The Arbit Story Pt 3: How we had a call with NBA MVP Steph Curry and reached 100,000 downloads in 6 months
Part 1 of the Arbit Story involves everything that happened up until the Summer of 2016: We bootstrapped our way to an MVP over 6 months, we started pitching around, came in contact with NBA player Steve Blake, and finally landed Steve as an investor at the end of Spring 2016. Part 2 discussed bringing on NBA player Anthony Tolliver as investor #2 and grinding through early stage issues leading up to launch. If you haven’t read Part 1 and Part 2, check them out now.
December 2016 — The Launch
I texted Steve Blake and Anthony Tolliver to let them know it was “go time”. We officially set Arbit live in the iTunes Store December 2016. This was it. These guys were going to start tweeting, posting on Instagram, sharing on Facebook. The NBA community would quickly see what this was all about and come flocking. Pro athletes from all over would come, then celebrities, then brands following suit. We’d be driving downloads left and right, tens of thousands over night.
(Sighs)
After an entire month, we had a mere 1,000 downloads. We knew where we could take this but we weren’t doing it right just yet.
At the same time, we were also running low on funds. Steve and Anthony invested enough money to build the product and get us to launch (June 2016-Dec 2016). Our goal was to then sprint ahead with growth and secure more funding. This would begin a remarkable series of “live-to-fight-another-day” capital raises that kept us going throughout the first half of 2017. First Step: Accelerate Baltimore.
We applied to Accelerate Baltimore, a prominent startup incubator in the city, along with over 100 companies. We were then selected as one of a dozen finalists to come pitch in front of their panel. I had never pitched in person before. I was unsure how to approach what to cover and what to leave to the side. All I knew was that I could paint a story, describe our product, be very passionate, and make everything flow.
It was a cold mid-December night. $25,000 was on the line. I drove 45 minutes from my home in Forest Hill to the Johns Hopkins University campus building where they hosted the pitch. I practiced my pitch the entire car ride there. Upon arriving, I was put into a “green room” with two other founders. They were practicing their pitch, going over slides on their laptops, pacing the room.
I sat there, said a quick prayer, and shortly thereafter a man entered the room:
“Arbit? You’re up.”
I walked down the long hallway with two thoughts:
- We really needed this money or Arbit could quickly come to a standstill.
- I refused to lose.
I opened a door that led to a classroom with about 10 people, including the heads of the Emerging Technology Center and Abell Foundation, along with other prominent startup founders. These were top people in their respective fields.
I noticed someone was drinking a beer.
“Can I get one of those before I begin?”
The room was laughing. Tension eased. Go time.
I went through the pitch for 7 minutes, answered questions for about 10 minutes, left the building feeling confident and drove home.
A few days later I get a call from Jackie Albright from the ETC: “Congratulations and welcome to the cohort. You won!”
Arbit was one of six companies chosen to win $25,000 out of what would be about 110 applicants.
Greg and I were so happy about the $25K but we had plenty of work to do to solve our early growth issue. And $25K in our space would go so fast. The celebrations were short-lived.
Do you know why Uber was so successful (see also: Airbnb, Instagram, and more)? Because they solved the “Chicken or the Egg” rule of startups: that you need to find the sweet spot for what should come first: generally in terms of supply or demand. Uber could not have had a supply of drivers without a willing demand from users for those drivers. They also could not have demand from users without having some sort of supply of drivers. It’s so difficult to get both at the same time when starting out that you generally must start with one. Uber focused on supply. They had to find enough drivers willing to work with small amounts of early riders and hope that demand would eventually rise. And it did. The rest is history. Alright enough about Uber.
Why does that matter? I wrongly asserted that the NBA players we had were enough to get us going. They’d create engaging polls, post them on the app, share across social media, and users would come to vote. False. It was the other way around.
We needed to start with a large user base in order to get bigger names behind the app. Greg came to me and said, “Why don’t we try to find big accounts on Instagram to advertise through in order to attract more users?”
