Not that you need my vote, but I agree with all of this. In particular:
- Go true native, not hybrid
- Use ads for testing ideas
- Don't forget about email!
I'm also intrigued by your approach of not going market-by-market like a lot of local-focused marketplaces do. Your approach seems to make sense, and obviously worked for you. I particularly like that you had a different onboarding flow for users in new markets, that's smart.
But still, I'm not sure that this approach would make sense for a lot of local-focused apps? I think the fear would be that it would be relatively easy to get 100k users but they'd be spread out so thin that they'd find little utility in the app and stop using it. So you'd have 100k users in your database, but a tiny fraction of that in terms of actual active users. But maybe that doesn't even matter, since you wouldn't have had all those inactive users anyway?
Could you speak to that? I'd love to hear how many of those 100k users are DAU or MAU, but understand if you can't share that :)
Sure, of course! So this is one thing that might be unique to Winnie — local data is one of our value props (and the best one) but it's not the only one. We discovered pretty early on that even in the local communities people were asking not-local questions like "what's the best diaper?". This told us that there was some demand to be part of a parenting community, even if it wasn't giving you particularly local insights. This is one feature of Winnie that works anywhere in the world, and we do have an active cohort of users who just use us to talk and get advice from other parents.
We also did something that I forgot to mention in the article that helped us grow nationally before we had a lot of proprietary data. One of the nice things about starting a company in 2017 is that there are tons of great resources available to you. Free or cheap services that solve what used to be really hard problems are readily available. One such service is Foursquare. When we launched Winnie, if you opened the app in an area where we didn't have data, instead of showing you nothing we instead showed you results from Foursquare. This was admittedly not the best experience, but it gave people affordance to still find places and write reviews.
Refusing to go market-by-market also forced us to build a bunch of proprietary and very cool infrastructure that collects data at scale. One early system we built could actually figure out which restaurants had changing tables and highchairs, nationally and instantaneously, at a VERY low cost. I can't say how we did that but you'd be surprised at what's possible if you have the will and ambition :)
"Grow even before you launch" and "Go big or go home" really resonate with me.
We were able to sign up a few thousand people to our new product waitlist through two main channels: exhibiting at conferences and answering questions on Quora. In the past, I would have just done a small beta with friends, but I guess I'm getting a little wiser over the years :)
Going big from the beginning is really a tough one. I already got burned at a previous startup by not narrowing the focus enough, but it really depends on the market and the type of product you are building. We're building a product for college students, which is a big group, so it's a toss-up whether to go after a certain category of students or go after them all. We're casting a wide net for now with the idea that our product will resonate with certain subgroups which we can focus later.
I worked at a startup where we had a “waiting list” model - a page where you gave us your email and you’d get an invite later.
The CEO thought this was a good way to build up anticipation, and make sure things were fully polished before opening the floodgates.
We got a few waves of attention, which meant we had about 30k emails on the list at some point.
Of course, this large number put more pressure on us to “get things perfect before we launch”, and it was over a year before the CEO decided it was time to let everyone in.
But by the time we did, people had lost interest, and our conversion rate was abysmal. While a bit buggy and unpolished, the product was still very functional a year before, and had we just let people in we’d probably have gotten very valuable feedback a year early.
(I left the company a long time ago, and it is now in zombie mode)
I was an early employee of Quora and can vouch for it being a good place to do content marketing! I really love that site.
The idea that you should have a small scope and narrow focus is the one very common piece of startup advice I struggle with. In my experience at Winnie, whenever we "thought small" growth would stall out. I think if your product is just better with higher numbers of users, get as many people into it as you can.
I get the idea of building your users/interest before it event exists but I personally am not 100% on board with that idea especially if the product doesn't exist yet.
And I know who am I, nobody. But as a person who hears about some service like "We'll help you get hired by these new methods of looking over resumes" great. sign me up. I sign up "Sorry we're in private beta at this time." like what? Why did I Go through all of that process to be told it's not available.
