With $150k backing PromiseUP aims to rid the world of broken promises

PromiseUP, a free app that tracks and incentivises the promises we make, launched this week on iOS. The goal of the app is to use social gamification to rid the world of broken (or forgotten) promises and ultimately improve the relationships in our lives.

The idea is to make us accountable for the things we say we’ll do, and when we’ll do them. Each promise is custom-made, with a simple and intuitive UI. A wager is placed on that promise (with the app’s own virtual currency, $UP), and a time-limit set. After the time-limit expires, PromiseUP will ask the necessary parties whether the promise was kept or not and then transfer the wagered $UP to whoever won the ‘bet’.

Using a freemium business model — the app gives news users $UP1000 upon signing up that they can use to wager with friends (or themselves), on whether they will keep a promise, or break it. If a user runs out of $UP, they can restock using real money — the core of PromiseUP’s business model.

$UP can be cashed in for prizes at the UP-Shop which, at the moment, only stocks t-shirts — yet the app’s promise is to ever expand this store. Perhaps we should place a wager on that?

PromiseUP received seed round funding from TDVF for US$150 000, and is part of the RZLTT Accelerator incubator based in Moscow, Russia.

Promises made during beta-testing included a son promising to call his mother once a day for a month (successful), a friend promising another friend to delete his ex-girlfriend from his social media networks (unsuccessful) and a promise from one brother to another to eat his entire lunch with only his feet… unsuccessful.

“A kept promise is a thing of beauty,” said Ivan Kochetov, CEO of PromiseUP. “Unfortunately, like Kate Winslet’s character in Titanic, promising a drowning Leonardo DiCaprio that she’d “never let go,” too many of the promises we make to ourselves and our friends end up broken, forgotten, or both. We founded PromiseUP on the belief that following through on promises solidifies friendships, relationships, and pushes our own goals forward in a meaningful way. Our promise is to give users an intuitive, worthwhile platform to be better connected to the promises they come across daily.”