“Alright…yeah, let’s do it,” I said. We weren’t thinking much about an advertising model at the time, but it couldn’t hurt.
Working with a small budget, we targeted Instagram accounts with 10K–15K followers that generally posted about sports, humor, pop culture, and the like. We’d ask them to post a screenshot of an Arbit poll on their Instagram account with a call to action like: “The only way to vote is download Arbit. Link in bio!”
And we got clever: Rather than paying these accounts anything at first, we just gave them an official blue Arbit check on the app. Saved us money. They really wanted the check. Win-win. So the post would go live, and next thing you know…
It’s drawing in tens of thousands of impressions and likes. Downloads started trickling in.
It wasn’t a lot at first but we noticed something…
Once users were on the app, we realized how badly they wanted to answer interactive polls and be able to create their own with friends. They wanted feedback, they wanted likes, they wanted engagement. They were on it all the time and we could tell they were sharing with friends. Most of them were Centennials (Generation Z) who have been increasingly looking for different ways to connect with one another on social media.
So we said “Okay, let’s dive deeper. Let’s go bigger”.
Then we’d talk to larger accounts with 100K–250K followers. That’s where we’d have to start paying to advertise, but guess what happened: Downloads. Hundreds of them in a few hours. And keep this is mind: the fact that we were able to take people away from arguably their favorite social network to come download our app because they were intrigued by our polls is… insane. We were proving something.
So we went bigger.
We spoke with some of the largest Instagram accounts in the U.S.
We began driving thousands of downloads per week. We had one week in February where we had 3 days straight of 2,000 downloads. One day while I was working at the incubator, another member, Phil DiMuro, came over to me and saw the numbers. He was like “DUDE! Are you kidding me?! This is unbelievable.”
I’ll be honest. I wasn’t that happy. It might have been easy to get caught up in the vanity metrics of downloads, but I wanted to see this taking off with more people, I wanted Arbit to be shared more, to be seen more freely. We hadn’t really solved for that yet from a development perspective. It was a standalone app without much ability to expand beyond that. We’ve since headed in that direction but that’s for later Chapters.
“Live-to-fight-another-day” Round 2
It was at this point in time that we had been contacted by NBA player Caron Butler about investing in Arbit. For Greg and I, Caron is an icon. He played his best years in the NBA for the Washington Wizards and we grew up loving his tenacity and style of play. Having him behind us would provide more grit that really became a foundation for our culture as a startup.
After an early introduction call with Caron, I was told that his agent, Raymond Brothers, would be getting on a call with me. (In the crazy, interconnected world we live in, Raymond has recently been in the news as he is the current agent for #1 Draft Pick Markelle Fultz).
He laid into me. It was an intense call. I could tell how much he cared about Caron and how he spent his money. He fired questions left and right about our vision, our goals, how and when we might exit, and more. He had me on the ropes, my hands were up, taking wave after wave. I could tell by the end of the call I had earned his respect. And by March 2017, he gave Caron the approval to invest in Arbit to get us further along in our development efforts and explore generating revenue. I have not heard from Raymond Brothers since.
Curry Time
Just a few weeks later, the app was booming and Under Armour’s stock was falling. Why? Their poor earnings report, which was largely due to a lack of sales for Steph Curry’s signature shoe, the Curry 3s. Across all of social media, no one liked the design. The shoes had a bad rep and sales were way below expectations.
“Curry 3 shoe sales don’t hit the mark for Under Armour” — ESPN headline
“A fairly obvious problem is: The shoes look ugly.” — Deadspin article
Anthony Tolliver (playing for the Sacramento Kings for the 2017 season) happens to be close friends with Steph. When Anthony finally cracked his way into the league in 2010, he happened to be playing with the Warriors in Steph’s rookie season. They become brothers both on and off the court and shared a deep bond.
