Building scalable vertical social communities

Today on?#FounderMoments: Ayush Chamaria talks to, Vipul Allawadhi & Prashant Sachan on 'Building scalable vertical social communities' - from identifying the idea to monetization and everything in between, they decode what it takes to navigate the 0-1 journey. Tune in to know more.

Here’s a summary of the key takeaways from the discussion:

1/ We at?@matrixindiavc?are big believers of the vertical social community opportunity. With more people transacting online, offline behaviours are moving online & vertical communities are getting deep thus necessitating the need for a vertical platform

1a/ Identifying the idea - a bunch of offline behaviours are moving online/can move online; essential to identify spaces exhibiting deep engagement behaviour

1b/ Large horizontals are generic and unable to replicate the exact offline behaviour online thus creating the need for a vertical social community

1c/ Stay very close to users/consumers – best ideas often come out from the customers themselves

2/ Best set of early customers are those who deeply resonate with the problem– they engage early & provide the right feedback. Identify the behaviour they relate to the most, put the early product out in the mkt, get this set of users to try out the app & iterate basis feedback

2a/ Navigating the 0-1 journey- keep biases aside, stay close to the early customers, talk to them regularly to identify what is working & what is not working and accordingly iterate very quickly

2b/ Being retention first (vs growth) - focusing on a high-frequency use case, good initial retention (D1/D7/D30) and noticing early signs of user habit building and recall is essential

3/ Identifying PMF:

a. Early customer love: gets reflected via +ve customer feedback & virality (often comes in the form of customer gratitude)

b. Early retention & engagement metrics meeting benchmarks

c. Signs of habit formation: L-ness curves are a very good indicator for it

4/ Essential to hire for skills that the founding team doesn’t have in the early days. No one-size fits all - approach could be to hire generalists first then specialists or vice versa basis the idea/requirements

5/ Scaling the business: the core focus continues to remain the same and founders keep adding layers to it as the business grows. Essential to not lose sight of the initial goal as the platform scales

6/ Monetisation:

a. Don’t rush into it- best time to monetise is when the need is coming from the users directly (Users say “Can you do this for us– We are happy to pay”)!

b. Monetisation should complement the existing user journey– approach will vary basis the platform's goals

7/ Advice for potential founders:

- Don't chase market sentiments; play the long game

- Fix the fundamentals & solve 1st principles: solve for the unknowns 1st, do not re-invent the wheel by doing things already done before

- Pick a great partner (Mentors/VCs) who play longterm