Hype Badger cofounder Brad Rach told us that too many times while following favourite bands he’s missed out on the album launch date. And by the time he remembered to buy said album, it was six months after the release date.
The Ottawa-based Project Management grad teamed up with Chris Horsnell, a developer based outside of London, England who had already begun work on Hype Badger, a site that “lets you track release dates for your favourite upcoming products and projects.” Users can discover, share, and contribute to hundreds of projects, such as movies, games, tv, books, gadgets, music, etc., and when products finally do come out, those users get notifications.
“We see ourselves as a tool for independent product makers, developers, musicians and others who might be able to get that ten seconds of interest at one point: maybe they post a song and someone likes it, they find out they have an album, but without any marketing money those fans are just going to forget about them,” Rach told BetaKit. “What Hype Badger wants to do is allow that user to say ‘ok, I actually like these people, lets go on this site, follow that album, so that even though I know I’m going to forget about them, when it does come out it’s something I can remember.'”
Central to the startup’s strategy will be an Android app, which is first priority. Rach mentioned that once the site and mobile platform has attracted enough users it can then focus on partnerships and advertising opportunities for various product designers and others who are selling the products.
Hype Badger’s minimal viable product was only released six weeks ago and Rach said it’s still in continuous improvement mode. Currently visitors to the site can sign up and follow a number of different products in tons of categories, like the new Nike Lebron sneakers, Google Glass, Xbox One and much more. The design and layout is relatively simple and this startup just wants people to know that they can remember and discover cool stuff and their release dates.