WHAT is a social polling app enabling anyone to post dilemmas, polls, or open questions to specific audiences around the world. The vision is to democratize opinion polling and giving everyone the opportunity of getting real and honest feedback on personal dilemmas or important questions.

Users can ask and answer personal dilemmas anonymously to further honest feedback. But the app also feature a reporting function and the option of blocking other users.

“I got the idea of WHAT after listening to a famous Danish radio show, where people phone in with their dilemmas. People have so many good and interesting dilemmas, so why not enable quick feedback from thousands of people through a social app?” Steven Højlund, CEO and founder of WHAT

Users can add text- or image options to their polls, or they can ask an open-ended question for text input. Polls can be sent to specific age and gender segments, and any country the user want to query. Users can follow their friends or celebrities and see and answer to their questions.

Try the WHAT-app here.

The vision

WHAT is easy and quick polls for everyone. We wish to support a global community, where it’s easy and fun to answer questions from friends and organizations.

“The vision is a global community, where anyone can get answers from a representative group of people in just 24 hours.” Steven Højlund

There are many people with dilemmas or ideas that need quick and honest feedback. However, most people or organizations only have the option of asking their connections on Facebook -which is not good enough, if you want unbiased feedback.

On a global level, more than half of the world’s population live in countries, where the freedom of speech is limited, and official opinion polls and elections are manipulated in one way or another. Collecting opinions from the greater majority of people on the planet is still not feasible, despite of improved access to the Internet and Smartphones.

“We believe, that the democratization of opinion polls and easier access to knowledge about people’s living conditions globally, will empower advocacy groups and allow anyone to challenge decision-makers with the trustworthy facts about human attitudes.”

So, we built WHAT to democratize opinion polls and make our contribution to the freedom of speech and the aggregation of people’s opinions into meaningful and actionable results, as well as data for the common good of mankind.

What we do differently

We focus on making it easy and fun to answer questions. Most people know how boring surveys can be.

To make questions more fun and engaging, we have reduced the response time for questions or surveys to one minute. When users answer the questions, they can see the aggregate answers to the question and engage with the content. Currently, we are testing prize draws to reward the users, who have been most helpful sharing their opinion on the platform (beta-testing in Denmark only, 2018).

We know from research in economic psychology, that people are motivated very differently. Prizes and money incentivize some, while others are motivated by the connection between people.

Business model

We live in a fast-paced world, where ideas are transformed into products at a staggering speed. In this business reality, both small, medium, and large organizations need fast feedback from potential customers to adjust and develop products that don’t fail in the market.

Opinion polls are by far the best tool to collect representative feedback on crucial business questions, such as product design, segmentation of customers, pricing, and brand awareness.

WHAT want to enable anyone, - students, businesses, public organizations and non-profits-, to make quick, reliable and cost-effective polls. We strive to make polls available to as many people as possible.

“The problem in the polling industry is that polls are too long and too expensive. When respondents are bored, they will just click through the last part of long surveys. This severely distorts the quality and reliability of polls and renders the answers useless to the organization that paid a large amount for them.”

In the current market, representative opinion polls are only available to the few large corporations that can pay. We want to change that and allow anyone to make better decisions with reliable opinion polls.

“Research shows that people answer more honestly, when they answer online, compared to facing a person in an eye-to-eye interview.”

Company profile

WHAT is owned by getQueried ApS, a Danish limited company founded by Steven Højlund in 2014 and co-founded by Christian Thode Larsen.

The company received investment over consecutive rounds of funding from a public grant (Innobooster) and the Danish angel investors.

The head office is at Islands Brygge in Copenhagen, Denmark, Europe.

Founders

Steven Højlund (CEO) received his Ph.D. at Copenhagen Business School in 2015. He got the idea to build WHAT at a research stay at Stanford University, after having worked as a management consultant, dealing extensively with social science analysis and opinion polling.

When he returned to Denmark, he was joined by his highschool friend Christian Thode Larsen (CTO), that received his Ph.D. in computer science and machine learning algorithms at the Danish Technical University. Christian conducted parts of his research in Boston, in affiliation with Harvard University.

Results and prizes

WHAT received 450.000 DKK in grant from the Danish State’s Innovation Fund (Innobooster).

WHAT won the prize of ‘Best Investment Case’ at the Danish accelerator program ‘Go Grow’. The jury consisted of VC Kim Wiencken (NorthCap Ventures), Jacob Heiberg (Founding Partner at Gorm’s Pizza) and Peter Inselseth Jørgensen (COO at Praice).

WHAT soft-launched in the App Store and Play Store on the 14th July 2017 and globally in October 2017.

App description

You can download the WHAT app in Apple’s App Store (iPhone/iPad) or Google’s Play Store (Android). New users register on the platform through Facebook or email.

The WHAT app’s main screen is an overview of relevant questions from friends and people nearby. When you answer questions, you get access to see the answers provided by other users. You can also choose to answer the questions anonymously. When you help other users by answering their questions, you participate in the prize draws (beta testing in Denmark only, 2017).

On WHAT, you can ask open questions or closed category questions with text or images. For example, take four photos of the glasses you consider buying and ask your age group which pair they prefer. You can ask anonymously, if you are a little embarrassed about your question and you can choose to ask a specific user segment (gender, age and proximity) or your friends.

It’s also possible to see a list of users in your vicinity and ask them questions. For example, which of these three restaurants would you go to tonight?

On WHAT, everyone has a profile with an image and a short description. You can see other people’s profiles, as well as a list of their answers and questions they have asked (not the anonymous questions and answers).

List of possibilities on WHAT:

  • Answer questions and share your opinions
  • Follow friends and interesting people and see what they think about stuff
  • Win prizes when you help people with your answers (beta testing in Denmark only)
  • See all answers to questions
  • Ask your friends about their opinions
  • Specify your question audience’s age, gender and geography (distance around you)
  • Answer and ask questions anonymously
  • Define answer categories with images or text

Contact information

Njalsgade 76
2300 København S
Danmark, Europa

Telefon: +45 53 53 98 95
Email: contact@what.qa
www.what.qa

WHAT-questions & Answers

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WHAT is collecting the world’s opinions.

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