Pocket Points app rewards students for staying off their phones in class
In one year, Mitch Gardner, 22, and Rob Richardson, 21, went from average college students to owners of a nationally-recognized business.
The duo's app, Pocket Points, awards students for staying off their phone in class. In one year, it went from a few thousand downloads on the campus of Chico State University in Chico, Cal., to more than 200,000 downloads from students at more than 100 universities and colleges nationwide.
Richardson says the idea for the app came to him in the spring of 2014 as he was sitting in a 150-person lecture. He noticed many of his classmates’ heads were down – they were fiddling with their phones.
“I knew there had to be some sort of incentive to get kids to put their phones away,” Richardson says.
The premise is simple: Once students open the Pocket Points app and lock their phone, they start to accumulate points. The longer their phone stays locked, the more points they can get. Points are also awarded based on how many people are on the app at a time.
The app is free and only works on campus. Students can redeem their points for free or discounted items from local vendors.
Jack Micek, 20, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student, says he first heard about Pocket Points from his fraternity brothers.
“They were actually, as men will do, being very competitive about who had the most points,” Micek says. “Naturally, my interest was sparked, and I was like, ‘OK, I bet I can get more points than you guys can.’”
Micek’s goal? A pizza that cost 120 points.
According to David Rahn, the director of e-Incubator and a lecturer of strategy and entrepreneurship at Chico State, Richardson and Gardner didn’t have food-related rewards in mind when they first pitched the app. Instead, Rahn says the men originally planned for professors to reward students with extra credit for staying off their phones. But in a focus group session, Rahn says the professors didn’t like the idea of rewarding students for something, in their opinion, they should already be doing. That’s when Richardson and Gardner decided to reached out to companies.
“They came back a couple of hours later, all out of breath, saying, ‘This is great! Companies have budgets for these kinds of things and want to sign on!’” Rahn says. “Right then, we knew they pretty much had something.”
Richardson, a computer science student from San Diego, Calif., coded the app. And Gardner, a marketing major from Orange County, Calif., has been responsible for getting the word out.
Richardson and Gardner say that, within a month, 30% of the Chico State student body downloaded the app. Because of its success, they expanded to more U.S. campuses in the spring of 2015, including Penn State, University of Michigan and University of Arizona.
Since then, the men say the app has continued growing. They spent their summer meeting on a weekly basis with Rahn to brainstorm, develop ideas and expand their staff.
Campus representatives market the app and work with local vendors to find deals for students in their respective areas.
Eric Weber, 21, is the Pocket Points campus representative for Georgetown University. Originally from Stockton, Calif., Weber first heard about the app from high school friends who go to Chico State. Since the app launched at Georgetown in the beginning of September, Weber says nearly 200 people have downloaded it.
“The word is spreading about it,” Weber says. “As we keep going on it’s less that I’m doing and more of it taking care of itself.”
But Kelli Britten, a lecturer in advertising and public relations at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, says the app presents some problems.
“It seems almost trivial because I feel like if you’re just sitting in the building, you can just turn the app on and be collecting points that way as well,” Britten says. “Also, I don’t think it combats the idea that students are still active on their laptops and iPads.”
And Hannah Christian, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln student says she does exactly that. Since she lives on campus, she says Pocket Points works from her dorm room.
“I don’t know if that’s cheating or not, but it’s really positive for me because that helps me study instead of looking on Twitter or Facebook,” Christian says.
Gardner says he and Richardson don’t want people to abuse the app, so they’re trying to control accessibility so students can’t earn points from dorms. While Pocket Points doesn’t solve everything, he says it mitigates some problems in the classroom.
“If they’re trying to cheat the app by going on campus and watching Netflix on their computer, that’s not what it’s meant for but there’s no way to stop that,” Gardner says. “Our goal is help them study or focus, so if they do that, we’ve succeeded.”
Richardson and Gardner are currently taking a leave of absence from school. If the success continues, they say they’re not sure if they’ll go back to school at all.
“My parents want me to,” Gardner says.
For now, the men are focused on growing the company—and they’re having fun doing it, Gardner says.
“We’re always improving and always thinking about getting better about how we do,” Gardner says. “We love our jobs and love our lives. We couldn’t ask for any more.”
Vanessa Daves is a student at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a fall 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.