This evening we got our 171st user for our wishlist-service. When we launched it 1 year ago we tried to get it out on different channels like Reddit and HN without much success, while we _did_ see success in just talking about it to friends and family, and had just over 100 users in January this year.
Since then, we've done close to zero marketing, and it's been amazing to see new signups, wishlists and items being created - seemingly out of the blue. I made a simple Slack-bot to post those events to a channel with their ID, and these are the stats from it was added late March until now: 53 new users, 74 new wishlists, and 482 new items.
As we do no sort of analytics, we have no clue who these people are, but boy does it make me happy to see those "A new user was just created!"-messages nonetheless!
I have a suggestion for wishy (if you're not doing this already of course).
Extract out the most popular items that people are sharing (no identifying information connected, only extract out super items that you can identify well, like "Wonder Woman on blu ray"), or similarly build your own curated lists based on what's popular right now (eg a new PS4 game). Build some categories that they belong to ("video games" or "clothing"). Then enable people to quickly browse for things within those segments to add to their wish lists. It should boost wishlist item adding substantially over time and give people new ideas. You could also build a gently curated top 10 or 20 item list in a given week or month (manually reviewed for potentially inappropriate items). You can track various metrics for what's moving socially right now for a link/item to get an improved idea on what matters to provide some further ranking (eg facebook sharing acceleration or deceleration).
Have you thought about a few marketing side projects for your site? For example, maybe (a) showcase public lists with a count of how many people clicks on each item, (b) creating a list for entrepreneurs, parents, teachers, etc, and (c) sharing them on the respective site.
People will hopefully not just find the items interesting, but will also be curious to see what items others are looking at.
And best of all, hopefully a lot of people will find your site this way.
I'm using a throwaway because I don't want this associated with my my main account, but a super valuable market for you here is sex workers. I used to be a camgirl, and a main source of income for a good chunk of camgirls is getting people to buy gifts off of wishlists. Usually people use Amazon's wishlist feature, but that obviously limits you to things that are on Amazon, which doesn't have a great selection of sex-related stuff. Having a pretty, store-agnostic platform would be really welcomed.
Good places to find camgirls is /r/camming / linked subreddits in the sidebar, along with the sites themselves (I only used Chaturbate, so I can't speak to the other platforms).
Best takeaways from the article (no particular order):
- Retool ads as a way to test for and identify demand.
- Bait people with truly useful content where they're already looking, and then direct them to your app.
- Simple changes in wording or flow of UX can increase shares dramatically.
- Get featured in app stores. How?
- Integrate with latest device features being pushed
- Adhere to vendor design standards
- Email is still very effective, so use it.
- Have 10 enthusiastic users that will spread their enthusiasm before you start.
That last point is good to know, and perhaps the most important, but it's way easier said than done. Especially if you aren't a social butterfly.
Also, the "don't use cross platform" preached in the article isn't very convincing. You can get excellent performance with well-coded cross-platform build tools, and in far less time.
The best way to get those 10 enthusiastic users, without being a social butterfly (in a traditional sense), is to manufacture them through inclusion. For example, find a subreddit that is relevant to what you're doing, and sell a batch of users on being early adopters (a certain type of people love that). Then give those people credit, attention, and make them feel like their input matters and that their contribution to the thing matters. Basically, make it personal for them, cultivate that experience. For a lot of people those last few concepts can be very rewarding, they'll become your first cheerleaders (and just one of those on eg Reddit can spark something). I've observed that people who are not traditional social butterflies, can still often function at a decent social level on sites like Reddit (at least enough to do what I've described).
The point about native is that it’s more likely to win over Apple/Google editorial teams for getting featured. And getting featured is an absolutely massive growth opportunity which you can optimize for.
It's not really like winning the lottery. There's a lot of different kinds of promotional features they can give you, with different levels of publicity. You just have to make a high quality app that does something useful or new (or a good game), and ask their editorial team if they can promote your app. They'll usually give you some kind of promotion on the store.
It's "editor's choice" and the other front/center features that you might equate to "winning the lottery". And yeah, you can't expect that unless you've already made something huge.
