In Survivor 48, by Kyle Fraser ally with castmates Kamilla Karthigesu he helped lead him win. Now, the pair are working together in a new space, hoping for a similar outcome: starting a business together. On Tuesday, the new co-founders are introduced Vavroclipa goal-focused “social accountability” app that they hope will become a more meaningful form of social media.
Inspired by their in-game, post-game experiences and positive psychology principles, Paprclip’s idea is to bring people together to tackle their personal goals — whether it’s a health and wellness goal or something else entirely.
The app does Premiere on Kickstarterwhere the team aims to raise an additional $40,000 for its development.
Fraser and Karthigesu played Survivor again in Season 50, but Fraser unfortunately he tore his Achilles during the filming of the first immunity challenge. He had to leave the game and begin months of physical therapy, he told TechCrunch in an interview.
His wife was at the same time pregnantand was thinking about his next steps as a Survivor winner.
“I had a lot of things going on in my life that required organization, but also accountability and push from different people,” says Fraser. This led him to think about how the Paprclip app could work, sharing clips with a friend, but with an emphasis on documenting and sharing their progress towards a goal.
Together, people using the app can compete in daily challenges, build their goals and habits, and upload short-form clips documenting their progress. These clips can remain private or, if agreed, can be shared more publicly on other social media sites.
I’m very much a habit tracker, an organization hacker,” Fraser admits. “And I thought, there are so many habit trackers in the world and so many productivity tools, but there’s nothing that allows you to actually do things together. And, as crazy as it sounds, you’ll always hear me say ‘people, people, people’ — that’s what I feel has made me more successful.”
That is, Frazier credits other people with helping him achieve the major goals he has achieved in life, which include going to college, playing lacrosse, going through law school to become a judge for a major record label, and finally, of course, getting cast and winning Survivor.
“I thought, why not try to develop a product based on something that has helped me so significantly?” he says.
In the app, users receive new, randomized daily challenges designed to push them outside their comfort zone, just like the challenges in Survivor do. However, rather than testing physical strength, as Survivor often does, these challenges were developed in coordination with licensed clinical therapists. As couples complete challenges, their progress is tracked in-app and badges can be earned.
Additionally, users can create their own goals, habits and tasks both individually and as a couple, and can upload visual proof of their progress through clips, which are added to a shared page. This page acts as a calendar where both users can review their progress and hold each other accountable. The in-app to-do list, meanwhile, can replace a user’s individual goal or habit tracker if they prefer to use the app independently.
Fraser emphasizes that while it shares some of the community elements of a fitness app like Strava, Paprclip isn’t just for tracking health or exercise goals.
“I don’t just see it as a health and wellness app. In fact, if Paprclip works the way I want it to, I think people will realize they can use it for whatever they want—people trying to do different hobbies like cooking, painting, or different endeavors. This is a social responsibility app,” he says.
As in the game, Fraser and Karthigesu’s relationship as teammates has worked to their advantage, the founders believe.
“Just like in the game, I would come to Kamilla with a problem — like a puzzle, or like, ‘Kamilla, I’ve got this crazy idea, can we pull it off?’ It literally happened in real life, where I was like, Kamilla, I want to do this,” Fraser says, and Karthigesu, a senior software engineer at Discord, had the technical skills to make it happen, he said.
Fraser adds that the new app was built by humans, not AI, which meant they hired developers and designers to help with the work.
“I’m not critical of AI, but one thing that was important to us is that this is an app for people, made by people,” he notes.
To help it come off, Vavroclip is based on a $20,000 grant and operational support from the Flemming Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Hampden-Sydney College, where Fraser became the inaugural alumni founder to create a company through the Forge on the Hill program. In addition, the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies the University of Michigan was awarded special funding to support the UX/UI design of the app.
Apart from these investments and what comes next KickstarterPaprclip has not raised capital outside.
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