Building the World’s First Mobile Rewards Network: Brian Wong, 20-Year-Old Founder of Kiip (Part 3)

Sramana: When you were starting the company, how did you get your first customer and validate that your concept was indeed going to be effective? Brian Wong: Our first customer was Vitaminwater. Their ex-CMO was an investor in Kiip.

Building the World’s First Mobile Rewards Network: Brian Wong, 20-Year-Old Founder of Kiip (Part 2)

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

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Building the World’s First Mobile Rewards Network: Brian Wong, 20-Year-Old Founder of Kiip (Part 1)

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.

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From New Zealand to Silicon Valley: Victoria Ransom’s Wildfire Journey (Part 7)

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

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From New Zealand to Silicon Valley: Victoria Ransom’s Wildfire Journey (Part 6)

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

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From New Zealand to Silicon Valley: Victoria Ransom’s Wildfire Journey (Part 5)

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

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From New Zealand to Silicon Valley: Victoria Ransom’s Wildfire Journey (Part 4)

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

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From New Zealand to Silicon Valley: Victoria Ransom’s Wildfire Journey (Part 3)

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

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