In April 2017, the Sacramento Kings traveled to Golden State a night before their game. Steph invited Anthony over to have dinner with Ayesha and him. After they discussed life matters, having kids, and basketball, it was time for their favorite topic: business.
Anthony mentioned to Steph a startup he recently got behind: Arbit. He pulled up the app on his phone, passed the phone over the table to Steph, and Steph immediately took to the app, repeatedly saying “This is Dope!” (per Anthony). I also had Anthony show Steph an example of what a company like Under Armour could do with Arbit to crowdsource feedback around products. Something struck Steph.
You know when you see opposing players meet at half court or half field before a pro sports game? If you’re like me, you wonder what on earth they talk about in those passing moments.
Well… that night of the Kings/Warriors NBA game, Steph approached Anthony at half court (per Anthony):
Steph: “So that app from last night. Any chance I can talk to the guys about it?”
Anthony: “Absolutely! When would you want to?”
Steph: “I’ll hit you up with a date.”
And so in April 2017, I received a text from Anthony saying Steph was good for a call. Greg and I joined the conference line early. We were followed by Steph’s brand manager, Jeron Smith, a brilliant, talented dude. We spoke with Jeron about his career, formerly high up at Nike before joining Obama’s staff in Washington. After Obama left office, he linked up with Steph to take over his brand managing duties.
About 10 minutes later we heard a *beep*. Someone joined the call.
“Hey this is Steph.”
wow. pause.
Exactly 18 months earlier, we had absolutely nothing. I was at home; Greg in Austin. No one knew what Arbit was. It was in our heads. Yet over the course of a year and a half, we scrambled, hustled, did whatever we could to get off the ground and prove what we set out to prove. And here we were talking to Steph Curry about our product. 2-time NBA MVP Steph Curry.
“Hey Steph what’s going on? This is Alex Bullington and Greg DiNardo from Arbit. It’s nice to connect with you.”
…..
We spoke for an hour. An hour. This is a guy that gets thrown tons of proposals every single day. And he was on for an hour. We talked about everything. How he enjoyed using Arbit; where we wanted to take it; why he thought it would have been perfect to gauge his fan’s interest on different shoes/products before releasing them to the public; how it could help so many brands. It went about as well as we possibly could have scripted it.
And so we hung up, wished him well, and said we’d follow up soon.
At that same time (and what we’d later find out to be in our best interest), Kevin Durant went down with an injury. Pressure was back on Steph to carry the team into the postseason and focus on winning. He was in lockdown mode. I followed up with Steph via email and we talked about the timing of everything and where we wanted to take Arbit further. We’ll be looking to get him involved in 2018.
Early stage startups are tough. Like really, really, really hard. You need money to grow but in order to get money you have to grow first and prove you can propel your business. It’s a vicious cycle. By April 2017, we had Caron’s investment still working for us, but we needed a serious capital raise. We hadn’t grown quite enough just yet or had revenue to attract any type of Venture Capital, let alone an Angel Group. You’d think we did, but we weren’t quite there. This is why startups are so damn hard. We were in the proverbial “valley of death”.
Accelerate Baltimore was ending and all 6 initial winners had a chance to pitch for a grand prize of $100,000. This was our first time pitching to a huge audience. I wasn’t going to let it slip. This was our chance to really put Arbit on the map in the investor world. And that we did.
By June 2017 we had over 100,000 downloads. We were at one point one of the top 100 free social networking apps in the App Store. There are millions of social networking apps out there. We were in the top 100.
What transpired next over the Summer of 2017 and into the Fall of 2017 is perhaps the most volatile period of Arbit to date, but where we are heading today as a result is the most exciting thing we have done. Ever. More on that to come.
Peaks and valleys. Ups and downs. For Greg and I (and all entrepreneurs for that matter), it always comes back to one word. Can you maintain:
e·qua·nim·i·ty
noun
- mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.
(Chapter 4 coming soon).
If you want to invest in Arbit, check out their crowdfunding campaign here.
