tech-company, business-plan, product, lean-startup, strategyI run a gamefied social networking web application for users from emerging markets, coming online for the very first time.
This demographic is known as the “Next 4 Billion”, mostly hails from low-income backgrounds, uses the internet on entry-level smartphones (or internet enabled feature phones that are now making a comeback) and is semi-literate.
We have around 200K monthly active users, 23K daily active users, ~30 min average session length, 80% users returning at least once a month and roughly 18% d1 retention. We are bootstrapped and pre revenue at the moment.
Given resources are tight, we are currently grappling with deciding between focusing on i) retention, ii) virality, iii) monetization and iv) geographical expansion. Note that we have a very strong partnership with regional telecoms who’re in a great position to push us in various emerging markets.
What are the pros and cons - at our stage - of focusing on each one of the aforementioned 4 domains? And which one ought to be our chief focus in your opinion? We have worked on our product for ~2 years, and are 4 founders.
Many venture-backed companies start by seeking scale (let’s call that, in your terms, virality supported by retention). That’s because long term value online has been all about market dominance, so investors don’t want the team or the proposition to be held back by any drag factors.
If you’re bootstrapping, this inverts. It’s easy to give away value, but the question is, who will pay, so we can make it through the hockey stick curve to profit.
So that’s my starting thought: until you focus on monetisation, it’s a hobby.
But you have several approaches you could test. You could charge users (for premium features); you could charge advertisers (for ads, or for special accounts, or for data); you could charge telcos (for exclusivity, or for QoS, or for localising the app to a new geography).
In your shoes, I’d be tempted to try all three, because the sooner you know where early revenues can come from, the better you can plan how to build your team for scale.
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