It’s not a lottery. I’ve done it several times over many years with different products and companies. The advice I laid out is basically how I did that.
Of course you can’t control if you are featured or not just like you can’t control if you get a writeup in a big publication. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give yourself the best chance of getting it.
BTW, I'm the OP and am happy to answer questions here. My expertise is obviously in consumer internet products but I spend a lot of time thinking about growth. It's my superpower!
What's a "very modest spend" when it comes to advertising? How much is enough to validate whether and ad is or isn't working in your experience? Also did a majority of your new users come from being featured on app stores or was it primarily through turning the modest spend into a serious spend once the ad was converting?
Yeah no. Apps using push notification for marketing/dark purposes is super irritating and for that reason I block notifications by default from all apps.
You say that, but you are in a minority. Most users just mindlessly click Allow. Its an amazing power - being able to appear on someones home screen instantly at anytime with any message - but a privilege. So having each notification be useful and actionable is key. In addition to not flooding them with too much frequency.
Funnily enough, we also sort of failed to capitalize on push. We didn't even ask for push permissions in the first version of our app! Eventually we found the right push product for our users, but it's still the case that a lot of people have them off by default or prefer to be contacted by email.
Sorry if it's already mentioned, but I found it frustrating that I could not get to the winnie homepage (http://www.winnie.com) from the blog. Even the "Home" nav link at the top of the blog just points to the blog's homepage.
Sigh...this is one of the last things to worry about. It's like hoping your roulette number hits. Doing a lot of work is like getting a second roulette wheel number towards getting featured, but a lot of work might improve your chances of success any how. Every year that goes by, this hope becomes less and less likely as the competition grows.
Also, the advice on how to get featured on Google Play is not great advice. If I wanted a higher chance of being featured in Play, I would read this web page - https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8.... . New features of the latest Android. Then I would make an app showcasing one of the new features that Android wants to highlight. If you look at featured apps, these are what get featured a lot. Think of it from Google's POV. Actually, Oreo has been out for a bit, so someone trying for Oreo is already behind the ball. There are videos of the Google people telling you what they look for when featuring, watch those.
I also think it's a bit ridiculous to start advising people to "go native" because of the possibility of being featured in the app store.
The cost of doing two native apps is not small at all, and I imagine (not being a mobile dev) that being featured in the App store is a LOT easier for a family friendly app like OP's than the average. I'd also assume the vast majority of native apps don't get featured.
It's well-intentioned advice, but the cost-benefit analysis is nowhere near that simple.
Great tips for an aspiring startup founder. I agree completely.
In particular the “mobile-only” resonates with me well. I have seen a number of products only provides a homepage to send me to their appstore/google play. In some cases I was trying to see what job openings were available. I was suprised to see no “career” page. Hmm Did they hide that in the webconsole / developer console? Nope!
So please do not do that to both your users and your potential hires. Your modern website should be mobile friendly, and if you are mobile-focus like instant messenger, that makes sense - but I recommend adding a desktop version later. I have facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Telegram installed on my Macs so (1) I don’t need to switch gears constantly, and (2) there are times I need to transfer stuff over from desktop...
Partnering with people in the same pace is a great idea. For example. Reaching out to Youtubers who are parents early on, brainstorm with them, and invite them to your paid sponsorship could help in your case.
At last, I am surprised you are able to register winnie.com. I would have expected it taken and if so I wonder how much it cost to buy it.
I love this kind of posts, by sharing the anecdotes of what worked and what didn't, they provide a glimpse into the inner workings and strategies for one of the biggest challenges for any startup, plus most likely will generate a considerable influx of new users from the post itself. Everybody wins.
Kudos - 100k MAU is an extremely impressive feat. This is an excellent post, very succinct and punchy advice. Especially interesting to hear about the role of web and email in growth, advice around using ads to develop company positioning is great.
Thanks for admitting the failures you picked on the way. Since you said Mobile-only was a terrible thing to do, how did you decide Winnie has to be a mobile app and not a simple mobile responsive website in the first place?
