Trophy Updates - July 2025
Points is here! Plus we launched a podcast and shipped new APIs for displaying user data in new ways.
Charlie Hopkins-BrinicombeProduct experiences that delight and retain
Learn how to leverage user psychology to hook users on your app—with their blessing.
THE TROPHY METHOD
- Role
- 1. Aligning Incentives
- Description
- When you build a product that provides massive value for users, they will beg you to use every psychological trick at your disposal to make sure they stay hooked.
- Author
Jason Louro
- Role
- 2. Establishing A Habit
- Description
- Now that we've made sure our product provides users with value and incentives are aligned, the next step is to help the user build a regular usage habit.
- Author
- Jason Louro
- Role
- 3. Maintaining Engagement
- Description
- With incentives aligned and a habit established, we must keep our users consistently delighted, encouraged, and engaged.
- Author
- Jason Louro
News & Updates
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Trophy Updates - June 2025
Email builder is here! Plus streak achievements and the free tier.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Trophy Updates - April 2025
Docs V2, new APIs, and more A/B testing controls.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Trophy Updates - March 2025
This month we released our API client SDKs making it super easy to integrate Trophy into any web or mobile app.
Charlie Hopkins-BrinicombeGamification Guides
How To Create a Duolingo-style Points Feature For Your Web or Mobile App
Learn how Duolingo's XP feature drives user engagement and how to build an XP feature for your web or mobile app.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Why Duolingo switched to ‘Energy’ and how to build an Energy feature for your app
Duolingo recently introduced a new feature called ‘Energy’ to replace the long-known 'Hearts' feature. This shifts the focus from penalizing mistakes to rewarding success and represents an opportunity for app developers to rethink their gamification strategy.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
The Psychology of Streaks: How Sylvi Weaponized Duolingo's Best Feature Against Them
Speaking on the Levels Podcast, Amy shared how understanding streak psychology helped Sylvi capitalize on market disruption and create a retention system that actually serves user goals rather than just app engagement.
Jason Louro
How to Design Gamification That Actually Retains Users
Sylvi AI's approach offers valuable lessons for any B2C startup looking to implement gamification that enhances rather than detracts from their core value proposition.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Why Your B2C App Needs a WhatsApp Group: The Retention Strategy You're Missing
Amy Cameron, Head of Marketing at Sylvi AI, discovered a surprisingly powerful retention strategy that any B2C app can implement immediately: adding new users to a WhatsApp group during onboarding.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
How To Create Duolingo-style Progress Reports For Your App
Duolingo is famous for having fun and engaging lifecycle email marketing and it's a big driver of retention. But what if you could follow their strategy without all the upfront work?
Charlie Hopkins-BrinicombeGrowing B2C startups fast
Insights we've gathered from B2C founders at high-growth companies
- Role
- Building Community Before Launch: 300 Beta Users from Investors and Press Coverage
- Description
- How do you build an initial user base when you have no existing community? João Neves and his team at Bloop solved this challenge by turning their fundraising process and press strategy into community building tools, creating 300 engaged beta users before they even launched.
- Author
- Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
- Role
- How to Get Your First 100 Marketplace Sellers
- Description
- Most founders struggle with the chicken-and-egg problem: buyers won't come without good selection, but sellers won't join without existing buyers. João Neves and his team at Bloop solved this challenge by focusing on three key strategies that helped them reach nearly 100 sellers before launch.
- Author
- Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
- Role
- The 'Shake to Report' Feature That Generated 500+ User Feedback Points in Weeks
- Description
- Getting meaningful feedback from users is one of the biggest challenges facing early-stage product teams. Most startups struggle with low response rates to surveys, generic feedback that's hard to act on, or users who simply don't bother sharing their thoughts at all.
- Author
- Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Building a Community
Building Community Before Launch: 300 Beta Users from Investors and Press Coverage
How do you build an initial user base when you have no existing community? João Neves and his team at Bloop solved this challenge by turning their fundraising process and press strategy into community building tools, creating 300 engaged beta users before they even launched.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
The Psychology Behind 'Bloop Is for Everyone': Democratizing Influencer Marketing
In a recent conversation on the Levels Podcast, João explained how Bloop's "for everyone" philosophy challenges traditional influencer marketing assumptions and creates a more authentic, accessible system for earning through recommendations.
Jason Louro
How Bloop Raised €400K from 126 Investors Using Word-of-Mouth Crowdfunding
When most startups think about crowdfunding, they picture polished campaigns on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, complete with professional videos and stretch goals. João Neves, co-founder and CTO of Bloop, took a completely different approach: the power of word-of-mouth.
Jason Louro
From Happy Accident to 1,000 Paying Customers: How Sylvi AI Built Their Founding Community
Sylvi AI, a language learning app that helps users practice conversations with AI pen pals, launched in April 2024 and has already reached over 1,000 paying customers. But their path to building a loyal user base started with a simple question: "How did you find us?"
