Conversation with Unlocked cofounder & CEO, David Vincent
Tell us a bit about how you started working with Science.
I met Mike Jones at a charity benefit for the Boys and Girls Club. In passing, I mentioned I was working on a concept for a mobile app. Mike invited me and my cofounder into Science to discuss. After a few visits to Science, we knew the incubator was the ideal fit to bring our vision to market.
Walk us through your vision for Unlocked. Why did you decide to work on this and how has it evolved from when you got started?
Unlocked developed from a problem my cofounder and I continued to experience. We are both professional voice actors who have found success in video game, animation and Anime voice acting, and frequently attend Comic Cons & fan conventions around the world as celebrity guests. We noticed we were constantly missing connections with fans because of location, money & time, and we couldn’t find a product that solved this problem. Enter Unlocked.
The original concept was to create a one-to-one live connection between fans and celebrities. It has evolved quite a bit while maintaining its original essence. Fan convention attendance has exploded over the last 5 years with major celebrities from every genre joining the movement. There are over 1K of these conventions worldwide yearly. Unlocked recreates the palpable energy and engagement of a fan convention, while capturing the sense of community a convention brings to the fan base via live streaming 365 days a year.
How do you think about vertical (ie. single purpose) versus horizontal (ie. general purpose) and public versus private social networks? Where does Unlocked fit in that matrix and how does that decision serve the vision?
The fan Convention community is quite unique with extraordinary engagement from a very large audience. Unlocked is able to provide both a focused experience for the fan base around fandoms and also provide a broad opportunity for fans to engage with other fans and celebrities who share their passions.
Unlocked cuts through the noise of major social networks by creating a destination community for fans to engage with each other and share their passions. To discover and engage with new influencers who work on their favorite titles they aren’t following on social media. Conversely, celebrities and influencers in the industry are now able to engage and grow their fan base by reaching an audience who already have a heightened interest in the projects they’re involved with; but aren’t following them on social media.
What can people do with your product today? Any major new updates on the product roadmap for next 3–5 months that you can share?
We have just released Unlocked 1.0. Today our audience can engage with their favorite celebrities and influencers via daily scheduled live streams, enjoy direct conversations with them via multi-streams and engage with each other in the fan community. New updates on our roadmap include building a more robust fan community incorporating fans live streaming their experiences and showcasing their talents. We are actively partnering with fan conventions to stream their events for both the fans in attendance and for the millions of fans around the world who would love to attend but cannot due to time and distance.
What does an average user look like? Are there any surprising or interesting lessons in who is using the product more or less than you expected?
Our average user skews younger and come from all walks of life. One of the more surprising discoveries is the equal split 50/50 male/female of our audience. We had guessed our users would skew more heavily male.
What secular trends is Unlocked capitalizing on?
The trend of high fan engagement and loyalty to an ever-growing list of popular fandoms has allowed Unlocked to create a new opportunity for people to meet, share and engage with each other.
Social and video products tend to focus on ad based business model. Walk us through your thinking around your subscriptions based model and how that informs the product development.
Live streaming is not new. Rather than focusing on competing with bigger social and video products, Unlocked offers a more exclusive and intimate experience with original content and connections fans will not get anywhere else.
What are some emerging consumer behaviors you think the bigger social and video products are underestimating or ignoring?
The power of community.
