Why Cadoo
By: Tim Parsa
Tags: Education, Health, Fitness, Startup, Money

Hello world!

We are the co-founders of Cadoo, an app that makes it easy to incentivize and reward the use of apps and services that promote health, learning, focus, and well-being.

Our mission is to grow the Gross National Happiness of the Internet.

In this introductory blog post we want to tell you why we built Cadoo and how we plan on making Cadoo a leader in a new market for online incentives and rewards that will be bigger than the global remittance market ($500BN in 2018).

If used mindfully, smartphones can be tools of personal growth. There are hundreds of cool learning, health, and mediation apps. And self-motivated learning has never been easier. Any book or subject matter can be accessed and absorbed thanks to the internet. All you need to do is search, click, and focus. It’s also never been easier to use the internet to create personal wealth if you have the discipline to use your networked devices productively.

But that’s a big if.

Cadoo makes that if more likely.

We are a technology company that makes it easy and fun to challenge and reward people to be their best selves by using apps and online services that improve their lives.

And the Cadoo API makes it easy and effective for any online service to add user-funded digital cash incentives to their products, which amounts to a viral user-funded referral program, something every Head of Growth can get behind.

Want to motivate a friend to get in shape? Send her a Fitbit Cadoo that rewards her with digital cash for every mile she walks or runs. Or for getting a good night’s sleep. Or for losing weight.

The truth is that even the most disciplined among us sometimes need a little motivation to be our best selves. And the greater truth is that our smartphones have become huge distractions from reaching our full potential, when they should be making it easier.

That’s why we built Cadoo.

For most of us, our networked devices are a source of distraction and dysphoria.

Gossip, news, porn, social media- our smartphones tempt us to indulge at the cost of our health, peace, and focus.

Instead of learning Chinese with Duolingo or how to code with Mimo, we indulge in the shallow thrills and meaningless status games of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.

Instead of using Fitbit or Strava or iOS health to improve our physical health, we dedicate countless hours to destroying imaginary people in imaginary worlds while our real-life body gets soft and flabby from lack of movement.

Instead of learning Chinese with Duolingo or how to code with Mimo, we indulge in the shallow thrills and meaningless status games of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.

One of Cadoo’s inspirations is tech entrepreneur, Angel List founder, and Twitter sage Naval Ravikant, who has written & spoken often about the importance of adopting strategies to mitigate the impact of a world of surplus on the human algorithm evolved to survive scarcity.

Cadoo doesn’t have a fasting or meditation app in our integration pipeline just yet, but it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be able to send a Headspace Cadoo or a Calm Cadoo to incentivize someone to learn how to observe their monkey mind and get in touch with a deeper, more serene, and less anxious sense of self.

As a small startup that has raised a little money, we need to prove that Cadoo can increase the National Happiness Index with every app with which we integrate. Our initial focus is tween/teen wellness, and we’re proud to announce that Fitbit is our first integration partner (via the awesome API of APIs IFTTT)

Our near-term goal is to help 100 overweight kids be happier and healthier and have better relationship with the parents.

Being an inactive kid makes everything harder, including learning and resisting digital addiction.

We know from interviewing child wellness experts and Fitbit users that there is a desperate need for Fitbit Cadoos as a way to motivate and reward overweight kids to be healthier.

Our near-term goal is to help 100 overweight kids be happier and healthier and have better relationship with the parents.

Parent-to-child payments is huge market and we think its the smartest place to start.

There are $41 Bn in parent/child allowance paid in the U.S. every year. Every one of those dollars has analog strings attached.

Cadoo replaces those strings with API calls to popular learning and health apps that trigger digital cash rewards.

If you want your kid to learn French, send him a Duolingo Cadoo.

If your kid wants to learn to code, he can request a Mimo Cadoo that rewards him or her to advance through coding courses.

We think the potential global market for digital cash incentives is way bigger than the $40bn US allowance market. Or even the $325bn online education market.

Cadoo replaces those strings with API calls to popular learning and health apps that trigger digital cash rewards.

We think it could become as big a payment category as the $500bn + global remittance market.

Instead of immigrants sending money back home so that the loved ones they left behind can live a better life, Cadoo enables people to send money to people they love and see every day for the same reason.

Cadoo’s social feed makes it easy to follow, share, and celebrate as rewards are earned through hard work and perseverance.

It’s been a long and winding two-year journey for us to build the Cadoo app, which we’ll be launching in beta in November with our Fitbit integration (Strava and iOS Health to follow in December).

We think it could become as big a payment category as the $500bn + global remittance market.

We look forward to sharing our journey with weekly updates from both of us as we work to raise the NHI of the Internet one Cadoo user and Cadoo integration partner at a time.

Contact us to learn more.

Wishing you to be your best selves,

Colm & Tim

colm@cadoo.io tim@cadoo.io