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A University of Kentucky alumnus helped create an app to make exercise more fun. Destin George Bell graduated from UK in 2020 with a degree in marketing from the Gatton College of Business and Economics. He’s now the CEO and co-founder of the smartphone app Card.io, a gamified app turning any outdoor movement into a social competition. Destin is also a Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship graduate from the Bootcamp accelerator program!
Card,io launched on 7th January, brought in its first 100 users and has grown to over a thousand. Destine and his team at Cardio have raised a little under $1M, including non-dilutive capital from groups like the University of Kentucky, Niantic (Pokémon Go parent company), crowdfunding, and grants from accelerators and pitch competition wins.
On the most important lessons he’s learned as an entrepreneur, he said: “The biggest lesson I learned is that a “no” is a not yet/I’ve been told no so many times in my life that if I took that to heart and never did anything that was met with resistance, I’d still be sleeping in my dad’s attic on an air mattress.
“The “not yet” that became the biggest “yes” we ever got was when I sent a cold email to the CEO of Pokemon Go. It took two months for him to respond. After our first conversation, 3 months passed with complete radio silence, but despite that, I sent email after email the entirety of that time until one day they rewarded my persistence with a $50K grant,” he added.
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