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
From 50 Beta Users to Product-Market Fit: Why Early Customer Feedback Beats Feature Planning
Amy Cameron, Head of Marketing at Sylvi AI, discovered a fundamentally different approach that transformed their product development process and accelerated their path to product-market fit.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
The Creator Equity Strategy: When to Give Away Ownership to Build Your Community
Most B2C startups approach creator partnerships with a simple playbook: offer affiliate commissions and hope for the best. But according to Tim Johnson, who's managed creator communities at three major consumer apps including Wattpad (acquired for $600M), this approach is fundamentally flawed.
Charlie Hopkins-BrinicombeGrowing Marketplaces
The Psychology Behind 'Bloop Is for Everyone': Democratizing Influencer Marketing
In a recent conversation on the Levels Podcast, João explained how Bloop's "for everyone" philosophy challenges traditional influencer marketing assumptions and creates a more authentic, accessible system for earning through recommendations.
Jason Louro
How to Get Your First 100 Marketplace Sellers
Most founders struggle with the chicken-and-egg problem: buyers won't come without good selection, but sellers won't join without existing buyers. João Neves and his team at Bloop solved this challenge by focusing on three key strategies that helped them reach nearly 100 sellers before launch.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Cold Outreach and Lowballing: How We Got Our First 10 Suppliers Pre-Launch
When you’re building a two-sided marketplace, you face a chicken-and-egg problem: you need supply to get demand, but you need demand to convince supply to join. Read how one founder solved this problem with a lot of cold outreach and lowballing commissions.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
From Tour Aggregator to Community Hub: Evolving Beyond the Marketplace Model
Most B2C startups think of themselves as platforms, marketplaces, or products. But the best ones evolve into something much deeper: a community.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Seasonality Almost Killed Our Startup, Until Gift Cards Saved Our Christmas
When you’re building a B2C startup, the hardest problems aren’t always product, pricing, or even growth. Sometimes, the biggest threat is… the weather. Read how one founder used gift cards to solve this problem.
Charlie Hopkins-BrinicombeEngineering
How To Create a Duolingo-style Points Feature For Your Web or Mobile App
Learn how Duolingo's XP feature drives user engagement and how to build an XP feature for your web or mobile app.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
How we built a block-based template editor for gamification emails
Read about how we built our email-builder. Hear the difficulties and successes we had + lessons learned.
Jason Louro
The Technical Reality of Building E-commerce and Social Media in One Platform
Building a social network is hard. Building an e-commerce marketplace is hard. Combining both into a single platform? Even harder. That's what João Neves and his team at Bloop discovered as they set out to create the world's first social shopping platform that rewards users for their influence.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
How to Send Charts in Lifecycle Email Campaigns (Don’t Use Images!)
Using charts in emails is great for engagement, but can hurt email deliverability. Here's the solution.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
Building a B2C Platform Without a Tech Background: How I Hacked My Way to an MVP
In the B2C startup world, there’s still a lingering myth: if you’re not technical, you can’t build a tech company. Max, the founder of Adventuro, didn’t buy that. Learn how Max built his startup in 11 weeks and landed his first 50 customers a couple of months later.
Charlie Hopkins-Brinicombe
How We Built Our Developer Docs With Mintlify & Fern
Learn how we built our developer docs site at Trophy.
Charlie Hopkins-BrinicombeGamification Case Studies
How Brilliant Uses Gamification to Improve Engagement and Retention
Discover how Brilliant leverages gamification to boost retention and engagement.
Jason Louro
How Charity Miles Leverages Gamification to Boost Retention
Learn how Charity Miles uses gamification to improve engagement and retention, and add value to its users.
Jason Louro
How ClassDojo Uses Gamification to Improve Engagement and Retention
Explore the mechanics and tactics behind ClassDojo's gamification strategy.
Jason Louro
How Codecademy Uses Gamification to Improve Engagement and Retention
Explore how Codecademy implements gamification to enhance user engagement and retention.
Jason Louro
Coursera Case Study: The Impact of Gamification on Retention and Engagement
Explore how Coursera implements gamification to enhance user engagement and retention.
Jason Louro
Duolingo's Gamification Strategy: A Case Study
Find out how Duolingo uses gamification to drive user engagement and retention.
Jason LouroGamification Examples
10 Apps That Use The Achievements Feature
Curious about the achievements gamification mechanic? Check out these 10 examples of how it's done right.
Jason Louro
10 Apps That Use The Challenges Feature
Wondering how the challenges feature can enhance your app? Learn from these 10 examples of how to use it successfully.
Jason Louro
21 Education App Gamification Examples
Curious about gamification in education apps? Check out these 21 examples of how it's done right.
Jason Louro
12 Examples of Fitness App Gamification
Wondering how gamification can enhance your fitness app? Learn from these 12 examples of successful gamification tactics.
Jason Louro
10 Apps That Use The Points Feature
Explore how 10 apps are leveraging the points feature to create compelling user experiences.
Jason Louro
10 Apps That Use The Progress Bars Feature for Gamification
Wondering how the progress bars feature can enhance your app? Learn from these 10 examples of how to use it successfully.
Jason LouroNewsletter
Hand-crafted guides to help you retain and delight your users
We'll email you when we publish something worth reading.