Hold
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
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Sections to complete：02 · 05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Hold was a Danish startup app for students, built by three friends — Maths Mathisen (CEO), Florian Winder and Vinoth Vinaya — who met at Copenhagen Business School. The free app rewarded users for not using their phones: ten points accrued for every 20 minutes without touching the device, redeemable in an in-app marketplace for real-world prizes such as Amazon vouchers, cinema tickets and coffee. It launched in Norway in February 2016, gaining 50,000 downloads in its first three months and reaching more than 120,000 users across Norway, Sweden and Denmark, including 40% of Norway's higher-education students.
02 / FAILURE REASONS
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03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Launched
Hold launched in Norway in February 2016, rewarding students for not using their phones; it grew to 120,000+ users across Norway, Sweden and Denmark with 40% penetration among Norwegian higher-education students.
- Pivoted to productivity
By 2020 the company had pivoted from the student rewards app to a productivity tool — CEO Maths Mathisen described HOLD as a tool to plan the day and become distraction-free, measuring and monitoring productivity.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
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Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
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