How A Simple App Turns Small Acts Into Big Impact with Daniel Varga (Hungary & Luxembourg)

What if your feed rewarded kindness instead of conflict? We sit down with founder Daniel Varga to unpack Better.ette, a minimalist app that turns everyday generosity into a repeatable habit. Born from a career pivot and a personal audit of what truly brings joy, Daniel’s idea blends neuroscience, AI and thoughtful design to make doing good feel simple, social and sustainable.

We walk through the core loop: log a small action, get an effort-and-impact score, receive a nudge of positive feedback and watch a star appear in a shared night sky. That constellation becomes a living map of kindness across the world, visible for a few days to encourage fresh acts. Drawing on self-determination theory, Better.ette avoids prescriptive to-do lists and instead showcases what others are doing, letting users choose how they want to contribute. It’s autonomy first, with recognition that builds competence and community without the pressure of performative virtue.

Safety and wellbeing shape every choice. There are no comments, only hearts, to reduce bullying and bragging risks—crucial for schools, families and workplaces. The app limits scrolling and adds a short mood check to suggest a small act when you feel low, acknowledging the research that prosocial behaviour can lift mood without positioning itself as a mental health tool. For Gen Z and young professionals who crave impact alongside income, Better.ette introduces missions like “clean earth” or “call five childhood friends,” making service cool, concrete and achievable with friends or colleagues.

We also talk about the team’s path: building Better.ette Global in Luxembourg, learning inside a social business incubator, gathering feedback through a public waitlist and A/B testing, and showcasing at Web Summit with plans for Nexus, ChangeNOW and VivaTech. Daniel’s gratitude for the designers, coders and scientists behind the demo reminds us that the product’s subject—kindness—also powers its creation.

If you’re curious about behaviour change, humane tech and practical ways to spread good, this conversation will give you tools and inspiration. Join the waitlist at bettered.com, share the episode with someone kind, and tell us: what small act will you log today?

Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King

Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....

Chapters

• 1:14 Meet Daniel And The Big Idea
• 2:27 From Self‑Reflection To Social Impact
• 3:42 How The App Works And Scores Actions
• 4:56 Safety, Community And No Comments
• 5:59 Missions For Schools And Workplaces
• 9:56 Autonomy, Neuroscience And Design
• 13:18 Testing, Waitlist And Global Reach
• 17:38 Roadmap, Events And Gratitude
• 22:35 Closing Reflection On Kindness

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

Welcome to another episode of The Business of Life with Dr. King. Today we have a very special guest, Mr. Daniel Varga. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01: 0:45

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 0:47

It's wonderful to have you. Could you please tell us our audience a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 0:52

Sure. So I'm Danielle. I'm based in Luxembourg, but I was born and raised in Hungary. And while by education, I'm an economist. And I've been working in finance for 17 years now. And lately we came up with the idea to establish a social impact company to inspire people to do positive actions for others. So this is what we are on to now.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17

I love that. A social action company to inspire people to do good for others. Tell us more about that, please.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24

Well, uh, the idea was coming, let's say, uh, two to three years ago, after a self-reflection exercise, whereby I was thinking, okay, how how do I see myself in the future? What is my path? So I started this me investigation, I would say. And then I found that the best moments in life are coming when I was able to help someone. So I started, let's say, the this discovery and started a little bit of a research as to why is this the case? And it turned out it's a neurological reason behind that. So when I do something good, it feels good because of the neurotransmitters, because this is how we are wired. So, well, based on this, I found that how about letting people experience this good feeling as well when they do something nice for others? So we came up with the idea of um of putting this into an application and and uh and build a way for people to be to be able to be in the habit of doing good to others.

SPEAKER_00: 2:30

I really love that. That's such an interesting. I I love the fact that you actually started to assess yourself in your own life and figure out, okay, when when was the time that I was most happiest? When was the time that the things were good for me? And you realize that it was when you were doing things and helping others, which is which is quite unusual. But I think what I really love about it is that you've decided to use also your ability and tech and your ability and understanding, even as an economist, right? That somehow you can actually not just measure this, but encourage people to do it from an app. Can you tell us more about that?

