On Survivor 48, his alliance with Kyle Fraser and castmate Camila Kartiguez led him to victory. Now, the two are teaming up in a new field and are hoping for similar results. That means we’re building a business together. On Tuesday, the new co-founders announced Paprclip, a goal-focused “social responsibility” app they hope will become a more meaningful form of social media.
Inspired by experiences during and after matches, as well as the principles of positive psychology, the idea of PupClip is to unite people to work on their personal goals, whether they are health and wellness goals or something completely different.
The app is debuting on Kickstarter, where the team aims to raise an additional $40,000 for development.
Fraser and Kartiges played Survivor again in Season 50, but unfortunately Fraser ruptured his Achilles tendon while filming the first Immunity Challenge. He had to step away from the game and begin months of physical therapy, he said in an interview with TechCrunch.
At the same time, his wife was pregnant and he was thinking about his next steps as a Survivor winner.
“There were a lot of things in my life that needed organization, but I also needed responsibility and support from different people,” Fraser says. So he started thinking about how an app called Paprclip could work, with a focus on documenting and sharing progress toward goals while sharing clips with friends.
People using the app can compete in daily challenges, build goals and habits, and upload short-form clips to record their progress. These clips can remain private or shared more publicly on other social media sites with your consent.
“I’m very much a habit tracker, an organization hacker, and I thought there are so many habit trackers and so many productivity tools in the world, but nothing that actually allows you to do things together,” Fraser admits. And as cliché as it may sound, you’ll always hear me say, “People, people, people.” I feel like that’s what made me the most successful. ”
In other words, Fraser credits others with helping him achieve the great goals he has achieved in life. Those goals include getting into college, playing lacrosse, going to law school and becoming a litigator for a major record label, and ultimately, of course, getting cast and winning Survivor.
“I thought why not develop a product based on something that has helped me so much,” he says.
In the app, users receive new randomized daily challenges aimed at pushing them outside their comfort zone, similar to the challenges on Survivor. However, rather than testing your physical fitness as Survivor often does, these challenges were developed in collaboration with qualified clinical therapists. As pairs complete challenges, their progress is tracked within the app and they receive badges.
Additionally, users can build their own goals, habits, and tasks individually or in pairs, and upload visual evidence of their progress via clips added to the shared page. This page acts like a diary where both users can reflect on their progress and hold each other accountable. On the other hand, if users prefer to use the app on its own, the in-app to-do list can be used in place of a personal goal or habit tracking app.
Fraser emphasizes that despite sharing some of the community elements of fitness apps like Strava, Paprclip isn’t just about tracking health and exercise goals.
“I don’t see this as just a health and wellness app. In fact, if Paprclip works the way I want it to, I think people will find that they can use it for whatever they want. People who are trying to take up different hobbies, like cooking or painting or different endeavors. This is a socially responsible app,” he says.
As well as the game, the founders believe Frazier and Kartiges’ relationship as teammates was an advantage.
“Just like in the game, I come to Camila with a problem, like a puzzle or, ‘Camila, I have this crazy idea, can I make it happen?’ It literally happened and I was like, ‘Camila, I want to do this,’” Fraser said, noting that Kartiges, a senior software engineer at Discord, had the technical skills to make it happen.
Fraser added that the new app was created by humans rather than AI, meaning it hired developers and designers to help with the work.
“I’m not criticizing AI, but one of the things that’s important to us is that this is an app made by humans, for humans,” he points out.
To get the business off the ground, Paprclip is relying on a $20,000 grant and operational support from Hampden-Sydney College’s Fleming Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Fraser became the first alumni founder to start a company through the university’s Forge on the Hill program. Additionally, the University of Michigan’s Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurship provided dedicated funding to support the app’s UX/UI design.
Other than these investments and future plans on Kickstarter, Paprclip has not raised any external funding.
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