5 Things We Learned By Building And Selling Yoroomie App
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If you are wondering what happened to Yoroomie App after we listed the company for sale on eBay (article here), we are proud to say that we now have a new owner!
Although we have built dozens of apps as a team and worked with amazing clients, Yoroomie App is our first product acquisition. Not only does this validate our studio model, but it brings with it a unique set of learnings that might be atypical from venture backed startup experience.
For a refresher, here is how we originally went from idea to app launch in 30 days and then also growth hacked it to be one of the most popular roommate apps in LA.
Let’s get to it though, here is what we really learned:
1. If you do one thing well, you don’t need to do everything.
Yoroomie is one of the most simplistic and intuitive apps in the roommate and housing space. The product was designed to solve the problem of finding a roommate and just that. Beyond the ability to discover other roomies using a map interface, our messaging was the core feature and functionality of the app. We didn’t try to do anything else with robust features or reinvent the wheel. We simply created an app that solved a problem in the easiest way possible, which people loved!
2. Carve out a space in the market you are in. Be scrappy and be known!
We are located in LA and surrounded by other amazing (and competitive) startups. In order to not only compete, but also carve our place in the market, we first focused on our simplistic product, branding, and messaging to lay the foundation for a clear understanding of who we were and what we were doing. We were the biggest evangelists of our own product and growth hacked our way to become one of the most popular roommate apps in LA. We even placed Yoroomie cards and stickers all over town!
3. Feedback loops are critical early on.
In order to reach rapid product fit, we built-in a feature that would send a personal welcome message to each user in our on boarding. A reply would go directly to our team in a realtime chat interface, so we created actual conversations with our users (thanks Slack integration!). We received tons of replies, feedback, and questions that we took into consideration and this guided our product roadmap.
4. Products mature
By this, I mean that products mature as users increase and your product or service has settled into it’s respective market. Hyper growth is great, but products experience different usage, feedback, and traction over their lifecycle. Sometimes the initial growth might trigger false intuitions or perceptions that will be corrected or further realized over time.
5. Know your competition (and market) inside and out.
This may sound like a no brainer, but it still surprises me how many times I am talking with other founders or executives and they do not personally know their competition, domain experts, and also potential acquiring targets. The old cliche of it’s all about who you know has proven to pay off for us as we knew who had the resources to buy us, who’s business roadmap it aligned with, and also knowing what a “good deal” actually looked like.
