Today we’d like to introduce you to Kaben Clauson.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Kaben. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Social media is a great place for a vacation photo or an update on a new member of the family. It’s a horrible place to post opinions with any honesty or frequency. This problem became crystal clear for us around the time leading up to the 2016 election. We found that the political discourse was causing many people to burrow underground with how they felt about their world and the issues that surround it.
Increasingly we felt that people were forming bubbles that made it harder than ever to understand where people stood. We felt that a real need existed for people not just in Chicago but across America to have a safe place for expression and comparison.
We formed a group of like-minded individuals to start brainstorming an idea for a crowdsourcing opinion. After testing a prototype of the concept with 100’s of people across America we felt we had found something. Our team of 7 began to build Aop, the “anonymous opinion platform”.
The platform allows for rich correlations of data across fields of study; politics, health, culture, entertainment and more. Aop’s goal is to bring the world’s hidden opinions (ex. 2016 election) to the light by protecting anonymity while also allowing people to see where they fit compared to their fellow Americans. We came out of beta on iOS and Android last fall. Aop now have tens of millions of opinions from people across America.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
No! We’ve made many mistakes along the way. One of the greatest struggles is understanding what’s important. How do we prioritize all of our ideas? Sometimes the things you think will matter, prove to have little impact. We created some product features that we thought would be a major home run. People didn’t like them… some even hated them! At other times we’ve proven to be too slow in reacting to what our users are telling us.
More than ever, we’re trying to really listen to people. Listening even beyond what they tell us, to the root cause of why they feel that way.
Aop – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Aop is a mobile application for iPhone and Android. It’s a place for people to express themselves with total honesty then instantly compare with others across America. On Aop every user is completely anonymous. The platform makes it impossible for anyone to hate or “troll” you for who you are or what you believe. If you are interested in politics, dating, social issues, brands, entertainment and more you will love finding out how you compare to your fellow Americans.
We’re most proud of those special moments we hear our users having on the app. People have said, “I understand the world better now.”, “I understand myself better”. “I don’t feel alone in how I feel.” Mostly, we’re proud when people tell us it’s an addicting experience. This means they love it.
What sets Aop apart is we offer the opinions of America in real-time. When something happens in the news you can come to Aop to instantly understand how a large group of Americans feel about it. All of this information is broken down into beautiful demographics, gender, age group, race, region, and more.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
We will be successful once we’ve created a “Wikipedia of Opinion” that anyone can access from any device. Imagine wondering how many people in a certain city feel about any issue and instantly finding that information. Imagine a place where different groups of people are able to instantly see where the other side stands without guessing.
This platform will be able to show people how the opinions of our country are constantly shifting, shaping, and being born. Aop wants to bring the opinions of America to light, we need a dedicated user base of a quarter million people to do this. At that point, we will expand to other countries around the world.
Contact Info:
- Address: 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza #1212, Chicago, IL 60654
- Website: aopapp.com
- Email: info@aopapp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/voteaop/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/voteaop/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/voteaop
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