" each other and share their skills through social media. Users could win virtual medals or other tangible prizes. The app mimicked the high stakes of real-world competitions by giving users one chance to successfully record their challenge. Once they hit the "record" button, their submission would automatically upload to the app and enter into the challenge.
Opportunity
By combining the growing mobile trends of video, social media and gamification, Uppd offered a new avenue for self-expression and community. For companies looking for a new avenue to engage their customers, Uppd was an innovative approach to leveraging the social graph and incentivizing direct product trials.
Process
Uppd applied lean product principles to learn, build, and measure our product's success in the market. Since we were targeting a B2B2C business model, Uppd partnered with neighborhood businesses to launch local challenges and gather data on meaningful metrics (such as number of challenges completed, number of votes cast, and sales generated per challenge).
Result
Uppd raised $25,000 dollars in a friends and family round of funding. It was also a finalist for the 2014 Tech Stars Chicago cohort, which won us free space in 1871 and generated interest from the likes of Nick Woodman (CEO of GoPro) and Marcin Kleczynski (founder of Malwarebytes).
While in the coming years, "challenges" became more popular than ever, Uppd shutdown due to critical flaws in its execution. Intent on releasing our own application, we ignored clear data that pointed to app fatigue among young people. While our challenges generated loads of activity, most of the activity was through existing social media channels, such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Stubbornly tied to our vision, we failed to adapt our business model to fit our users' needs.
More than any other project, Uppd taught me the incomparable importance of trusting data and adapting your solution to meet your users' problems.
