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"The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.\nName: Mindbloom Life Game\nQuick Pitch: Mindbloom creates interactive software designed to help you stay engaged with and top of your goals for living well.\nGenius Idea: Stay inspired to improve your life holistically via daily reminders and a progress-charting game-like interface.  \nMindbloom co-founder Chris Hewett acknowledges that the online health space has several interactive tools. But he says most of those share a couple of faults: they narrowly focus on one area of life, for example physical fitness, and their interactive elements are often narrowed to simple things like leader boards and merit badges.\nAnd that, in part, is why he and business partner Brent Poole started Mindbloom in 2008. Offering a more holistic approach to self-improvement measured in quantifiable steps will lead to more fulfilled and healthy lives, they believe. \nMindbloom's Life Game is based on the central concept of a tree as the metaphor for a user's life. By choosing a series of areas to focus on maintaining and improving \u2014 for example, health, creativity, relationships and so on \u2014 users see those facets of their lives represented as different parts of the tree. They can then in put a series of smaller benchmarks \u2014 such as completing a set of push-ups, practicing guitar scales or spending time with family \u2014 that aim toward larger goals. If they achieve their smaller tasks, then different areas of their tree grow. If not, then that growth remains stunted. \n\"It's really these small steps that keep people feeing successful,\" Hewett says. \"And one trait of good game design is helping people feel effective.\"\nHewett brings a wealth of game industry experience from his decade as a designer at Monolith and handles Mindbloom's creative side. Poole, an early Amazon executive, deals with its business operations. The Seattle-based company has raised nearly $2 million from angel investors and launched its Life Game product from beta in September. An iPhone app called Bloom launched in November and complements the Life Game or offers standalone reminders to help build a healthy life.  \nBut it's not just the small steps designed to help people reach their larger goals that will make Mindbloom successful, Hewett says. Interactive elements such as slideshows of personal and inspirational photos set to handpicked music also help users grow their trees and stay motivated. Users can keep their trees private but also have the option to invite friends to group trees together in forests for mutual encouragement, and can access community-added resources like websites on ideas for date nights or exercise routines.   \nMindbloom currently has about 50,000 registered users, Hewett says, with 36,000 of them active and visiting the site an average of three times per week. During all of 2011, more than 1.2 million scheduled actions were completed, according to Hewett. The mobile app Bloom has been downloaded some 200,000 times since its launch. \nWhile the Life Game and Bloom app are free, Hewett says Mindbloom generates revenue through an enhanced premium version and strategic partnerships, such as its current collaboration with health benefits company Aetna, with businesses that purchase licensing fees allowing their members or employees access to the Life Game's premium version.\nWhat do you think? Can this approach help people reach their goals? Will it work as a business model? Let us know in the comments, and check out the video below for more information. \n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/01/06/mindbloom-life-gam/>