- Get the product to influential early adopters
- Have them use it for a few months (in stealth)
- Do a coordinated "big reveal" w/ content from these users
The Creator Economy gets a lot of hype - but the Expertise Economy may be even bigger.
Not everyone can make content or has an audience. But everyone is an "expert" on something!
What if you could monetize this? 👇
Expert networks generate hundreds of millions in revenue - but they’re fairly inaccessible.
Customers have to commit to huge annual contracts, and can't search across the expert pool.
Experts need the “right” type of experience for an invite, and have no visibility into demand.
The result? The biggest expert network (by 2.5x) has less than 3,000 customers.
Tech should be able to open up both sides of this marketplace, making it easier for people to share and learn from each other (and make money doing it!)
It was March 26, 2012, and Brian Armstrong was desperate.
YC apps were due in 3 days. Despite some close calls, he had no co-founder for his "PayPal for BTC" idea.
5 months later, Brian was still solo. But he did have a product, growing at 20%...per day!
How did he do it?🧵
The company, of course, became Coinbase. And Brian did find a co-founder later in 2012 (on Reddit!).
In the meantime, he pulled off an incredible debut - reaching thousands of users & $65K in transaction volume in 5 weeks.
Three lessons from the Coinbase launch👇
1⃣You aren't launching in a vacuum.
In summer 2012, interest in BTC was rising - but hacks/thefts were rampant.
Coinbase messaging played up the company's YC backing (which brought major cred) & Brian's fraud prevention background - which made it a more trusted alternative.
You post a TikTok about your new app. It goes viral, getting millions of views and bringing in tens of thousands of users (for free!).
That's the dream, right? But it can quickly become a nightmare. Let's talk about the "TikTok spike" 🧵
Lately, I've seen a number of consumer companies post app demo videos on TikTok, and have them completely (and unexpectedly) blow up!
The TikTok algo is unique in that you don't need followers to have your content boosted. You can get millions of views on a brand new account.
But like a ProductHunt or TechCrunch spike, TikTok virality raises Qs about how "real" your traction is - & on a much larger scale, given TikTok's audience!
Why? Imagine you're raising $ for an app w/ 100k downloads, with 50% from a TikTok video. Here's what I'm worried about 👇