I'm really curious how product folks decide to go mobile-first, especially in many cases where the user interacts with the app once a week or less frequently. Would love to know how you decided on this with the assumptions you made.
This is very interesting strategy. Thanks for the good article.
Could you elaborate on the content-growth strategy? I'm really curious since in some business ideas I'm usually stuck with "chicken and egg" kind of problem. I believe there is no universal strategy here, but what worked for you except this special onboarding flow for users in new markets?
It's in the article. Provide the supply yourself (content) while you build demand (users). Do things that don't scale.
One specific example is that we saw a lot of demand for information on child care, so we researched over 5000 local daycares & preschools and created very comprehensive pages for all of them. This sounds like a lot of work but it actually wasn't that bad. Once we had done that we were instantly the best place in the SF Bay Area to research daycares and find open spaces. Word spread like wildfire and we climbed the Google rankings quickly as well. Now, we no longer have to collect data manually, because the daycare providers come to us to reach their audience of customers. So it delivered growth on both sides of the network in a sustainable, ongoing fashion, and only required a one-time upfront investment in content creation.
What if your product doesn't really have any inherent network effects? How do you incentivise your paying customers to share the platform that's giving them a competitive edge (my SaaS is B2B)?
You could do an ambassador program of some kind (check out The Skimm, they have a great one). But I wouldn't expect people to eagerly spread the word about solutions. For B2B you should be investing in content marketing and SEO above all else. Other clever ideas are like what Slack did; make it friendly enough for a consumer to use, and then that consumer ends up advocating for the product to their organization.
The advice to not only rely on push and native mobile hits home hard - despite it being cool - email, text, and the web still work really well to bring the customers in!
If you have the choice, yes. You'll regret React for many reasons but you are so, so much less likely to be featured with a React app, even a great one. Suck it up and learn Swift/Kotlin (not that hard) and if you can get your app featured that's a cool 10-20k installs for free.
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|8 years ago|reply
- Go true native, not hybrid
- Use ads for testing ideas
- Don't forget about email!
I'm also intrigued by your approach of not going market-by-market like a lot of local-focused marketplaces do. Your approach seems to make sense, and obviously worked for you. I particularly like that you had a different onboarding flow for users in new markets, that's smart.
But still, I'm not sure that this approach would make sense for a lot of local-focused apps? I think the fear would be that it would be relatively easy to get 100k users but they'd be spread out so thin that they'd find little utility in the app and stop using it. So you'd have 100k users in your database, but a tiny fraction of that in terms of actual active users. But maybe that doesn't even matter, since you wouldn't have had all those inactive users anyway?
Could you speak to that? I'd love to hear how many of those 100k users are DAU or MAU, but understand if you can't share that :)
Congrats!
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
We also did something that I forgot to mention in the article that helped us grow nationally before we had a lot of proprietary data. One of the nice things about starting a company in 2017 is that there are tons of great resources available to you. Free or cheap services that solve what used to be really hard problems are readily available. One such service is Foursquare. When we launched Winnie, if you opened the app in an area where we didn't have data, instead of showing you nothing we instead showed you results from Foursquare. This was admittedly not the best experience, but it gave people affordance to still find places and write reviews.
Refusing to go market-by-market also forced us to build a bunch of proprietary and very cool infrastructure that collects data at scale. One early system we built could actually figure out which restaurants had changing tables and highchairs, nationally and instantaneously, at a VERY low cost. I can't say how we did that but you'd be surprised at what's possible if you have the will and ambition :)
[+] [-] onion2k|8 years ago|reply
Users don't care. Most of them can't tell.
[+] [-] ythn|8 years ago|reply
What about for games? Unity is extremely tempting, especially when the alternative is to write the game twice in two different languages...
