Startup Feature: Badger
August 9, 2011 in Statups by f3 fund it
We recently had the chance to chat with Nathan Roth, CEO of Badger Media Inc. about their upcoming release of Badger, a new app that lets users share photos around interests. The app in itself is something completely new and innovative in the ever growing sea of social picture sharing applications, that for the most part don’t do much aside from sharing photos. Badger is different, it creates communities around the interests that people have, and lets people connect though their common likes, and more importantly in this social-location oriented market also around place.
How did you come up with the idea for your company?
I was at ITP and a former iteration of Badger was my thesis project. We thought about icons, what they mean, and how to initiate new behaviors around those icons. Especially with the ever growing prominence of mobile technologies we saw a great possibility not only in fostering conversation, but also human interactions around those things that people find most important to them. We looked at varying icons, and eventually settled on badges due to their deep rooted significance in western culture.
Any milestones that you’d like to share?
Yes, after building the initial prototype of Badger, we headed down to South by Southwest, a festival in Austin TX, to see if the platform could gain any clout. At the time we only had very limited MMS functionality, and the entire submission process was archaic in comparison to what we have today. It was enough however to get us into a Tech Stars affiliated program and brought us to where we are today, on the brink of app launch.
Can you tell us a bit about the team?
Sure, it’s composed of three guys including myself. None of us really knew how to code when we started this project, but the thing about coding is it’s pretty logical, and we just started hacking at it. I think the team is well balanced overall, as it’s myself, I have a background in anthropology, Oscar, who I met at ITP, he ample agency and graphic design experience, and J, who brought the whole business side of things to team. The funny thing is we all contribute to the technology in different ways, but really have no formal training.
Any advice to pass on to budding entrepreneurs?
Just go for it, if you don’t know how to do something, just learn it, and if you think your product isn’t ready for launch, launch anyway, you can always make adjustments as you go along the way, but one thing for certain is, plan, not for others, but for yourself. We didn’t plan in the beginning and it definitely set us back a bit.
Badger will be launching their iOS App very soon, so be sure to check them out, and spread the word on this great and innovative new startup out of NYC.
Link: http://playbadger.com
Twitter: @playbadger
iTunes App – Badger *













