Winning Where It Matters

tl;dr: Keep your eye on the ball. Your users, not the startup scene, are the people who matter most.

After over a year of what often felt like banging our heads against the wall all day, every day, our geek dating app Cuddli is starting to get noticed in places we never would have expected. For example, we’ve started growing like crazy in Spain, where we were reviewed in two major publications. This is particularly astonishing because we don’t even have a Spanish version of the app yet!

Why is this happening? We think it’s because of a fanatical focus on our community. Cuddli users have begun evangelizing our product all around the world through our Ambassador Program. It’s the very definition of “organic growth” and we’re now gaining traction in places none of us would have expected. We are both humbled by and grateful to our community for the support, and we’re really excited to see the product grow. However, we are optimizing for high quality growth, so still haven’t raised outside funds.

We also entered our first startup competition, which — to our surprise — we won! So naturally, we started planning how and whether we should use this in our marketing. Since we have been fighting an uphill battle on a mud-covered hill in the pouring rain armed only with cosplay Nerf swords and wearing dance shoes — in what many have called a quixotic battle against formidable and well-armed competition — I’ve never really had to think about winning before.

A lot of startups celebrate their wins, crowing a lot publicly. This is particularly true in image-conscious Los Angeles. It’s easy to get caught up in your own ego, though, and I consider this dangerous. Wins in the startup scene, while gratifying, aren’t the kind of wins that really matter. For us, ultimately what matters is winning with our users. That’s what we are focused on every day: creating a unique and special community full of wonderful, amazing geeks.

Here’s our view on pitch competitions and startup events:

• We never pay to participate. We just don’t have the money, and even if we did, it’s better spent on growing and improving our community.
• We optimize for high impact in choosing where we participate. This is because whatever is going on in our business is generally more important than things that are going on in the startup community.
• We are grateful when given the opportunity to participate, and gracious when not selected. Often, we are not selected, and that’s just fine: it means we’re aiming high enough.
• We’re always happy to win, but we’re not full of ourselves if we do.
• If we lose, we still won: we learned how to improve.

At the end of the day, we’re like rookie baseball players in the minor leagues (yes, although I’m a geek, I have a serious weakness for baseball — go Mariners). The way you get to the big leagues isn’t by crowing about minor league victories that don’t really matter, but by learning from major league players how to win. And ultimately, that’s a lot of hard work: you have to show up every day for practice. You have to play in every game. And then one day, at Spring Training, the small, hardcore crowd that travels to Florida or Arizona starts cheering your name.

That’s winning a pitch competition. It’s a start. But there’s a long road ahead, and there are million and one ways to flame out along the way no matter how many pitch competitions you won. So we’ll keep showing up at every practice, we’ll keep working hard, and we’ll play in every game. And then someday, maybe, we’ll be good enough to be a rookie in the major leagues.

At Cuddli, we’re creating a community that is different and special. And if you’re reading this, you can be one of the first to experience it. Won’t you join?

About the author: I am the founder of Cuddli, where we create joy by making people’s lives more fun. I’m interested in technology that keeps people and their data safe without slowing business down. Feel free to reach out if I can help you.