[+] [-] amitmathew|8 years ago|reply
We were able to sign up a few thousand people to our new product waitlist through two main channels: exhibiting at conferences and answering questions on Quora. In the past, I would have just done a small beta with friends, but I guess I'm getting a little wiser over the years :)
Going big from the beginning is really a tough one. I already got burned at a previous startup by not narrowing the focus enough, but it really depends on the market and the type of product you are building. We're building a product for college students, which is a big group, so it's a toss-up whether to go after a certain category of students or go after them all. We're casting a wide net for now with the idea that our product will resonate with certain subgroups which we can focus later.
[+] [-] GuiA|8 years ago|reply
The CEO thought this was a good way to build up anticipation, and make sure things were fully polished before opening the floodgates.
We got a few waves of attention, which meant we had about 30k emails on the list at some point.
Of course, this large number put more pressure on us to “get things perfect before we launch”, and it was over a year before the CEO decided it was time to let everyone in.
But by the time we did, people had lost interest, and our conversion rate was abysmal. While a bit buggy and unpolished, the product was still very functional a year before, and had we just let people in we’d probably have gotten very valuable feedback a year early.
(I left the company a long time ago, and it is now in zombie mode)
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
The idea that you should have a small scope and narrow focus is the one very common piece of startup advice I struggle with. In my experience at Winnie, whenever we "thought small" growth would stall out. I think if your product is just better with higher numbers of users, get as many people into it as you can.
[+] [-] jcun4128|8 years ago|reply
And I know who am I, nobody. But as a person who hears about some service like "We'll help you get hired by these new methods of looking over resumes" great. sign me up. I sign up "Sorry we're in private beta at this time." like what? Why did I Go through all of that process to be told it's not available.
[+] [-] amelius|8 years ago|reply
What is wrong with building the functionality first, get paying customers, and from there scale? At least that way, you'll have the money to scale.
[+] [-] danielskogly|8 years ago|reply
Since then, we've done close to zero marketing, and it's been amazing to see new signups, wishlists and items being created - seemingly out of the blue. I made a simple Slack-bot to post those events to a channel with their ID, and these are the stats from it was added late March until now: 53 new users, 74 new wishlists, and 482 new items.
As we do no sort of analytics, we have no clue who these people are, but boy does it make me happy to see those "A new user was just created!"-messages nonetheless!
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
Extract out the most popular items that people are sharing (no identifying information connected, only extract out super items that you can identify well, like "Wonder Woman on blu ray"), or similarly build your own curated lists based on what's popular right now (eg a new PS4 game). Build some categories that they belong to ("video games" or "clothing"). Then enable people to quickly browse for things within those segments to add to their wish lists. It should boost wishlist item adding substantially over time and give people new ideas. You could also build a gently curated top 10 or 20 item list in a given week or month (manually reviewed for potentially inappropriate items). You can track various metrics for what's moving socially right now for a link/item to get an improved idea on what matters to provide some further ranking (eg facebook sharing acceleration or deceleration).
[+] [-] jonas21|8 years ago|reply
https://wishy.gift
[+] [-] vineet|8 years ago|reply
People will hopefully not just find the items interesting, but will also be curious to see what items others are looking at.
And best of all, hopefully a lot of people will find your site this way.
[+] [-] pascalxus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soared|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway46786|8 years ago|reply
Good places to find camgirls is /r/camming / linked subreddits in the sidebar, along with the sites themselves (I only used Chaturbate, so I can't speak to the other platforms).
[+] [-] notaboutdave|8 years ago|reply
Also, the "don't use cross platform" preached in the article isn't very convincing. You can get excellent performance with well-coded cross-platform build tools, and in far less time.
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
The best way to get those 10 enthusiastic users, without being a social butterfly (in a traditional sense), is to manufacture them through inclusion. For example, find a subreddit that is relevant to what you're doing, and sell a batch of users on being early adopters (a certain type of people love that). Then give those people credit, attention, and make them feel like their input matters and that their contribution to the thing matters. Basically, make it personal for them, cultivate that experience. For a lot of people those last few concepts can be very rewarding, they'll become your first cheerleaders (and just one of those on eg Reddit can spark something). I've observed that people who are not traditional social butterflies, can still often function at a decent social level on sites like Reddit (at least enough to do what I've described).
