#6. How Apps Can Change the Habits of People - Yves Benchimol (WeWard)
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Show Notes
Yves Benchimol is the CEO and co-founder of WeWard, an app on a mission to make walking a more rewarding part of people’s lives. In this episode, Yves and Tommy discuss the three pillars of motivation that WeWard uses to inspire people to get outside and take a walk: gaming, social, and rewards. You’ll hear the strategies behind their success in helping 20 million users increase their number of steps on average by 25 percent.
WeWard is a free mobile app that converts steps into digital currency, which can be redeemed for offers, coupons, products, or cash. Yves has a master's in engineering and entrepreneurship and lives in New York with his family.
Questions Yves Answered in this Episode:
- How did you become the CEO and co-founder of WeWard?
- What’s one business you find inspiring?
- Why did you start WeWard?
- How does your app motivate people to walk more?
- Of the three pillars, which impacts your consumers the most?
- Do you have any examples of features that didn’t work that you thought would?
- How did you decide when it was time to expand into other countries? And how did you decide what countries to expand to first?
- Does the U.S. present unique challenges or rewards to WeWard’s expansion?
- What approach did you take to amplify your rewards system, and why was that important for WeWard?
- What’s your favorite walk of the day?
Timestamp:
- 3:06 Yves’s background
- 7:14 WeWard’s origin story & the beauty of walking
- 11:11 The 3 motivational pillars
- 13:38 What motivates people the most?
- 18:58 Deciding when to kill a feature
- 22:35 How we decided to expand to other countries
- 31:05 Amplifying our reward strategy with games
- 36:04 The BEST walk