Jonah Grant

Jonah Grant

A brief history of Belly

Today Belly closed a $10 million round of funding from arguably the world’s top venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz (or A16Z). A16Z is behind some of the biggest names on the internet, including (but not limited to) Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Instagram, Pinterest, Bump, Skype, Twitter, and Zynga. In addition, A16Z partner Jeff Jordan, former CEO of OpenTable and President of PayPal, will join our board of directors. Jeff wrote an excellent piece on his blog about the partnership with A16Z and Belly.

Belly is an exciting startup that I’ve devoted most my time to over the past year.  What Belly does is it enables small to midsize businesses to create and retain custom loyalty programs to keep their customers coming back in.  After a set of custom rewards that are shaped around the voice of the business are created, an iPad is installed in the business with an unlimited amount of physical Belly cards which are scanned on the iPad after each visit.  After scanning your card for the first time and registering, it becomes your universal loyalty card for every business that has Belly.  Additionally, if you’re not interested in carrying another card, you can download the Belly app on Android or iPhone and scan via your phone.

Belly began in Chicago last August with a few select partners and quickly swelled across the Chicagoland area to encompass hundreds of businesses.  We started with local ma-n-pa businesses and soon after national chains wanted in.  Chains like 7-Eleven, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, Ben & Jerry’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway, Dairy Queen, and Nike to name a few.

In December of 2011, Belly raised funding from Lightbank and caught press in The New York Times, FastCompany, Forbes, Chicago Tribune, and TechCrunch.

By the end of the year, Belly had been installed at over 200 locations across the Chicagoland area. And that was just the beginning. At the end of January, that number increased to over 450 and expanded outside of Chicago to Austin, TX.

In Austin, Belly was a hit. Fueled by SXSW, Belly grew on Austin like Asian Karp in the Chicago River. In less than two months Austin had 100 businesses with Belly, which is half of what it took for Chicago to reach that milestone. During SXSW, when the technology/music/film world descended upon Austin, we threw a few rad parties to spread the word.





Soon after, we began expanding our offerings to more cities across the nation. What started in Chicago spread to Austin, then to Madison, Phoenix, Miami, Washington D.C., and eventually made it’s way to Dallas, Milwaukee, Boston, New York, Raleigh, and countless others.

Businesses can now engage their customers on a personal level with rewards that are more than just a free cup of coffee (although a free cup of coffee is certainly a reward many businesses offer!). They can give their most loyal customers experiences that are tailored to the voice and style of the business, because no small business is the same. Each one has a unique feeling you get when you walk in the door and get greeted with a smiling face. It’s what makes small businesses special and we love that.

We work closely with each business that is signed up with Belly to develop a loyalty program that’s centered around the personality of the business. We fundamentally believe it’s important to harness that culture, and that’s what we built Belly on. We’re helping to provide rewarding and exciting experiences for loyal customers.


Rewards range from “Create & Name Your Own Cocktail” at Halcyon in Austin, TX to “Punch Staff Member Of Choice In The Stomach” at AlleyCat Comics in Chicago, IL. Five points are given after each visit to a business with many offering promotions where if you visit during a certain time period you can get double or triple points.

Belly’s come a long way since I got involved during it’s founding. Accumulating 200,000+ users, 1,400+ businesses, 800,000+ checkins, hiring 50+ employees across the country, and moving into our own office space since our first business a mere 8 months ago.

With today’s funding, we’ll be able to extend our reach further than we could before and provide new and creative ways of rewarding customer loyalty. We’re thrilled that Andreessen Horowitz shares our vision of the future of loyalty and we’re excited about what’s to come.

Here’s to what we’ve done, and what we’re going to do,








Jonah Grant
jonah@bellycard.com


To read more about our funding, visit the Chicago Tribune, GigaOM, TechCrunch, CNET, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, FastCompany, or Forbes.

For a full press release, visit MarketWatch.

If Belly sounds interesting and you want to set up a demo for your business, visit bellycard.com/add.

sayzlim ASKED:

1. What do you think is the most essential to be an software developer (not only iOS)?
2. How long does it take for you to grab the flow of developing and programming a full fledged software?
If you don't mind, can you share some of your experience when you are getting started learning developing and programming.

There are countless things I believe are essential to being a software developer, but I’ll highlight a few.

People first
The best developers put people first. They realize that the code they’re writing is going to be used by people, smart people and not-so-smart people. They’re willing to put in the hours and go the extra mile to make the experience for their users easier, quicker, and more intuitive, even if it’s a few seconds being shaved off. They help their users use their product.

Open source
Working on open source projects not only gives you practice, but you learn a lot by having the ability to see someone else’s work and see how they coded their way through certain problems. You also get good at writing clean code because this time it’s not just you looking at it; every contributor and user of the open source’d project is using your code, so you learn to write descriptive and intuitive code that won’t get you yelled at. It also gives you exposure to other processes that you may not have been familiar with before, even if you didn’t directly contribute to it. Reading someone else’s code is the best way to learn code.

Be curious and don’t take no for an answer
Never stop asking “What if?” or “Why not?”

I can’t stress this enough. If someone ever tells you something can’t be done, spit in their face and shoot them in the foot because it’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that they’re not willing to do it, and ultimately that’s what differentiates a good developer from a bad developer.

Make something you want to use
Being passionate about what you’re working on is unbelievably important. It fuels the drive you have towards whatever you may be developing and I believe that’s the most important aspect when looking at a software developer. Whether or not they exhibit passion in their work is vital because at the end of the day you’re more likely to make the best product if you’d want to use it.

Learn
Amazing programmers are ridiculously hungry for knowledge. They’re always reading a ton about new methods and love to try out things learned from their peer’s experiences. They’re not afraid to try something new.

A typical process from idea to product can vary immensely. I’ve started and finished a product in three months and I’ve started and finished a product in three days. It all depends on complexity, experience, and code. I say code because more often than not if I didn’t spend much time on the product, I didn’t spend much time writing clean code.

I learned a lot of my skills from looking at open source projects and seeing what happens if I change something, but I’ve also learned a lot from reading online, getting help from other developers, and a little bit of reading. I was recently turned onto The Pragmatic Programmer which I think is essential to any new developer. I wish I had read it earlier in my career as it’s a godsend in terms of just how much you learn about how to be a good programmer and thinking critically about your work.

alexstone ASKED:

I see you have Trailers open-sourced on Github. Aren't you ever concerned that someone will mod, compile, and submit your code as their own app and potentially make a decent chunk of change (I'll tell you, I was ready to drop 99 cents on an elegant app version of the Quicktime Trailers page)?

Well, no.  I’m not concerned because the reason it’s open sourced is because it’s not allowed on the App Store.  If someone somehow gets it on the App Store, it won’t be there for long.

Anonymous ASKED:

Have you thought about putting your trailers app on TestFlight or something ? (i kinda wanna use it :D)

I wouldn’t put it on TestFlight because I would need your UDID on my developer account, which I have no more spots, but I open sourced it on my github: http://github.com/jonahgrant/trailers