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Caligula|8 years ago|reply
Honestly, its like giving financial advice and saying "Ok, win the lottery or marry someone rich"
[+] [-] fragsworth|8 years ago|reply
It's "editor's choice" and the other front/center features that you might equate to "winning the lottery". And yeah, you can't expect that unless you've already made something huge.
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
Of course you can’t control if you are featured or not just like you can’t control if you get a writeup in a big publication. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give yourself the best chance of getting it.
[+] [-] giarc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jqbx_jason|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dboreham|8 years ago|reply
Yeah no. Apps using push notification for marketing/dark purposes is super irritating and for that reason I block notifications by default from all apps.
[+] [-] samschooler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evanspa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ologn|8 years ago|reply
Sigh...this is one of the last things to worry about. It's like hoping your roulette number hits. Doing a lot of work is like getting a second roulette wheel number towards getting featured, but a lot of work might improve your chances of success any how. Every year that goes by, this hope becomes less and less likely as the competition grows.
Also, the advice on how to get featured on Google Play is not great advice. If I wanted a higher chance of being featured in Play, I would read this web page - https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8.... . New features of the latest Android. Then I would make an app showcasing one of the new features that Android wants to highlight. If you look at featured apps, these are what get featured a lot. Think of it from Google's POV. Actually, Oreo has been out for a bit, so someone trying for Oreo is already behind the ball. There are videos of the Google people telling you what they look for when featuring, watch those.
[+] [-] AWebOfBrown|8 years ago|reply
The cost of doing two native apps is not small at all, and I imagine (not being a mobile dev) that being featured in the App store is a LOT easier for a family friendly app like OP's than the average. I'd also assume the vast majority of native apps don't get featured.
It's well-intentioned advice, but the cost-benefit analysis is nowhere near that simple.
[+] [-] yeukhon|8 years ago|reply
In particular the “mobile-only” resonates with me well. I have seen a number of products only provides a homepage to send me to their appstore/google play. In some cases I was trying to see what job openings were available. I was suprised to see no “career” page. Hmm Did they hide that in the webconsole / developer console? Nope!
So please do not do that to both your users and your potential hires. Your modern website should be mobile friendly, and if you are mobile-focus like instant messenger, that makes sense - but I recommend adding a desktop version later. I have facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Telegram installed on my Macs so (1) I don’t need to switch gears constantly, and (2) there are times I need to transfer stuff over from desktop...
Partnering with people in the same pace is a great idea. For example. Reaching out to Youtubers who are parents early on, brainstorm with them, and invite them to your paid sponsorship could help in your case.
At last, I am surprised you are able to register winnie.com. I would have expected it taken and if so I wonder how much it cost to buy it.
[+] [-] beachy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabianuribe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebleon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggarious|8 years ago|reply
https://venturebeat.com/2012/06/22/reddit-fake-users/
[+] [-] tmatthewj|8 years ago|reply
I'm really curious how product folks decide to go mobile-first, especially in many cases where the user interacts with the app once a week or less frequently. Would love to know how you decided on this with the assumptions you made.
[+] [-] mkalygin|8 years ago|reply
Could you elaborate on the content-growth strategy? I'm really curious since in some business ideas I'm usually stuck with "chicken and egg" kind of problem. I believe there is no universal strategy here, but what worked for you except this special onboarding flow for users in new markets?
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
One specific example is that we saw a lot of demand for information on child care, so we researched over 5000 local daycares & preschools and created very comprehensive pages for all of them. This sounds like a lot of work but it actually wasn't that bad. Once we had done that we were instantly the best place in the SF Bay Area to research daycares and find open spaces. Word spread like wildfire and we climbed the Google rankings quickly as well. Now, we no longer have to collect data manually, because the daycare providers come to us to reach their audience of customers. So it delivered growth on both sides of the network in a sustainable, ongoing fashion, and only required a one-time upfront investment in content creation.
[+] [-] yakshaving_jgt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miradu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myf01d|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 40acres|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annekate|8 years ago|reply
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