The Claim app was founded in November 2021 by CEO Sam Obletz (left) and Chief Technical Officer Tap Stephenson (right). Credit: Courtesy of Claim
Friends with benefits just got a whole new meaning.
Claim, a rewards app and social network where users and their friends can earn cash back, share rewards and redeem them together, is set to launch at Ohio State Tuesday. Claim CEO Sam Obletz said one of the main features of the app — which is now accessible to college students at over 70 campuses nationwide — is the weekly “drop.” Every Thursday at 11 a.m., Claim releases a new “drop,” similar to the French social messaging app BeReal’s daily photo notifications, which provides users with new rewards they can redeem with their friends, Obletz said.
“Drop day is a thing, and on a lot of our campuses, lecture halls will fill with students looking at purple screens,” Obletz said. “We are creating this moment of magic for our students, and then students are actively comparing what they got and making plans to go do that.”
Claim, a rewards app and social network where users and their friends can earn cash back, share rewards and redeem them together, is set to launch at Ohio State. Credit: Courtesy of Claim
Obletz said one of the things he and the Claim team feel most excited about is getting to collaborate with Sweetgreen — a fast-casual salad restaurant that has more than 200 locations across the United States — which is set to open a new location in the Short North in September and will have to-be-determined, Claim-exclusive deals ready for Ohio State students.
“Sweetgreen is our anchor in Columbus,” Obletz said. “We work a lot with Sweetgreen. They are one of our greatest partners, and now that they are opening a store in Columbus, that has become a big part of our joint excitement to launch at Ohio State.”
The startup was founded in November 2021 by Obletz and Chief Technology Officer Tap Stephenson, but Obletz said the brainstorming began long before when he and Stephenson first met during undergraduate studies at Yale University.
“We lived together throughout all of our undergrad time, and if you’ve had a roommate, you probably know that you either completely gel with them or you just hate each other, and fortunately Tap and I love each other,” Obletz said. “We always knew we wanted to build a company together. It was just a matter of time.”
Obletz said having that shared college experience — having roomed with Stephenson again throughout graduate school at Harvard — led them to create an app intended for other college students.
“Part of the initial inspiration for us was to design something we wish we would have had as college students — something that gave us more opportunities to have quality in-person time and less looking at our phones — and that is what still gives the team a lot of motivation,” Obletz said. “We like to say that Claim exists to create easy and affordable memories, and that’s a good rallying cry for our mission and what we’re still trying to do.”
Obletz said the first college campus to adopt Claim was his graduate school stomping grounds, Harvard, in January 2023.
Namirah Quadir, a fourth-year in neuroscience at Harvard and one of Claim’s growth interns, said she was a second-year student at the time and heard about the app through a competition Claim hosted among Harvard’s student organizations, in which the first three organizations to get a referral code from Claim and get 100 members on the app within 24 hours would win a cash prize for their club.
“I was, and I still am, the president of the Automotives Society at Harvard and I heard about this and I really wanted that money for my club,” Quadir said. “I sent hundreds of emails and definitely more than 300 text messages. I recruited the men’s lacrosse team.”
Quadir said she reached the 100-user goal just barely within 24 hours to win the cash prize.
“The head of growth at Claim — who is now my boss Caroline [Jung] — she had messaged me and was asking, ‘How did you do that? How did you get that many users in 24 hours? We have been trying to do that for the past few days,’” Quadir said.
Despite her lack of experience within social commerce, Quadir said she became a Claim growth intern shortly after winning the challenge.
Shortly after, in December of 2023, Sequoia Capital — an American venture capital firm known for investing in major companies like Apple, Google, YouTube, Instagram, Zoom and more — led Claim’s seed round, becoming one of the app’s first major investors, Obletz said.
“What it means to be backed by Sequoia Capital is that this can not be a small company, which is a good thing,” Obletz said. “It gives us the backing and the confidence to be supported by people who have done this before, and have done it successfully.”
The Claim team has grown from its original eight-member staff, now retaining 10 full-time employees and four interns. Credit: Courtesy of Claim
Though the Claim team has grown from its original eight-member staff, Obletz said he is happy to still have a fairly small team, with just 10 full-time employees and four interns.
“I am very fortunate to work with this exceptional group of people,” Obletz said. “If you look at some of the great tech outcomes of the past couple decades — What’s App, Instagram, etc. — they actually sold with pretty small teams and that’s because if you get a magical group of people together, you can do a lot with very few.”
Along with weekly drops, Obletz said users can receive exclusive rewards for visiting new places.
“For Sweetgreen for example, what we do is if you haven’t been to Sweetgreen before, Claim gives you a little trading card, and with that trading card you can go redeem a free salad at Sweetgreen,” Obletz said. “It encourages you to get out and try something you may not have tried before.”
Quadir said Ohio State was the college campus at which the Claim team has been most excited to launch the app.
“I have been really excited to launch at Ohio State because I’ve heard so many things about the social scene and the giant events that [it has],” Quadir said. “I just can’t wait for a launch there and really to launch across the world, and I say the world because across America first, but eventually we are hoping to take it to the rest of the world.”
To learn more about Claim and to download the app, visit the Claim website.
This story was updated Aug. 20 at 10:20 a.m. to properly identify Sam Obletz as Claim’s CEO on his first reference.
