Sramana: Once you recognized that people did not like advertisements in games and had identified the concept of recognizing achievement, what was your next step? Brian Wong: I immediately vowed to not do anything with ads. We don’t do anything with them at all. Our entire model centers on awards. We create a reciprocal connection
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Brian Wong is the founder of Kiip.me, a mobile rewards program. Prior to founding Kiip, he worked at Digg in business development. His five months there ended when he was laid off because of cost-cutting measures, an event that motivated him to start his own company.
Sramana: If you had a daughter in her early years of school right now, what would you do? Victoria Ransom: I would encourage her to study sciences. Sramana: You could encourage, but she might not respond. The peer environment does not always support that. Victoria Ransom: Very true. It also may not be what her
Sramana: How important is it to develop a unique culture in a company? Victoria Ransom: In my opinion, one of the things we have done well at Wildfire is that we took time and effort to create a great place to work. People at Wildfire are passionate about being at Wildfire. The culture is a
Sramana: Does Wildfire have good capabilities for small businesses, or is it out of reach for them? Victoria Ransom: We have the campaign capability that can be operated at 99 cents a day. We also have a small business option for our platform that is in the low hundreds for a month. We have small
Sramana: Do you have a segmentation of your customer base? Victoria Ransom: There are a lot of SMBs using our product but our focus has been on mid-sized and large brand businesses. That is where we have growth that is powered by our sales force. Our SMB growth does nicely on its own without any
Sramana: How did Kayak and Zappos find out about you? Victoria Ransom: Zappos had an employee who went on some vacations with Access Trips. We reached out to him, and he put us in touch with the right person. Kayak had heard of us, and at the same time we were doing outreach through our
Sramana: Why did the two of you decide to start an adventure travel company as your first entrepreneurial venture? Victoria Ransom: When we were in investment banking, we were both looking to learn to surf. We had tried to find a trip where we could do that, and everything we found seemed to be oriented