THREE Canberra entrepreneurs are about to launch a new online community where friends trade in motivation and reputation is everything.

Users amass points and advance up a leaderboard but it’s not a game; they post pictures and little stories of their real lives, but it’s not a social network.

“We’ve got a term for it – I don’t know if this is right yet – but we call it an ‘online accountability framework’ or a ‘social accountability framework’,” says 33-year-old Thomas Burdon, who created “StakeMyRep” with his partners Michael Riethmuller and Jonathan Mullins.

“In StakeMyRep, users, or players, are asked to create a challenge for themselves, and other users are invited to bet their reputation on whether they think the user will complete that task,” he explains.

While the three have done nearly all the work themselves, with help from friends, Thomas says the small start-up business really took off with the support of Covate, a Canberra-based “innovation incubator and accelerator”, which provided them with starting capital and ongoing mentoring.

“It’s about getting the idea validated as being a legitimate and solid business model, and they’ve helped us tremendously in that regard, and working with them has just been really great in general, in terms of having somebody that you can talk to about your ideas.”

Each member of the new online community has reputation points, which they can increase by completing challenges – especially difficult ones – or gamble on whether others will. The amount they get back for completing a challenge is based on how much they put on the line, but also how much others bet against them. Evidence of success must be uploaded, and the community gets to vote on whether they believe it.

“That’s one thing that makes our app unique,” says Thomas. “It’s got that evidence-based voting component which other [similar] products lack.”

A few similar websites have appeared since he first thought up the concept about four years ago, but Thomas sees validation rather than competition in the growing scene where he hopes StakeMyRep will take its place.

“If other people are doing it, that means there’s a market, so I’m excited about that,” he says.

Beyond the simple concept, there’s a lot of testing and experimentation needed to make sure the system works well and that users enjoy the experience.

The first-stage or “alpha” testing is now complete and people can sign up to take part in the “beta” testing phase now, which involves taking part and sending feedback on bugs or loopholes that make it easy to cheat. With plans to add some real-world value to the reputation points, preventing fraud could become a serious issue.

“One way reputation points might benefit the user would be if they were able to cash them in with a business for a discount … or it may be that their reputation points boost up some other currency they can then exchange,” says Thomas.

The team is also looking at ways users can rate tasks on degree of difficulty, he says, and the possibility of letting businesses put up “sponsored challenges” for the whole community to complete.

“But I can’t accurately tell you what will happen because our users will tell us that,” says Thomas.

“Our whole build philosophy is around customer validation; we’ve conducted alpha testing with initially 10 people, and then 30 people, so you get really quick and honest feedback about how they feel about different things.”

With the beta testing phase just beginning, Thomas hopes to get a lot more honest feedback so StakeMyRep is ready to launch later this year.

To try out StakeMyRep and help with beta testing, go to stakemyrep.com