SPEAKER_01: 3:04

Yes, of course. So this is an application, a very simple application. This is based on psychology, neuroscience, as I said, and gamification. So basically, what happens is that someone does something nice for someone else or for the planet, and we just need to dictate it or type it into the application as to what we did in a couple of words, and then it uh gets assessed in a couple of seconds. So, of course, we have an AI algorithm behind that that assesses the impact and the effort, and based on these two, there is a score from one to ten that the user gets. Of course, no one is getting a one, so it actually starts from two, it's a little bit of a secret behind the scenes, and and a very encouraging message, and after that, we have a so-called night sky, it's a screen which is full of stars, each representing a positive action that someone someone just did in the work. So basically, you can see real time how people, different parts of the world, are making the world a better place. And if you log in your positive action, you will also have a star for a couple of days.

SPEAKER_00: 4:17

I really love that. And can I ask, have you had educational systems try to use this, or people that work with children in general use your app? And if so, how have they used it and what kind of impact has it had?

SPEAKER_01: 4:30

Well, uh, we are at the demo stage now, so the prototype, but we have a partner, Canadian charity called 365 GIF. And they are, yes, they have connections with uh with schools, families, communities worldwide. So we are really happy and we are we can't wait to work together uh actually to to bring it to schools and and show it to children. Most most actually our target audience from the very beginning uh is millennials and Gen Z. And even Alpha Genesis. And so we believe that uh this should start at the early, at the early ages.

SPEAKER_00: 5:08

I think it really makes a difference when young people can see that that's just part of their their daily lives, almost like brushing their teeth, and that sometimes even if just it's picking up garbage from the street or um smiling at someone or holding a door, I don't know what it would be, but basically that's showing some kind of kindness. And I'm wondering whether or not this kind of kindness actually helps with people not being bullied as much and actually having people be more empathetic. Does that show through this uh app, or is that possible with this app?

SPEAKER_01: 5:43

Exactly. So ORAP is is building an in-app community in which people uh are safe to share their positive actions they use. So it's mostly uh friends and family, because what we found from the user interviews is that people don't always feel comfortable uh sharing their positive actions, it might be perceived as bragging, so and they are afraid of bullying. So we design our application that there will be no comment section, actually, only hearts or likes can be given, and that's it. And in addition, we also design it in a way that it doesn't encourage excessive screen time, so we there will be no too much scrolling. People can get inspired either by looking at what other people in the community are doing or what others are doing uh on the night sky in the forms of stars, but we don't encourage excessive screen time at all.

SPEAKER_00: 6:42

And tell us more about um how this can be used by teenagers and those that are in their 20s and young people today, you even see when they're working, they don't just want money, they don't just want a title, they want to understand that they have some kind of impact. So, can you tell us more about how this affects these generations?

SPEAKER_01: 7:00

Well, exactly. So, what we were hoping is that let's say kindness and positive actions is gonna be something cool, cool to do. Because what we see in social media is that so many people are are looking for a social recognition, which is perfectly fine. It's been with us you know from the early ages of humanity. But what we would like to encourage actually positive actions to be proud of, and and so that people post positive actions, and by that they can inspire others uh to do the same, and at the same time they can back, they can get the same recognition from their community in forms of likes, let's say, which encourages them to do it more.

SPEAKER_00: 7:48

I love that. And can I ask, do will there be some type of program with the apps that allows you to, for example, for people to say, you know, we really would like help with, let's say, an environmental project, or you know, we really would like help with going into a senior center for someone to come and entertain them for holidays. Is there anything like that where people can actually choose something that they could possibly do and the other people can actually put on what needs to be done? Is there anything like that on the app?

SPEAKER_01: 8:20

Yes, we will have missions. So we set up missions, let's say clean earth or call five childhood friends missions. These are things, these are missions or challenges that people can sign up to, and they can do it within their own community amongst friends or family or colleagues. So we also offer it for uh this solution to companies in case they would like to booster morale and they would like to spread kindness. This is what we found in the research that when people are working together for for something bigger than themselves, also at the workplace, it feels much more personal and much more rewarding and adds additional meaning, you know, to to everyday life. So, yes, there will be there will be such initiatives that people can join in.

SPEAKER_00: 9:09

That's really wonderful. So I've asked lots of questions, but can you tell me more about the app and also about why kindness is important?

