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Co-founder and main developer of Untappd Greg Avola pours us a generous portion of lessons on beer knowledge, user interface and the art of marketing with zero budget. Build an AWESOME product that people want to share!

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• Introductions and Updates
  
• Internet Interview – Greg Avola co-founder, CTO and developer of Untappd
  
• Outro Song (Andrew) – “Microbrew Caper” – Mo’Dukes of Imperial Productions
  

Send questions, comments, suggestions or love to podcast@owningyourown.com

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• Victory at Sea by Ballast Point is the beer du jour (1:24)
  
• Owning Your Own is now new and noteworthy in iTunes!!! (2:26)
  
• Untappd is available on all platforms; featured on previous episode of OwningYourOwn.com!  (6:20)
  
• Greg met the other co-founder Tim Mather on Twitter. (7:30)
  
• Launched to the public October 2010 and is only a two-man operation. They both work on the app part-time on top of their regular jobs (8:20)
  
• The mispelling wasn’t the first choice, but became the preferred choice eventually. (11:20)
  
• Once someone is familiar, the name can become an advantage. (12:00)
  
• What decisions did they make (perhaps via the app) that are the reasons they picked that beer. (13:30)
  
• Metro cities with public transportation there are 3 to 4 times more checkins per person. (14:00)
  
• Untappd is “tapped” into Foursquare’s API  for the locations (15:00)
  
• Open source database was the first part and focused on macro beers.  The decision to allow users to add to their database helped increase the volume of inventory in their database, including the rare beers.  The users are the part of the brand and helped them grow. (15:20)
  
• Duplicates in the database are the thorn in the side. (17:00)
  
• Team of moderators and teaming with the breweries helps eliminate the duplicate entries. (17:45)
  
• Checkins are likely mostly draft checkins; the picture recognition concept is great but may not be available for the vast majority of the checkins (19:10)
  
• Some breweries use the same UPC for seasonal beers as their regular beers. (20:30)
  
• Communication network for breweries is a strong benefit for using Untappd. (21:20)
  
• There is Untappd analytics, especially for Breweries! (22:10)
  
• Untappd insights (Brewery Insights). (22:40)
  
• Alan has a strong tie to the interface with the app, but it inspires social, ease of use and personal preference in one app. (25:00)
  
• Emotional inspiration of app interface. (26:00)
  
• They also have an API, some people like Sam Adams build widgets with live checkins using the data from Untappd. (27:30)
  
• Who is the big power user of Untappd?  Wil Wheaton may be! (30:00)
  
• Are people open to sharing their drinking habits?  Social and into beer, I’m into beer, and collectors are the main users.  (33:20)
  
• Users come first. (35:10)
  
• The marketing mix of Untappd is zero dollars of spend.  Word of mouth is the primary driver. (36:10)
  
• Favorite beers by the owners. (39:15)
  
• Recommendations is going to be a big focus in the next year. (41:23)
  
• Predictive Beer Analytics! (43:20)
  
• Potential partnership with Lyft and/or Uber? (45:00)
  
• Alan’s favorite app for more reason than beer. (48:10)
  
• First app that allows to pull in Twitter handles in Tweet data when sharing with Twitter. (50:00)
  
• April 7th, coincidentally the day we recorded the interview, was national beer day. Virtual cheers. (51:00)
  
• Microbrew Caper is a “superhero themed” song as part of a collaborative effort of Imperial Productions.  Performed by the late (RIP) Mo’Dukes formally of 3rd Floor Productions and produced by Neil Cabana. (56:27)