Methods, strategies and lessons learned by building and tinkering

Graduated from Georgia Tech – with a focus on aerospace engineering, psychology and Russia

Moved to Moscow, Russia

Worked at Y&R Moscow– advertising agency

Met and started to work for a partner at Mamba

Badoo started with a great team and grew to over 70 million users

Opened up London office after first 15 million users

Got obsessed with social innovation

Moved to NYC

Use past experience to make best guess on initial MVP and setting a/b tests

Measure all stats on user behavior using Google Analytics and Mixpanel (Kiss is said to be good too)

Three stages going at all times: 1. Past stage metrics being analyzed to create Future

stage product dev plan 2. Current stage being developed with limited

interference from me 3. Future stage dev plan a/b tests and metrics to

measure being completely dictated by Past stage metrics

Buy a database (pay for what you want)

Plugging the site on blogs/forums

Add features requested by initial visitors

Offline advertising

Make coolest homepage ever

Partnerships: What does the partner value, how can you give it to them, and what makes a valuable partner?

Private beta: Sign up and"Private Invites" given to highly connected users, but leave private beta quickly

Newsletters: Strike discount deals with popular newsletters in your space

API questions: what info can we request therefore display, how can full users communicate with API imported third party users

Foursquare api gives access to Facebook & Twitter user ids and emails/phone numbers

Public data from services like 4sq and Twitter can be used to bridge the ghosttown problem, especially in LBS

Check out http://temboo.com for a good service and base list of major APIs

Inherent – example: Dropbox, Draw Something

Trade – example: Dropbox

Sharing – example: most medium sized sites

Motivation – what the user wants to do

Trigger – prompt to make them do it

Action (import contacts & invite)

Reward – feedback and reward for action

Trigger

….on…and…on…loop

SEX

POWER

MONEY

STATUS/RECOGNITION

Access to information (about self is ultimate)

Connection/access to other users

More attention to self or self generated content

Ability to get a special deal/give special deal to friends

Import webmail addressbooks – openinvite and APIs for big 4 (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL)

API connections – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google/+…

Phone contacts (mobile app access)

Facebook apps

Contact files (customer email lists, csv, etc.)

Opt-in vs Opt-out

Proper clear messaging

User initiated vs System initiated

Worthy notification concept (ie. Like/Comment)

Know and prepare for your local market law

A startup is a business

Find out your ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) as soon as possible

Track your paid offsite advertising from ad to user acquisition to paying user (valid to track viral power of acquired user as well)

Once all set, all paid online marketing/advertising options can be statistically judged and adjusted

MYTH: A good product attracts users

TRUTH: A good product retains users, but does not attract them

MYTH: PR, events and articles will attract users

TRUTH: PR, events and articles will attract investors and business partners, but only hundreds/thousands of users. If you want anything more than 100,000, you need virality

Free Viral marketing is possible in all B2C businesses

Set up your base viral methods/actions and analyze your product for its triggers

Don’t confuse PR with being a user acquisition method

Professor Michael Geer

Founder, Advisor, Consultant

mdgeer@gmail.com

Twitter: @geeria

Nymos – Focusing the world’s positive energy