A year ago, Kiip ran a “Build Fund” contest for independent developers, offering $100,000 in prizes. Founder and CEO Brian Wong told me recently that the fund was supposed to be a one-off promotion, but this year, enough developers asked if he was going to do it again that, indeed, he’s doing it again.
Just like the first fund, Wong is looking for the best developers of apps that integrate with Kiip’s mobile rewards system, where users receive prizes from advertisers when they achieve certain goals in an app. There are, however, a couple of changes this time around. For one thing, there are only going to be 10 winners this year, not 20, which means that there’s more prize money for each developer — $10,000 in cash, plus $5,000 in services from partners like Parse, Urban Airship, Amazon Web Services, Crittercism, and Localytics.
The contest is also designed around a theme this year: “Creation.” The idea, Wong said, is to focus on apps that are really doing something innovative and creating new categories, rather than just offering a small tweak on what others have already done.
“We are trying to look for the true creators who literally do not care about anything but just making something great for the sake of it being great,” Wong said.
The other addition this year is that Pepsi is sponsoring part of the Build Fund, specifically by offering sponsorships to the fitness apps that win.
You can read more about the fund here.