Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Katie Ames. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Katie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
What if we could gamify our daily interactions to make them more quantifiable, repeatable and fun?
Whether we are creating memories and sharing them, competing in a workout challenge with friends near and far, or partaking in a scavenger hunt for a bachelorette party, we are regularly documenting and sharing our experiences and hoping to one up our besties.
And so I thought, why not take this process and digitize it?
Building out a technology platform has been a very multifaceted and occasionally challenging endeavor. There is of course creative work (what should each page look like?) as well as coding work (what does this page actually do?) to keep track of at every stage. As we have built it out I am continuously learning new things as well delegating tasks to staff (and learning about their jobs and such as I do that!)
Right now we are finalizing this iteration and checking things twice so that it’s ready to go soon! If you’d like to host a game or other event let us know!
Katie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are building out a “Starbucks for life” style application so that companies can easily gamify their brands with rewards, community and fun. Right now businesses host scavenger hunts, workout challenges, etc., via a hodgepodge of paper, email / social media, and for larger companies, their personal software to try to keep track of engagement. We streamline this process by making it digital so that companies can go back to focus on what they do best – whether it’s helping people achieve their fitness goals or creating a great product for their community.
Here are a couple ways people can use the platform:
-Workout challenges
-Bachelorette Parties
-Scavenger Hunts
-Team Building exercises
-Study Guides
We are so excited as we are about to launch. Have you been keeping track of your challenges on paper or over email?? We’d love to host your challenge on our platform.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
There is luckily so much support for small businesses right now. I follow the social media of a couple VCs, and they have lists of companies that offer free or highly discounted services to startups. The main discount we are using currently is that we have built our platform on AWS, something I would not have been able to do without a generous discount. This allows us to build a great foundation for future growth. I would encourage other small and newer businesses to join communities where they could also find out about deals and discounts targeted towards them.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
So many times recently I am learning to trust my employees and customers, as they have better ideas than I do – ha. I think there is this misconception that as the business owner I’ll have all the ideas – though perhaps I’m the only one with that idea – and so I initially have resisted a lot of ideas from customers and employees. Looking back, as I’ve slowly implemented them, I find this so funny as some of my favorite things I do now are things someone else suggested, many of which I initially disliked.
Lesson being, be open to trying new things! You might start to love it.
Contact Info:
- Website: begamon.com
- Instagram: @be.gamon
- Other: My website is under construction – please let me know before you publish so that I can confirm it’s up and working! Thank you so much.
Image Credits
The party phone and picture of drinks I purchased on Shutterstock and have basic distribution rights. Spa day is a free download from Breakingpic on Pexels The situp one is from Jonathan Borba from Pexels.