“It’s only two pictures and a question.”
The social polling platform Crowd launched just before Christmas, making it just a few weeks old. But the idea has lots of candles on its birthday cake. Founder Justin Thompson came up with the idea for Crowd while in school. After taking some business and software development classes, Thompson contacted developer Tiafau Purcell and together they solidified their plans for the app.
But when Thompson and Purcell presented their idea to venture capitalists, they were told time and again that they needed a proof of concept before a firm would be willing to invest. And they couldn’t build a proof of concept because they didn’t have any money. So they set their app plans aside.
Thompson moved to Arizona and developed a medical, which has done very well. The idea for the app was always in the back of Thompson’s mind, and he finally had some money to make it happen, so he became the company’s angel investor.
Purcell developed Crowd out of Verdad Tech and they beta tested the app for about thirty days. “We got really great insight from beta testers,” Thompson says. “It helped us nail down some of the key concepts of what people want in the app.”
Crowd allows users to easily create visual polls by presenting two images and a question. Say for instance, that I need to buy a new toothbrush. I can snap photos of both options, present them side by side, and ask, “Which toothbrush will prevent me from turning the exact color of all the Diet Coke I consume each day?” Then my acquaintances can respond with “The left one,” or “the right one,” or “You could stop drinking so much Diet Coke?” to which I could respond with, “Mind your own business Uncle Bob.”
Crowd also allows users to send polls to only select people. Like, not Uncle Bob. “People want to ask different types of questions to different people,” Thompson explains.
“People like how simple it is. It’s only two pictures and a question,” Thompson says. “We want to give people the tools that they want.”
