Fast Company – May 2019

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Daniel Gross was accepted
into Y Combinator’s accelerator
program at just 18 and sold an
AI-powered search engine to
Apple for a reported $35 million
at 22. Now 27, the tech entrepre-
neur is helping other founders
through Pioneer, an online com-
munity that enables anyone in
the world to compete for a prize
package that includes a $1,000
grant, $6,000 in cryptocurrency,
and $100,000 in Google Cloud
credit, plus the chance for fu-
ture investment from Pioneer.
In August 2018, Gross debuted
the concept as a gamified 30-day
challenge: Applicants complete
points-driven “quests” (games,
puzzles, quizzes, providing feed-
back to other participants) and
vote each other’s concepts up or
down a leaderboard. Within the
first six months, Pioneer has an-
nounced 39 winners from three
challenges that drew several
thousand contestants. Harshu
Musunuri, from the U.S., is work-
ing on a way to better diagnose,
treat, and prevent sepsis; Caroline
Oluka, from Uganda, is creating
a Kampala-based bike delivery
service that empowers young
women. Gross has created a
clever tech platform to screen
candidates seeking investment.
“With a relatively cheap and scal-
able intervention,” he says, the
applicants can become “the next
great set of innovators.”
—Ben Paynter

Gamifying Innovation

Pioneer.app

PIONEER APP

Making It Easier to Call for Help

The notOk App SIBLINGS HANNAH AND CHARLIE LUCAS

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58
As a freshman in high
school two years ago,
Hannah Lucas devel-
oped a chronic illness
called postural ortho-
static tachycardia
syndrome, which
causes frequent faint-
ing spells. On top of
the physical difficulty
of navigating her daily
life, she was bullied,
and became so se-
verely depressed that
she began contem-
plating suicide. Fortu-
nately, her mother
was there to counsel
her. But what if she
hadn’t been? What
if Hannah needed to
call for help, and
no one was around?
Voicing these
thoughts to her
younger brother,
Charlie, she kept
coming back to the
idea of a simple app
that would function
as a distress call: If
activated, it would
automatically send
a text to trusted
contacts. Charlie,
who had been learn-
ing to code since
he was 7, told her,
“I could do this.”
Last January,
Hannah and Charlie
launched the notOK
app (available for
free on Google Play
and the App Store).
With a single touch,
the notOK app deliv-
ers a message to
five friends or family
members chosen
by the user: “Hey, I’m
notOK. Please call,
text, or come check
on me as soon as
you can.” GPS pro-
vides the sender’s
exact location with
each message.
Suicide is the
second leading cause
of death among
people ages 10 to
34 in the U.S., and
mental health issues
affect 1.1 billion
people worldwide.
In the year since the
notOK free app
launched, 53,000
people have down-
loaded it, Hannah
says, and she and
her brother are work-
ing on an integration
with Crisis Text
Line, the mobile
counseling service.
“No matter what,”
Hannah says, “it’s
okay to be not okay.”
—Eillie Anzilotti
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