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whereas Ernestine was the youngest person to ever give VC funding, Brian Wong was the youngest person to ever receive VC funding. In 2010, when he was just 19 years old, Wong received seed funding from True Ventures for his startup company Kiip. Kiip, a company which partners with advertisers to implement real rewards when crucial levels are achieved on mobile apps, was birthed after Wong was fired from his previous job in business development at Digg. Pronounced “keep,” Kiip rewards users with tangible gifts ranging from gift cards on game apps to free water bottles on fitness apps. Noticing how many people were on their phones playing games while on a long flight, Wong came up with the idea to gift relevant rewards for achievements. Wong previously co-founded “Follow Formation,” an automatic following tool, but received his first VC funding from True Ventures. He describes his first seed funding as “very accidental.” “I ran into a VC and ended up going to a partner’s meeting,” Wong says. “I was showing them my idea, a random mockup I made, and all of the sudden a couple weeks later, we get this phone call.” Wong, a native of Canada who graduated from the University of British Columbia at the age of 18 (skipping four grades in the process), describes spending a lot of time “learning on the fly.” “I had no idea what I was doing. Funding … that process … I needed to learn while it was happening,” Wong remembers. “kiip”ing it real The name Kiip comes from a play on the word “keep.” Wong dished out a number of puns that have since developed: “Kiip it real, Kiip going, Kiip playing, Kiip up.” The two i’s in Kiip were inspired by Nintendo marketing, such as the Wii. According to Wong, many mispronounce the company name as “kip,” until the puns start rolling. “Once people know how to pronounce it, it sticks in their brain.” The rewards from Kiip are not determined strictly by achievement — Wong realized that players’ abilities are scattered and implemented an algorithm to make rewards relative, eliminating the potential problem of certain rewards only reaching an elite demographic of players. “10,000 points in a game might be a piece of cake to you, but 10,000 points might take me a month to get. “When we first started the model, I was actually reading a book called Predictably Irrational, and I was inspired,” says Wong. “You don’t know when the rewards come; I don’t tell you a set path to get there. It’s more about just doing the things you want to do. My whole philosophy was to tap into existing patterns of behavior. I want you to play the game because you want to entertain yourself. I want you to play the game because you want a reward.” Kiip currently has 45 employees in its main offices in San Francisco and New York, and is expanding into the Midwest. There are also satellite offices in cities ranging from Los Angeles, to London. “As a company, I think the two major things that contributed to our growth — strategically — is the fact that we took a model that started off very simple as an idea: real rewards for virtual achievement,” says Wong. “And we expanded on it. We looked at the concept of the physical reward and decided to add virtual rewards, which in hindsight is so obvious.” “The second thing was expanding beyond games,” he continues. “The core DNA in the idea for Kiip came from the inspiration around games, but we quickly realized that these moments that we were really trying to harness also existed in all types of apps.” According to Wong, Kiip is relevant to apps ranging from focusing on fitness, to creating a to-do list, to maintaining a recipe book. “There’s so many moments we realized that made Kiip applicable almost in every industry.” In January, Kiip took an investment from Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG), one of the “big four ad holding companies.” “I think the validation that came from that was indicative of the type of traction we’ve been getting from the bigger brands,” he says. Wong recalls the difficulty of initially introducing the concept of “rewarding in the moment” to potential buyers. However, after making a footprint in the industry, Wong says that business has become easier. “We’re almost a 3-year-old company. I joke around that three years is like 21 in dog years,” laughs Wong. “When you’re still around after three years as a startup, it’s actually a very interesting milestone. The brands now are less about ‘what do you do?’ and more about ‘how do we make something cool happen?’” 28 | 22 | SPRING ANNIVERSARY 2013 2017/2018
Kiip currently works with 15 percent of Fortune 500 corporations. “That’s been a huge milestone and we’re super proud of that as well,” he says. In addition to IPG, Kiip also took investments from Digital Garage, True Ventures, Relay Ventures, and Hummer Winblad at the end of 2012 totaling $11 million, according to a news release from IPG. When asked if Wong considered himself a “disruptor” in the industry, his answer was simple: “Sure.” Kiip has certainly made an impact in the virtual advertisement industry — according to Wong, Kiip is currently integrated into approximately 1,000 apps and games. The company racks around 350 “new game moments of achievement” per month. Within the network, there are about 55 million users, with endless potential to expand. “I think being able to challenge ourselves and question the norm even within the company that we all started and being able to accept our growth potential from that was one major thing that helped add to it,” said Wong. Aside from being a noticeable disruptor in the industry, Wong himself www.alISt-maGazINe.com WWW.<strong>ALIST</strong>-MAGAZINE.COM | 29 | 23
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