‍We built a thing.

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Otomo started with a vision — but where we began is not where we ended up. This is our creation story. We originally wanted to enable people to effortlessly organize their money in alignment with their individual aspirations and needs. So we built a platform to help consumers reach their financial goals on autopilot and brought it to market as a licensable product. After a stretch of beta testing, we saw an opportunity to add a feature that would automatically hunt for promotions on products and services that could help our users reach their goals faster and more affordably.

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In our discovery process we asked prospective partners what was critical to them in their businesses. We started hearing a small cluster of common, distinct desires — the needs to effectively engage their audiences, generate more revenue, and sometimes to better market their existing products. In a stroke of insight we did something unthinkable: we hacked our product down the middle and launched our offers as a standalone product that was only about helping people discover promotions based on what they care about.

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To bring it home, we introduced an AI wellbeing companion to make it a bit more magical for consumers and decided we would only promote brands we observe to be more beneficial to humanity and the planet than others. Oh, and it takes less than 10 minutes to integrate and we share the revenue we generate with our clients :)

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We offered it to a few partners quietly. It did really well, so we kept refining it.

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Three phone calls later, we had three design partners. Through nine months of working together, we saw the metrics climb from 10,000 to 90,000 monthly impressions. In less than a year, we had a stack of agreements that would enable us to reach nearly half a million consumers. Although it’s not what we set out to do, we were clearly looking at traction that affirmed our instincts that this product could and should stand alone.

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Now with great excitement we’re officially launching it. Goodbye dated, uninspired loyalty programs. Hello modern, hyper-relevant wellness perks.

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Gladous is an AI-powered recommendation engine that seamlessly integrates into your existing platform, enabling you to provide your audience with personalized discounts and offers from beloved brands like Headspace, Daily Harvest, Talkspace, Hydrow, Girlfriend Collective, Credit Karma, and hundreds more. Unlike other members’ perks programs, Gladous is curated with brands, products, and services focused around topics like mental and physical wellness, building credit, savings, and investments, and that are conscientious towards our planet.

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Our mission: everyone thrives.

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Customer perks and loyalty programs have become so ubiquitous they’ve started blurring together, and simultaneously have been underwhelming consumers for decades. Through the requisite amount of grind and willingness to listen to our customer rather than cling to the ideas we walked in with — we honestly arrived upon something that could do for the customer loyalty market what Mailchimp did with email marketing, and what Typeform did with forms. We discovered how to redesign perks to be more personalized and meaningful to people — by taking a stance on their personal, financial, and environmental wellbeing.

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We made perks rewarding, and flipped the model. With Gladous, enriching your audience’s lives is what drives more revenue and engagement.

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You can learn more about the marketplace here. Thank you for reading, friends, and for sharing this exciting moment with us!