SPEAKER_01: 9:19

Yes, so the app is is called Better At. It's bettering lives with small incremental actions, repeatable actions for a bigger impact. And this is where the the name is coming from. And why is it important? I would say how is important because what we found is that we really believe in this self-determination theory. The way it translates to better at is that we are trying not to give suggestions as to people what they should be doing, rather inspiring them to showing what others are doing, and they can decide what they can decide how they want to contribute and give back to the society in which form. Because every every people have uh different ways of doing it, and we would we don't want to say that, hey, please say hello to the bus driver or please pick up cartridge. We would like from from people to look into themselves and find out how they could do it because it's it's much more rewarding.

SPEAKER_00: 10:31

That that's true, that really makes a lot of sense to me. So you said that it's in the initial stages. Can you tell us more about? I'm really curious about how you made it and how you worked with social scientists and psychologists and so on and so forth for it. I find that quite interesting. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01: 10:50

Yes, so well, actually it it all started on, of course, on the internet. Tried to do my own research as to uh what happens in the brain, what parts of the brain are are triggered, what are the neurotransmitters that are flowing uh through the neuropathways. And well, the the reason for that is because I wanted to understand first myself, and then I wanted to understand later how which part of the brain needs to be triggered so you know we can have this, let's say, this impact in other spe in other people. So this is how it all started, of course. Then uh then we we reached out to neuroscientists who confirmed this, and the next stage actually is to translate it to the use of an application, so from very simple things as to how a reward system should be built in to an application to more specific things like the haptic feedback, these little buzzes that are that are coming through from our uh uh from our fingers to our brain, and at what stage of this reward loop should be implemented those those buzzes to have the biggest impact possible and the biggest reward. And of course, the messaging, the messages, the colors, the tone, everything. So it's it's uh it's very complex, and we are at the demo stage of it. So we have, let's say, our very basic version of this application, and we are at the stage now where we would like to show it to people and get their feedback. So it's testing or hypothesis, actually.

SPEAKER_00: 12:33

Thank you. So, how will this testing be done and how will the feedback get done? And if someone wants to participate, how can they do that?

SPEAKER_01: 12:41

So we just launched our wait list actually, which is available on the bettered.com website. People can sign up and they they will get emails time to time, whereby we will be doing A-B testing, showing them two different versions of the application. It can be screens, buttons, and then they we will ask them to please choose which one you know resonates better. And that this is one way of doing it. The other one is that we will do interviews, so deep interviews with people, asking them to please go to the application demo and then try to find how they can log a positive action, where do they find, where do you do they think they find the missions, the night sky? And we will, of course, see how they are, how easy it is to use the application, and we will collect feedback so that we can make it even uh smoother.

SPEAKER_00: 13:40

And and may I ask, you know, the more I think about this, when when you're talking about the chemicals that are released in the brain when you do something good, these are some of the same chemicals that ward against those having depression and different types of anxiety and so on and so forth. Is there going to be any way, for example, for someone for themselves to rate how they're feeling emotionally and to see whether somehow doing for others actually changes the way they feel in terms of you know depression or in terms of feeling as if maybe their life is not what they wanted it to be, and so on and so forth? Because it seems to me that these chemicals are quite positive for us, and these chemicals allow us to be happy in life.

SPEAKER_01: 14:23

Yes, yes. So uh we will have emotion check at the beginning, and people can in uh in a form of a widget, they can uh check how they are feeling, and based on that, we will give a suggestion that hey, you might need to go and see if you can help someone else. Uh it it might be a booster for you, actually. So, in that sense, yes. We on the other hand, uh, we don't we're not aiming to be, let's say, a wellness application or a mental health application in that sense, because there are so many of them, and there are some of them are really, really good. We would like to kind of focus on giving to others rather than giving to ourselves. On the other hand, we know that we are in a much better position to give to others when we are in well-balanced. So, of course, this is important, but the focus or on giving to others.

SPEAKER_00: 15:21

I really love that. And you said that um right now there's a wait list. Where are you looking to get your people? Is it from all of the different continents or is it a special continent of Europe? Is it also Africa and Asia? And then also there's this app in other languages, and what languages is this? Can you actually use this app in?

SPEAKER_01: 15:41

Okay, so there is there is no limitation in terms of waitlist participants. So this is a truly global initiative. Yes, we are based in Luxembourg, but the the demo right now is available in English, but thanks to AI, actually, the positive actions can be can be dictated or or typed in in any languages. So, and then we will see how many languages we will be translating the core application to uh where the need is. So, this is something we are also now discovering, but but we are aiming global.

