With more than $4 million from Google Ventures, Highland Capital Partners and DreamItVentures, SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch set about to build a layer of gaming over the real world. While it offers a check-in feature, the app's real draw is its location-based challenges or games. Anyone can build them, and such games can vary from scavenger hunt-like games to taking a photo of a particular store window in a mall, which can lead to rewards like virtual badges, discounted, or free items.
Companies and educational institutions apparently want in. SCVNGR now counts Coca-Cola, Gamestop, the U.S. Navy, Harvard, the Smithsonian Institution, Sony, and Warner Brothers among its 1000-plus paying clients, and the start-up reports an 80-90% annual repeat, or retention, rate.
