How a society’s culture influences its economic development was a subject that fascinated young Brandon Cheong, who wanted to be an academic or a research economist growing up. So when it came to choosing a course of study at the University of Cambridge, economics was the natural path forward.
His undergraduate programme, however, didn’t turn out the way he’d expected. “The taught material isn’t intended to deepen understanding of how economies work in the real world as much as developing familiarity with abstruse theories and models premised on highly questionable assumptions,” he elaborates. “I lost interest in academia as a career. I was reluctant to sacrifice my broad range of interests on the altar of hyper-specialisation, especially if it meant publishing in obscure journals only a few people would read.”
Still, the 26-year-old obtained his bachelor’s degree in economics and went on to pursue a master’s in machine learning at UCL, after learning about the major developments in artificial intelligence and their potential to affect a wide range of fields and industries. “It was definitely more enjoyable as I worked on projects with practical relevance,” he says.
These days, Brandon has his hands full with Pozyt (pozyt.com), a new social network he started with a few friends from school. “Users post about anything they think will happen next, from football club signings to celebrity gossip. We have a scoring system called cred, short for credibility. Once there is enough information to judge, everyone who called it right gains cred and those who are wrong lose it. Over time, everyone builds a track record of all the times they were right and wrong,” he explains.
On why he started Pozyt, Brandon says that while people love to speculate with their friends on a whole range of topics, including sports results and TV show plot lines, there isn’t yet a social network where you can see other people’s track record of whether they were right or not. Pozyt is also a departure from the current social media landscape that’s obsessed with the newest and the latest. “Currently, our feeds only give us the most recent content. Whatever happened in the past gets drowned out. Our product is all about remembering what people said in the past and seeing who got it right in the end. This gets people to engage with calls others made in the past as news around it develops and hold them accountable for their opinions.”
Intrigued by Poyzt and the brand’s journey, I quizzed founder Brandon Cheong on the social platform, as well as some startup insights.
Names: Brandon Cheong
Profession: Founder of Poyzt
Industry: Tech
Startup since: 2022
Tell us about Poyzt. How did it begin?
I’ve always found football and finance exciting because they both heavily involve speculating about what’s happening next, yet what ends up happening often surprises! Anything can happen in both fields – a seemingly invincible football team gets beaten by a weak team, or financial markets often move opposite to what consensus expects. This is the case for so many other topics, from TV shows to celebrity gossip. Many people like me cherish the suspense sharing and consuming opinions on what’s going to happen and seeing if they were right in the end, yet we somehow don’t keep an online track record of people’s calls. Pozyt aims to fix this.
What is the message behind your brand?
The message behind the brand is: If you think you know what’s happening next, make your call, track the crowd’s mood as it changes, and we’ll see who’s right in the end. The bold and contrarian get rewarded!
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t place too much of a premium on other people’s advice regardless of reputation – every business is idiosyncratic and requires tinkering in the real world to figure out what actually works. If you’re not an operator doing the tinkering it’s unlikely you’ll know what’s best.
What are your goals for Poyzt?
We already have a core community of football fans who use Pozyt for football banter. It’s a much neater format than WhatsApp groups or Twitter for that because you can see if someone’s call was actually right in the end and track how the mood and people’s takes on a call change as the news unfolds. We want to grow this community of football fans and spread the fun.
What are you most tired of hearing in your line of work?
People mistaking it for one of two things: a sports betting platform or a prediction market. It isn’t, because there’s no real money involved – it’s just internet points that measure how right your calls are. This means you can still have the fun from sports betting of putting your reputation at stake without losing money. It also isn’t because prediction markets aggregate the crowd’s opinion on some general topic into a market price. We do the exact opposite by having individuals share their takes to stand out from the rest.
What are you most proud of about your business?
I’m extremely proud of the fun community culture we’ve built and the stellar content that results. To take just two examples:
(i) Someone made a call at the start of the season that the Liverpool striker Nunez would be the top goalscorer this season, but he turned out to be a massive flop. Seeing the mood change over time was hilarious: https://pozyt.com/call/155
(ii) Someone made a call that the Chelsea manager Tuchel would get sacked literally a day before it unexpectedly happened – very prophetic! https://pozyt.com/call/2266
Looking back now, what would you have done differently?
We realised a lot of features we assumed necessary to have at launch aren’t essential. We should have scrapped them, and launched earlier. You can get around cutting these features at the very beginning by doing things manually that don’t scale.
What is a normal workday like?
It varies a lot on the tasks at hand, but normally a typical day involves a mix of cold emails, meeting our users to befriend them and collect their feedback, and planning group events for our users to meet one another to strengthen the community.
What would you be doing if you weren’t doing what you do now?
Probably work at a hedge fund so I can make the contrarian calls instead of working on the platform for other people to make contrarian calls.
What has been your biggest challenge with starting the business and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge we’ve overcome was launching the product. We learned how to build a consumer app from scratch without external developers by directly trying to build the product and improving it via trial-and-error.
What’s next for you and Poyzt?
Getting more football fans who love to banter with their friends to try Pozyt out and join our community!
Interested to find out more about Poyzt? Email Brandon at bc@pozyt.com.
