Pinky Promises, Plates and Ping Pong Balls
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Pinky Promises, Plates and Ping Pong Balls
By Noelle Johansen, The Utah Statesman, Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Derald Miller is a game show star, a lacrosse player and an entrepreneur. He is also a USU alumnus and the brain behind a new iPhone application called Pinky Promise that is taking over iPhones everywhere — one pinky at a time.
Miller grew up in Denver, where he said he developed a knack for running business early in life.
"Ever since I was a little kid, I've had lawn mowing businesses and sticker companies," Miller said. "When people hear entrepreneur, young — they think unemployed."
That couldn't be further from the truth in Miller's case. His mother, Margo Miller, saw her son's drive even before the lawn mowing businesses.
"He just has always been really industrious," Margo Miller said. "He would spend lots and lots of time just building and designing with Lego's, where you could see his interest in building and making and figuring things out."
Business seems to run in the Miller family. Derald Miller's father Robert Miller is the executive director of The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence from the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business.
"He's been entrepreneurial his whole life," Robert Miller said. "It's been his nature. He really enjoys creating, and he enjoys being the master of his own destiny. Derald Miller has been one who's been willing to invest his own skin and to take the risk of failure."
In 2001 Derald Miller said he decided he belonged at USU, which is where he played for the men's lacrosse team during his freshman year. He briefly left USU to finish a degree in business at Utah Valley University, only to return to USU for his master's degree in 2008, he said. He started a business — one he is still at the helm of — at 22 years old.
After completing his master's, Derald Miller said he moved to California. While there, he was recruited by representatives from NBC to enter "boot camp" for the television game show "Minute to Win It." Derald Miller described this boot camp as a bunch of Type A personalities playing games all day.
"It was just the most fun day of my life," he said.
While at boot camp, Derald Miller said he was introduced to Michelle Haugh, who later became his team partner on episode No. 6 of the second season of "Minute to Win It." Derald Miller said he thought he and his teammate were selected for the show because of their impressive performances during boot camp.
Over the next two months before taping, Derald Miller said he and Haugh had plenty of time to practice all of the odd games they might have to play on television. The games on "Minute to Win" It included tasks like stacking plastic cups into pyramids, bouncing pingpong balls off of dinner plates into a fishbowl and completing puzzles made out of cereal boxes — all of which must be done successfully in 60 seconds or less. Derald Miller and Michelle's practice paid off, he said, with a game that required one person to spin a quarter and the other to stop it, on end, with a single finger.
"We probably practiced that game until two in the morning one night," Derald Miller said. "We did really well. We got really far in the game."
The team reached the $250,000 level with no mistakes, only to lose their three "lives" on a game of building an eight-story tower with metal bolts. However, not all was lost, he said. The pair went home splitting $50,000 in winnings.
"That's an awesome chunk of money," he said. "I want to (invest) it (in) something to make me some money, rather than blowing it on Ho-Hos and Jujubes."
He said his father gave him the same advice.
"I said to him, ‘Derald, don't go buy a new boat, or don't go buy a new BMW,'" Robert Miller said. "'You should use this money, invest it in something that will help to secure your future, something that will build something for you, rather than get used up with fun and pleasure.' To his credit, he did."
Instead of purchasing a large amount of said Ho-hos or Jujubes, Derald Miller said he invested in the development of a new iPhone app.
"Everyone has made a pinky promise sometime in their lives," he said.
He said he wanted to bring this most sacred of childhood vows to the digital age. When the idea first came to him, he said he was hesitant to share it.
"I've seen ‘The Social Network'," Derald Miller said. "I'm not letting this secret out of the bag."
The first person he told was his game show partner, Haugh. He said she pinky promised not to tell anyone about his idea, and that was when he thought, "There's no way I can't do this."
Derald said he spent four months researching and gathering a group of developers to implement his idea.
"I started development in February," he said. "I released it a month ago. I've been having so much fun with this."
The social networking app allows users to send and receive pinky promise messages, complete with the novelty of a pinky swipe to complete the promise. The second step is confirming whether they were kept or broken. If a pinky promise is broken, the promise breaker loses points on his or her trustworthy score.
"I actually broke a pinky promise, and it hit my score," Derald Miller said. His current score is 91 percent, with 21 out of 23 promises kept.
He said work on the app is a continuous process.
"This version now won't be the same version in three months," he said.
The app is currently under redevelopment for compatibility with Android operating systems.
"I didn't create the concept of a pinky promise," Derald Miller said.
Instead, he said, he digitalized the concept and brought it to the text messaging generation.
"I've never thought I was a tech guy. I'm someone who has an idea and follows through with it. It's been fun to see it come out of my head — to launch."
The Pinky Promise app is available for iPhones on the iTunes app store for 99 cents.
(Kimberly Shorts photo from the Utah Statesman Online)
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