Hatchlings founder talks about the success of his Facebook app company
When you put together a list of the fastest growing technology companies in Iowa, you probably don’t include Hatchlings, Inc., but you should. I recently had the chance to sit down with Brad Dwyer the company’s founder, who is also a senior in Computer Science and Entrepreneurial Studies at Iowa State University, to learn about


When you put together a list of the fastest growing technology companies in Iowa, you probably don’t include Hatchlings, Inc., but you should. I recently had the chance to sit down with Brad Dwyer the company’s founder, who is also a senior in Computer Science and Entrepreneurial Studies at Iowa State University, to learn about his Ames-based startup.
Brad describes the game itself as “a mix between Beanie Babies, Pokémon cards, and Tamagotchis.” It’s Facebook-based, marketed virally from user-to-user and based on the simple idea of a virtual Easter egg hunt. Users of the application have the ability to find and collect eggs that are hidden in their friend’s profiles. It has since evolved to include the ability to hatch the eggs into a virtual pet, which the user can then digitally care for.
At its peak, Hatchlings has averaged 250,000 users per day, rating it one of the Top 100 applications on the Facebook platform. It has a total user count approaching 3.3 million and Brad says there’s still a lot of room for growth as he sets his sights on Facebook’s largest application Farmville, which Brad said averages 83 million users each month. Image above, a screenshot from Facebook’s Hatchlings page, is an example of what it looks like when you’ve found an egg.
Brad’s company has been nominated for the Technology Association of Iowa’s Prometheus Awards and is a finalist in both the Top Growth Company and Student Innovation of the Year categories.
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