Growing MAUs, a potential customer list, and GCP credits
TL;DR
It’s been a little over 2 weeks since my last update, and I’ve been busy! My primary focus has been on exploring growth channels and building out features based on user feedback. Monthly active user count has grown to 346, up from 82 as of the last update. I launched a referral program and found a huge potential customer list. I’ve submitted 6 iOS releases and 76 server deployments over the past 2 weeks, launching custom domains and a web interface. I have $19,928.92 left in GCP credits, and am helping users sell washing machines.
Growth
MAUs are growing. The primary driver is still app store search (which accounts for 86% of new users). I haven’t jumped into paid marketing or press yet — my focus is on finding more sustainable growth channels and adding those in once I’m comfortable with the state of organic growth. The spike in early October was due in part to a couple of takedowns of content that violated our terms of service (email me if you want the juicy details) that was getting serious traffic. I added a simple link to Hyperlink at the bottom of the 404 “Not Found” page, which drove traffic to the app. I expect that spike to calm down a bit once that takedown traffic subsides.
The numbers are small, but week 1 retention for new users (app opens, not further down funnel) is at 36%. This is exciting because it’s quite a bit higher than previous apps I’ve worked on (RML was in the 15–20% range for example) and seems to compare reasonably well against benchmarks. I’ve only had one full cohort make it through week 0 & week 1, but I’ll be watching this number closely has the numbers get bigger and as new cohorts flow through.
Referral program
On the viral growth front, I built and launched a referral program that enables you to get a free custom domain when you refer 3 friends to the service. If you want a free domain, I encourage you to check it out. The economics of the program are interesting — the program is currently limited to .xyz, .fun, .space, .site, .pw, .host, or .club TLDs all of which I can register for ~$1 for the first year. That puts my cost per install at 33 cents for users acquired through the program. At that rate, only 0.2% of those users would need to convert to paying users for the program to break even. There are some assumptions baked in there about CLV, but this break-even conversion rate is about an order of magnitude less than benchmarks for freemium conversion. If you sign up and refer three friends and want a custom .com or a .link domain — email me and I’ll waive the TLD restriction for being a reader!
Potential customer list
While digging through Twitter posts about bit.ly, trying to find customer pain points with the solutions that currently exist, I stumbled upon a Github repo that had a list of over 8,000 domains being used for short links. By writing some clever regexs on the git blame for the file, I was able to pull over 1,500 Bitly Pro customers that are paying for custom domains through the service. Bitly currently charges $29 per month for their cheapest plan — so my plan is to reach out to these companies with the same features (and more) for a third of the price. There are some really promising companies in this list, from Gusto (gsto.co) to Headspace (hdspce.co) and Docker (dockr.ly). I think reaching out to these companies and building out the features that they request could lead to some interesting results.
Usage highlights
I like to go through and see what Hyperlink users are actually using the product for because it helps me narrow in on a target audience and build features to make the product better for those use cases. I’ve seen teachers use it to send assignments to their students, and students use it submit assignments to their teachers (a project video that they’ve uploaded to iCloud, for example). Lots of users using it to promote their Instagram accounts, Youtube channels, Facebook groups, and Yelp pages. Event, conference, and Calendly links are popular as well. Finally, my all-time favorite power user in the UK that uses it to sell washing machines.
Launches
I’ve released to the iOS app store 6 times over the past 2 weeks and deployed new versions of our production server 76 times. A couple feature of highlights:
- Custom domain support (example domain gissur.link and short link gissur.link/twitter)
- A web interface (and an Android app in the works)
- Slack notification support in the API
- Streamlined link creation flow
- Editable short urls & destination urls (lots of requests for Bit.ly to support this on Twitter)
- QR code generation (that send push notifications when scanned)
Company stuff
I was accepted by the Google Cloud for Startups program under the Spark package, which gives me $20,000 of GCP credit over the next year (I have $19,928.92 left to spend at time of writing). If I manage to spend 75% of the credits within the first year, I’ll be eligible to apply for another $80,000 in credits for the following year. In my previous post I mentioned that this was available for ex-Googlers, but if you’re interested in the program regardless of Googler status, email me and I can give you some pointers. As part of this program, I also got G Suite promo code for 10 users free for a year, which I setup for Iteration, Inc. It’s great because you can setup domain aliases for free, which I use for my Hyperlink domain.
On a more personal note, getting health insurance is a big pain when quitting a big company like Google (as I’m sure it is when quitting any company). Maintaining my Google GHIP plan (their cheapest, high deductible plan) through COBRA would cost over $700 per month. That’s pretty steep considering I’m making a big personal investment in Hyperlink. I combed through the California state health insurance marketplace for alternatives, but signing up was such a hassle (at one point they wanted me to drive to some physical location to sign up). Luckily, I found Oscar — which makes it super simple to sign up for reasonably priced plans. Thought it might be helpful if any of you are considering leaving BigCo in the future!
Finally, an interesting tidbit from the world of startup funding. I’m currently bootstrapping the company and not looking to raise, but I got a cold email from a partner at Afore Capital. I was curious how he found out about Hyperlink — so I asked. Turns out, they’re running some sort of a LinkedIn scraper that looks for people who leave tech companies and add other VCs to their networks soon after. I thought this was a pretty interesting approach to getting deal-flow. I know from personal experience that Linkedin is not very friendly to scrapers, so I’d be interesting in seeing what their setup looks like.
Thank you
I said this last time, but I’ll say it again — thank you for reading and following my progress updates! They not only help me get the word out about what I’m working on, but they help me keep myself accountable. I will keep working hard to make you all proud!
Please feel free to send me an email! Try out Hyperlink. I’d love your thoughts, feedback, ideas and comments on anything I mentioned. I promise I’ll respond to every last one! Also, if you’d prefer to get these updates via email, you can subscribe to them here.
Until next time,
Siggi
