Building the World’s First Mobile Rewards Network: Brian Wong, 20-Year-Old Founder of Kiip (Part 5)

Sramana: What was the first case study you were able to develop?

Brian Wong: We did a case study with popchips. Our case studies were still limited. We did not have the full gamut of details that a half billion dollar ad network would have. We just had a version that we could show, and nothing more. We were able to put together a series of metrics on engagements such as click-through rates, Tweets, email address subscriptions, and the number of emails that were being opened. We had a series of metrics that demonstrated that people wanted to engage with the brand.

Sramana: What were your major inflection points between 2010 and 2012?

Brian Wong: We raised our seed round in August 2010. We hit our goal of 10 games and 10 grand in April 2011. We raised our A round of $4 million at that time, which meant we could charge ahead and hire. A lot of it is a waiting game. You have to create and build product and have confidence that you are building value.

We launched our partnership with Verizon, we launched a product with Disney, and we hired a COO from Zynga. We just announced our self-service platform last week. A lot has happened in the past year that has been built off the work we did while we were waiting to gain some traction.

Sramana: In terms of hiring, who were some of your key hires and what was the thinking behind them?

Brian Wong: They key was building out the sales team and the army that would be part of this movement. In the beginning I was doing everything myself. When I came time to build a team, I just needed to find people who were better than I was. Those people could then lead the team. There were three areas of the company that we had to build. We had a product team, a business development team, and a sales team. A lot of our sales team is in New York. We built our team there from day one because I wanted to create a team we could be proud of and that would have reputation in the industry.

Sramana: What is your sales model?

Brian Wong: We sell the advertising agencies and brands directly, in person. Those are 30- to 60-day cycles. We sell access to achievement moments with a reward product. It is very turn-key for a lot of them. They just need to understand what type of creative they can put in, what the messaging can be, and how to do targeting.

Sramana: What is the average deal size when you are selling to these people?

Brian Wong: In the beginning it was $5,000. We now have deals as large as $500,000 and deals as small as $25,000 to $50,000.

Sramana: You said you hired a lot of salespeople. Were there any other key hires that came about as a result of your Series A?

Brian Wong: We hired a VP of business development. We also brought on a couple more engineers to help with infrastructure, as well as a designer. My co-founder runs engineering as our CTO.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Building the World's First Mobile Rewards Network: Brian Wong, 20-Year-Old Founder of Kiip
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