Kyle
It’s not everyday that you find a startup that wants to help you predict the future and share your predictions. That’s of course as long as you throw all the “weather” startups to the wayside. PsyQic a startup from Syracuse New York, does just that.
PsyQic is an iOS app that makes it easy to proclaim and than share your predictions. Do you have a prediction for next week’s NFL football games? Do you see something in the future that not everyone else sees? This may be just the app for you.
PsyQic goes beyond the predictions themselves and gamifies the process by giving you points when your predictions comes true. The points are called Qi’s which is actually a Chinese word for “spiritual energy”. Founders Gabrielle Gosselin and Keisuke Inoue wanted to design something different and fun. PsyQic fulfills just that.
Inoue and Gosselin are currently incubating their startup in upstate New York at the Syracuse Tech Garden after graduating from the Syracuse Student Sandbox this summer.
We got a chance to talk with the team behind PsyQic in the interview below:
What is PsyQic?
PsyQic (pronounced “psychic”) is an iOS application that allows users to make and share predictions about the future on various topics such as sports, politics, business, science, technologies, entertainment, and gossip. For example, “Who will win the Republican primary?”, “Which team will win the NCAA tournament?”, or “Will Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux get married?” Users get rewarded for correct guesses with “Qi” (a Chinese word for “spiritual energy”) points, which represent the users’ predictive ability (or “PsyQic” ability) in a certain topic.
With their Qi score, users can establish themselves as expert forecasters as well as compete with their friends. In a nutshell, PsyQic is an easy, fun, and social way to make predictions.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Keisuke Inoue is PsyQic’s Founder, President and Lead Developer. He is an information science and technology Ph.D. student at Syracuse University’s iSchool, the School of Information Studies.
Prior to enrolling for his doctorate, Keisuke worked in the computer software industry, where he grew interested in information technologies and behaviors.
Keisuke’s passion lies in integrating human language technologies with social web systems. He mastered this with his research and teaching, which include: information retrieval, information-seeking behavior, computational linguistics, data mining, text classification, and social web technologies.
Gabrielle Gosselin
Gabrielle is Co-Founder and Director of Operations at PsyQic. She is an information junkie who lives by the motto, “why guess when you can research and know?” As an iSchool graduate and library and information science professional, Gabrielle puts her information gathering and management skills to work for PsyQic by exploring the best way to integrate crowd sourcing into content creation.
Where are you based?
We are located in Upstate N.Y. at The Syracuse Tech Garden, and just completed summer 2012 residency at the Syracuse Student Sandbox, a business incubator that is housed at the Tech Garden.
What is the startup culture like in Syracuse?
We have received so much support and recognition from the Sandbox, Syracuse University, and many entrepreneurs and professors in the area.
This year alone, we have received the Goldberg Prize in Technology and Innovation at Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management’s 2012 Panasci Business Plan Competition, Second Prize at the New York State Business Plan Competition, and Syracuse University’s RvD IDEA Award.
Syracuse University has made a tremendous effort into putting scholarship in action, and has created courses and initiatives that encourage student entrepreneurship.
The Syracuse Student Sandbox, which is an affiliate of Syracuse University, helps student companies develop, deploy, and demonstrate entrepreneurial projects. The program provides coaching, mentoring, educational programming, physical space, access to subject matter experts, and investors.
The synergy that was among our fellow student entrepreneurs throughout this summer’s Sandbox experience, and support from local professionals makes the Syracuse Student Sandbox one of the best student incubators in the nation.
What problem does PsyQic solve?
Predicting is an innate human behavior. According to neuroscientists, human brains are wired to make predictions and even release neurotransmitters to give people a pleasant sensation when they make a correct prediction. Simply put, people cannot live without predictions, and predictions are fun! However, current social media doesn’t provide a good platform for sharing and making predictions, let alone tracking your level of accuracy so you can prove to others just how good you are. PsyQic fills that gap.
What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?
One big challenge has been getting people to understand our business model. The primary revenue driver of PsyQic will be affiliate programs like Amazon and the iTunes store, which are widely available online. For example, if someone asks a question about the TV show SharkTank, e.g. “Which shark will invest the most dollar amount in the 2013 season?”, PsyQic will suggest purchasing and watching the videos of the previous episodes of SharkTank through the affiliate programs.
Since the affiliate programs model is a fairly new concept, people were having a hard time understanding how we will make money. By providing concrete explanations, like the one above, and drawing parallels to popular web technology companies, we have managed to get a lot of people who were on the fence about us on board.
Who are your mentors and role models?
Our mentor is John Liddy who is the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Syracuse Student Sandbox.
What’s one thing the world doesn’t know about you or your startup? I’m so addicted to working on PsyQic that I missed graduation in May, even though I was 90 percent done with my Ph.D. at the end of 2011.
What’s next for PsyQic?
We will be releasing the alpha version of our PsyQic app in September 2012 to those who signed up through our website. We will have those users test out the app and provide their feedback on opportunities for improvement.
PsyQic is currently seeking additional funding for developing the beta version.
Linkage:
Find out more about PsyQic here
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