April 14, 2026
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gamification startups

Gamification Startups Are Finding New Niches and Greater Profits

Kevin Shane25 mins

Gamification startups are still finding innovative methods to stake their places in new niches while producing large profits. Businesses are looking for new techniques and methods to establish their presence as the first authority to consumers. Many businesses are finding that new competition are ramping up the game which is leaving many to say: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” These new competitors are banking on the ideas and innovations coming from gamification methods and practices lending to impressive startups and profits.

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Objective Logistics Rewards Wait Staff Employees for Good Services

Kevin Shane24 mins

Americans tend to eat about five meals per week in restaurants. But how often do you go to a restaurant and vow never to return because of bad service? Some food service industry businesses fail based on the personalities of their servers rather than the quality of the food being served. For the business owners, this can feel like an unearned failure, which is why it’s important to make good decisions when hiring employees.

And this isn’t some tightly-kept trade secret. Customers know this and business owners know this. Customers are more likely to return if they’re treated well. Therefore, business owners — especially those in the service industry — have a remarkable incentive to retain highly performing service workers by rewarding them with desirable shifts and, especially in the case of food service, more generous financial bonuses. Objective Logistics, an innovative company in the broad category of gamification startups, is offering a service to restaurants that rates and manages servers in the food service industry.

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PromiseUP, the Gamification App to Help Keep Promises

Heong Weng Mak25 mins

Remember the promise you made to your mom that you would call every so often? What about the other time you promised your boss that would not be late for work again? Or that promise you made to yourself that you will quit smoking?

Many individuals are capable of keeping to their promises, but there are also many others who are unable to do so. The fallacy of making promises is that there is no one else besides the person who is being made the promise to that will hold the individual accountable for his or her actions. As there is a lack of an immediate feedback loop, it leaves the individual complacent in accomplishing their tasks and making good on their end of the promise. A new IOS app, PromiseUP aims to change that by helping people to fulfill their promises.

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Foursquare and the Fun Gap: What Foursquare Should Have Been

Gabe Zichermann410 mins

Today Foursquare announced a new round of debt-based financing amounting to $41M in loans and convertible notes. It has been controversial, because debt-based financing suggests the company has a significant performance problem (Jason Gelman has a good wrap-up of the spirited discussion). Foursquare’s problem has become increasingly clear to Gamification folks over the past two years – it’s just not fun anymore. In the transition from a (great) game to a (good) loyalty program to a (mediocre) recommendations engine, they lost the plot, alienated customers and wasted a ton of resources and time.

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Market Ripe for Health and Wellness Gamification Startups

Kevin Shane06 mins

A new study shows that employers are increasingly relying on gamification to increase employee health engagement. According to Buck Constultants, 62% of employers consider gamification the most effective strategy in encouraging employees to improve their health and at least 31% will adopt at least one new health-related gamification strategy in the coming year.

As healthcare costs continue to rise, employers are facing new pressure to encourage employees to be proactive about their health. While there is still insufficient data to determine whether employee health incentive programs are actually saving companies money, it seems that most businesses are not waiting to find out.

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How Gamification Can Create a Homeschool Education

Kevin Shane34 mins

Homeschooling has become one of the fastest growing forms of education, and gamification has become very integral to the way these children are learning.

When a parent decides to remove their child from school, many times it’s due to the boring nature of traditional classrooms, inflexible schedules, and just a general disagreement with the American education system but now there are a number of gamification tools that can solve these issues and make homeschooling better.

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Nike and TechStars Betting Big on Gamification and the Quantified Self for 10 New Startups

Ivan Kuo35 mins

If you weren’t sure where the future of fitness technology was heading towards, let the 10 winners of TechStars’ new Nike+ fitness startup accelerator give you a clue: it’s going to be all about gamification and the quantified self.

Nike and TechStars first announced the launch of their digital fitness startup accelerator program in December 2012 to find startups that will help people lead more active lives. As of yesterday, they have officially picked the 10 lucky startups that will participate in their inaugural 3 month class. Each startup will receive $20,000 in funding, a workspace, and mentorship from big names like Foursquare Co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, TechStars founder David Cohen, and Nike’s VP of digital sport, Stegan Olander. TechStars will receive a 6% stake in equity of each of the companies in exchange for their support.

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Gamification Roundup – March 26, 2012

Ivan Kuo01 mins

This week on the Gamification Roundup, we are all about startups: FundingWorks brings crowdsourcing to non-proft donations, HealthPartners is providing customized corporate wellness, CodeAcademy and Treehouse are teaching programming with gamification, Kiip adds rewards to any app, and SuperBanker is generated great participation at a banking conference. Check out what these awesome startups are capable…

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