Interview: Christine Lemke, AchieveMint Co-Founder, Making Healthy Choices Fun and Rewarding

AchieveMint is a multidimensional platform that not only aggregates your data from various health and lifestyle technologies (i.e. steps taken as measured by Fitbit, healthy places visited and checked in through foursquare) but additionally takes that information and uses it to reward users for healthy habits. Simply, do healthy activities tracked on mobile or web applications and earn AchieveMint points which leads to cash rewards for reaching your goals. The Company started when a few co-founders came together to discuss creating a system to track and incentivize healthy behavior as a way to improve their various health goals.AchieveMint’s Christine Lemke, who focuses on product and operations, explains it as “There are already apps that monitor your weight and steps taken that are widely adopted. The world doesn’t need yet another one of those apps, however we saw that if there was an incentive attached to those apps, users have more loyalty in using them and ultimately improve their health.”There has been a lot of interest from consumers who want to use AchieveMint but the company is adding users and accepting invites in a controlled and steady manner. They want to make sure that they are providing the best rewards and experience for users.When I synced my Fitbit to the website, I was delighted to see that it pulled my historical data and gave me credit for my distance covered in early December.The Company is offering points not only for exercise and weight loss, but also for spreading news about health. For example, soon you can earn points for tweeting and sharing healthy articles on social media websites. AchieveMint wants to work with all types of lifestyle businesses, including recipe sites and forums like Pinterest – giving points to the user for reading and promoting healthy tips.What else can we expect going forward? Christine acknowledges that they want to make the rewards more comprehensive and not just cash based. This could mean anything from donating your earnings to a favorite charity to getting discounts on fitness gear, a nice meal or a spa day.The Company is very focused on big data, namely sifting through all the data that is collected on you and analyzing it to get a view on which apps have what type of affect on your lifestyle. From this, AchieveMint will be able to focus on what motivates you most based on your past behavior (i.e. a certain goal or a leaderboard). Taking that knowledge, AchieveMint can create a plan for you, sort of like a “personal trainer in a box,” suggesting which activities or path to take to get back on track if you find yourself in a trough.I certainly like the company and if you can secure a coveted invite (sign up today!) there is no reason not to use AchieveMint to help track your fitness goals and earn rewards while doing so. As Christine summarized, “At the end of the day, you improve what you can measure and we want to provide that central dashboard to aggregate your physical and social activity. We can then use that data to help people improve their quality of life through healthy living on a daily basis.”