Silicon Valley is essentially the mecca for startups, and rightfully so, given that it’s home to numerous techies and hipsters that are deluded by the fact that they will one day change the world we live in through their nimble startup.
In fact, Malaysians aren’t spared from Silicon Valley’s charm and mystique either. If you’ve ever attended any startup-related talk in Malaysia, chances are that you’ve heard numerous talks about how our startup scene should emulate the culture and lifestyle of our counterparts in Silicon Valley.
Owning a startup in Malaysia has become so increasingly popular that it’s probably the cliché thing to do once you decide to quit your job or get fired from one.
While the startup fever continues to spread like wild fire across the world, there are quite a good number of people that find the whole concept annoyingly overrated.
If you find the fad with startups to be quite silly, then chances are you’ll fare well on Funder.
Funder is Lemonade.io’s first app and it’s built on the premise that “startups are silly”, and it’s a mobile game that gives you an opportunity to make fun of them. Co-founded by Angad Singh and Dawn Cardon (Stanford alums), the social game is set in Silicon Valley, and it bestows you with the power to create hilarious slogans for these “world-changing” tech companies.
The app is currently available only on the iOS platform but those on Android (sigh) and Windows Phone (double sigh) can still keep up with the action through their web platform—however, you can only create your own taglines on the iOS app.
Once you sign up using your Twitter account, you start your career off in the Valley by being an Intern. When you start playing the game, you’re given US$1M that you get to invest in the most hilarious startup taglines with a simple upvote, and soon after you will unlock the ability to write your own taglines, and to create your own companies.
Meanwhile, while you upvote other taglines and create your own, the app also rewards you with cash as your “investments” gets more upvotes from other users.
Here are some of the most hilarious taglines that you will see for some of the tech companies.
1. Facebook
2. Airbnb
3. Uber
4. Instagram
5. Twitter
6. Yahoo
(Take a wild guess whose tagline is leading the pack.)
I discovered the mobile game on Product Hunt this morning and I’ve been hooked on it ever since. While the game is addictive and fun, the founders have a vision that goes way beyond the surface of the mobile app.
Angad Singh wrote on Product Hunt, “Jokes apart, the app is based on the Consensual Assessment Technique by Teresa Amabile (Stanford/Harvard), which is considered the gold standard in creativity assessment. It showed that creativity is not as subjective as we think it is, and there is a high amount of consensus when people are asked to rank creative output by others.”
He also added, “If Shakespeare wrote everything in Google Docs and we could see his ‘Revision History’, think about how much we could learn about how his brain worked that we can’t know from just reading the finished product.’
In essence, the data gathered from the app will be used to identify amazing patterns that will help them better understand how people create.
He went on to explain that patterns that are identified from the data will be used to determine whether people who read lots of pitches written by others are more or less likely to create good pitches themselves. Or whether some people are consistently more creative than others, and if so what patterns are indicative of such behavior.
Data gathered from the app will be used to better understand the creative processes of individuals and how it can be further improved and replicated. He also explained that the company’s future road map would include building apps and platforms that help people and organizations improve creativity. “The data from this app will help us build intelligence so we can go in the direction of a less crowd-based and more individual or group based interaction,” he wrote in the same post.
Review
Funder’s provides you with an entertaining ecosystem that allows you to leisurely create hilarious tag lines for startups that you love and hate. While continually spewing out random tag lines for brands may get boring really quickly, the app keeps you hooked with frequent notifications and quick level ups.
Each level up gives you a witty and sometimes sarcastic explanation that will leave you with short spasms of laughter. The platform also offers you a pseudo financial reward every time someone upvotes a tagline you wrote or a tagline you initially upvoted. However, I feel that after a while you wouldn’t bother much about the financial reward but instead will crave the emotional gratification that you receive when someone upvotes a tagline you wrote.
All in all, the app is a joyous place to be.
You can download Funder from the App Store and you can check out other hilarious taglines here.