RAVN Creates the Coolest Beta Wall Ever
RAVN, an activities search and booking engine that lets people discover and schedule activities, classes and tours online, has an awesome splash screen for its beta invitations.
"Beta invites are boring, so we made this little game called RAVN Hunt," the site states. Every day, the top 10 players get instant access to RAVN Beta.
To receive a beta invite, you must enter your email and play the game to shoot ravens, which is based on Nintendo's Duck Hunt game.
"Our landing page was pretty traditional beforehand, but after the game, user conversion went up [300%] as people became more engaged, and kept playing for the invite code," RAVN co-founder Dennis Liu writes on Hacker News.
Some users have found ways to hack the game and inflate their scores, Catalyst Studios develo kyledr writes on Hacker News.
"Honestly we didn't try at all to make it difficult to hack," RAVN co-founder Steven Ou writes on HN. "Figured that no matter what we did, anyone with decent skills should be able to hack it. After all you can see all the source code! (like jerry said in another comment, we're not a gaming company after all - it was just a fun little experiment) - excites me that it piqued people's interest enough to go poke around in the source code though! :)"
RAVN gives you personal recommendations based on what you do and what your friends want to do. RAVN recently pivoted from peer-to-peer platform Skyara, which aimed to be an Airbnb for experiences, to RAVN, a similar company that aggregates small businesses and connects them with consumers.
Currently in private beta, RAVN is testing its business to business subscription model. So far, three businesses are using it on their websites.
Other companies in the experience and travel market include Mightybell -- an experience discovery platform that breaks down activities step by step -- and tours and activity engine Vayable.
Founded in 2011 by Jonathan Wu, Dennis Liu and Steven Ou, RAVN is currently funded by Hillsven Capital and i/o Ventures.
SCREEN SHOTS
Players with the highest scores get immediate access to Ravn. Considering that the lowest score in the top 10 is 3485, we're clearly not pros at the game but it's still a whole lot of fun to play.
