Out of the six Syracuse University teams that entered the Student Startup Madness competition, only the app HoundDog remains.

HoundDog allows consumers and brands to communicate and interact in new ways, breaking the trend of traditional advertisements. HoundDog was created by SU seniors Max Doblin, an advertising and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises dual major, and David Kern, an advertising and finance dual major.

The app is currently one of 32 semi-finalists of the Student Startup Madness competition, which is a national tournament for college entrepreneurs’ digital startups.

“I’m really excited,” Kern said. “I’ve been checking my phone all day.”

HoundDog creates a new channel of communication between brands and consumers through what it calls “social scavenger hunts.” Brands can create their scavenger hunts by making a list of tasks for users to complete. These tasks may include GPS check-ins, QR-code scans or social media shares, for example. This allows brands and consumers to develop a relationship of “fandom.”

Kern said he thinks HoundDog’s success in the Student Startup Madness competition will benefit SU because it will help put SU and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on the map in the field of start-ups, especially because technical schools such as Rochester Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology typically dominate the field.

“We’re creating this platform where we can curate dozens of thousands of hunts in different cities, with different brands,” Doblin said.

The app also allows users to individualize the app by choosing the type of brands whose scavenger hunts they participate in. For example, users could mark that they are interested in fashion, food or sports.

“Today, the way millennials interact with brands is totally different,” Doblin said. “We’re changing the script and changing the landscape to make advertising more interactive, competitive and community-based.”

Kern believes HoundDog made it this far in Student Startup Madness because the app addresses a need in the advertising community for interactivity with new media.

“Because it connects with people beyond a surface level of seeing a banner ad or hearing an ad on Spotify, it’s not so much advertising as it is content,” Kern said. “So when someone’s doing a hunt, it’s not like they’re being spoken at.”

Kern added that the interactive forms of advertising HoundDog offers differs from more traditional advertisements.

“People can mute an ad. They can change the channel, but this is something where people want to work with the ad — it’s not an inconvenience or a nuisance,” Kern said.

Doblin and Kern were inspired by the Twitter account @hiddencash and Cicaida 3301’s hacking hunts. Hidden Cash was a movement that began in San Francisco, where its founders Jason Buzi and Yan Budman anonymously tweet clues from the Twitter account, leading followers to cash hidden in the city.

Kern and Doblin reasoned that if millions of people were participating in these scavenger hunts already, there was a need for a platform to cater to them.

During the developing stages of the project, Doblin frequently consulted with Sean Branagan, the director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Newhouse.

Branagan said that he advised the duo to “out-execute” anyone else who had an idea like theirs.

“People think entrepreneurship is based on ideas — ideas are worthless,” Branagan said. “They’re fun, they’re interesting, but it’s somebody who does the work, does crazy hours — Max was working like crazy. That’s the difference.”

Doblin and Kern also are planning a scavenger hunt at SU this spring. Although nothing is official and the details are still confidential at this stage in planning, they said the hunt will involve finding hidden items on campus.

The two also hinted that tasks could involve finding a hidden logo in the mount stairs or participating in SU trivia. After completing the hunt, students would receive prizes that are relevant to college students. The SU scavenger hunt will involve about 50 students.

As Newhouse and Whitman dual majors, both Doblin and Kern say they work well together because they play up to each other’s strengths.

“We both study advertising, but Max’s emphasis is creative. My strength is strategy and data analysis. They’re both huge parts of our company. On the other hand, he has a background in Whitman in entrepreneurship. My background in Whitman is in finance.”

Published on January 27, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Alex: aerdekia@syr.edu