0 to 30,000 users: building Fantasy Life’s mobile community
By Charlie Russell, Co-Creator of Fantasy Life the App
I had no idea when I would write this post. As a creator you always believe that you will build something great enough for people to use. But at my first crack at a startup and with an app no less, I had no idea. But I knew I would at some point. You have to think that way about yourself. But let’s back up.
In June of 2014 I left my job to start creating mobile communities with one of my best friends from high school. We had the idea of apps with communities that talked back. About creating apps for the most die hard communities in the world. We had started about six months before we quit our jobs and had built a few prototypes. In May, my co-creator Mark approached ESPN’s Matthew Berry at a book signing. He saw the incredible following Matthew had and how Matthew’s book about fantasy football and life united so many people. We knew Fantasy Life (Matthew’s book) could be the perfect mobile community; a combination of die hard fantasy players seeking advice, private messaging their leagues, and sharing the ups and downs of the game that 40–50 million North Americans play every year.
So we started creating. We had a vision of what we wanted the app to look like, but we knew that the community building was the number one priority. We had to ease users into the idea, we had to build an easy to use tab-based product, and we had to set the tone from day 1 (shoutout to Sam Altman’s Startup Class, multiple product podcasts, and the countless accounts of community builders that we read). We launched at the start of 2015, after the 2014 season had ended. Why then? Because we wanted it to be on our terms.
The initial growth and user base was small. Matthew tweeted about beta testing the app and we literally started personally emailing die hard fantasy football players one by one. We would personally onboard them onto the app and they would be our original users (now they call themselves the OG’s, check out their website fantasylifeog.com!). By April we had about two-thousand users.
In May, we launched the Android version. Then, the growth slowed. We were averaging about 100 iOS users in the app daily and while the reception was great, we had a lot of trouble getting new users without a big marketing budget and with the season being about four months away. So how do we recruit and build the app organically?
This is where the hard work came in. We went on ESPN Mock Drafts and spread the word to die hard players one by one, we created fake accounts to drive more content that we wanted within the app (as the creators of Reddit did), and we became the go to users on the app whenever anyone needed anything (follow me on FL @charlie). Paul Graham has a great essay called Do Things that Don’t Scale that we called upon on a daily basis. We knew we could control the customer service and that was extremely important to us. We created a culture. No bullying, no trolling, no putting others down. Respect the community and the community will respect you. Below is the best email we’ve ever received and it will be blown up and hung on our office wall some day, if we are ever lucky enough to have an office.
July 2015 arrived. Fantasy Football season was back! And now we were armed with a die hard user base that was ready to protect the community they helped create. User growth started to explode.
We have doubled our user growth every three weeks since the start of July and now we have about 30,000 total users (about 6k of them active daily). While I know the user total isn’t crazy, the activity has been. We’ve been in the Top 100 sports apps in the Apple Store nearly every day in the past month. We’ve had over 100,000 comments on posts, 20,000 total public posts, 1000 leagues created (public and private) and over 350,000 user sessions (averaging over one minute per session) in the past month. And the season is still three weeks away!
The app isn’t even remotely perfect. In fact, there are new bugs every day and there are new features that we still need to add before the season even starts. With that being said, we have the best users in the world. They are understanding and patient. Because of this, I can’t even begin to think about where would we be if we had launched the app in July instead of last winter. I wouldn’t give up that initial culture building for 250,000 users on initial launch.
So why did I write this? Why did I feel the need to put this all out there? Because hopefully I can provide a creator with some guidance before he or she starts building. Because everyone needs help. Because although working on the app and moderating the users 18–20 hours a day with a very, very small team is tough and extremely unnerving, I am reminded daily of just how awesome the community has become. Leagues with total strangers have been created, there’s a public forum titled “Getting Started” that is strictly run by original users trying to help new users get acclimated to the app, and people that have never had the opportunity to write or produce content for “professional” fantasy websites have become Fantasy Life Experts.
I have no idea what Fantasy Life will be. It’s impossible to say. But right now, it’s truly a magical thing. Community building is hard and I think we got it right. Sometimes fantasy can become a reality and I could not be prouder of the community that we’ve built.
Please reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns at Charlie@fantasylifeapp.com. If you are a talented developer or love fantasy sports, I would also love to chat about joining the FL Team.
The Fantasy Life app is the best sports community app to talk fantasy football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, WWE, MMA, Nascar, golf, eSports, or anything else you would hear about at a sports bar. Find or post funny memes, polls, GIFs, or join chats about your teams. Matthew Berry (ESPN, The Talented Mr. Roto), the face of fantasy football co-founded the app as a place for fans to chat about sports, get fantasy advice, or find sleepers for your team. Find Matthew on the app @matthewberry
Download the iPhone or Android app at fantasylifeapp.com. Also available in the App Store and Google Play.