SPEAKER_00: 16:19

Thank you. I really love that. I mean, the fact that we have AI now and we're not limited by one language is pretty amazing. So it really does make that app global, it makes all the difference in the world. So, with this particular app, is there a company that's behind it, or is it your your personal LLC company? Or just tell us more about that, about the company that's behind this better app. And I believe that it's really going to take off in the in the year to come.

SPEAKER_01: 16:49

Thank you. So the company is we have a company behind it that we established. It's a Luxembourg-based company, it's called Better at Global. So this is to formalize the initiative. It was I I was really fortunate to be able to get assistance with the administrative part of setting up a company here in Luxembourg. Uh, I went to see the Luxembourg Social Business Incubator in 2023, 2024, it was, and then actually the project was accepted. And this project was in the incubator stage all year long last year, whereby we learned how to actually manage the company, how to set it up, what are the marketing strategies specific to social impact initiatives?

SPEAKER_00: 17:41

But actually, that's quite quick. I mean, it it's it's pretty amazing that within less than 24 months, you're able not just to set up the company, but also to start rolling out the initial part of the app for people to evaluate and for it to do well. May I ask, is there a launch date for the app that's fully that has full capacity that anyone can sign up for? Is there a launch date for that?

SPEAKER_01: 18:07

Well, we don't we don't have a launch date yet. Uh we have internal milestones. The reason we don't have such a strict is because let's say we are not enforced to do it, and we would like also to enjoy the journey. Many of the people who are working on this are my friends, and they also have a nine to five job and family in addition. So basically, we we would like to make sure that uh we enjoy we also enjoy the journey and we don't put extra pressure on us. Our milestones are mostly the events that we are preparing for. So from this year, we started attending events. We are just back from Lisbon, the Web Summit. And of course, uh, we we had a boot there, we had a startup showcase, a presentation, a pitch, and that requires us to have something real that we can show to people as to how it works. So we are working towards those milestone uh events rather than a final date of launch.

SPEAKER_00: 19:09

That's wonderful that you actually went to Portugal for the web. Can you tell us um are any other events that you'll be going to or that you'll be at within 2025, which is ending now and 2026?

SPEAKER_01: 19:22

Yeah, so the next one will be in 2026, so the first half of the year, we are hoping to go to Nexus, that's a big event tech event in Luxembourg. And also we are hoping to go to Change Now, that's in uh Paris, and VivaTech, which is also in Paris. So we're quite we're quite confident that uh by the time we we get to France, we will have an enhanced version of the of the demo with more feedback baked into it. And I'm really curious to to hear what uh people say about that.

SPEAKER_00: 19:58

Thank you so much. And would you like to tell us more or anything else about our uh not just your company but also this app, BetterEt?

SPEAKER_01: 20:08

Well, what I would like to do is to give a shout out to people who've been involved in the development. It was not myself. So what I usually say is that while this entrepreneurial journey is quite interesting, it's of course different from you know being in finance and working for a company. So far, the best part of this journey is the people I've met. So many amazing people with inspiring stories. And I mean, and those who not only who signed up, but also who have developing the demo, who have with the administration of the company, who gave advice on the looks, the designers, the coders, the AI, AI experts. I'm really, really grateful for their help.

SPEAKER_00: 20:58

I want to thank you for recognizing the people that work with you. I mean, that even shows even more about why your app is so important, kindness, right? It's not just about what we do these small, but but even in recognizing people that have worked with you. Thank you for that. That's that's really that makes all the difference in the world. It's so important. May I ask you, no, it seems to me that the journey that you're on is a book. Have you considered actually writing a book about the journey of actually making this better at this kindness app? And if not, I would say to you, perhaps you should think about it because I think it's an incredible story.

SPEAKER_01: 21:34

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's it's uh I haven't seriously thought about that so far. It came to my mind, but yes, it's not really in priority. I do journal, so maybe that journal at some point will be a good basis of a book. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00: 21:52

I'm happy to hear that. Thank you so much once again for joining us. Daniel Varga, thank you so much with better et and for our audience, thank you for joining us today. And remember, if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when? That was by the philosopher Hillel. And I've added if not me, then who? Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01: 22:17

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 22:22

Hello and