groupwishGroup Planning Made Easy.

Created by Genesis Dayrit

Problem

Most people use texting/ messaging apps to plan events with friends.

Texting sucks for group planning:

- Details get lost- Schedules don’t align- Conversations get off topic- It’s hard to search for things together- People flake or don’t respond at all

- From 125 respondents, 71% of people are still using a text or messaging app as their primary application for planning with friends

- ~45% of people ranked “Knowing your friend’s availability” as the most difficult pain point in the group-planning process

- “Knowing what activities your friends are interested in” ranked as the second most difficult painpoint

- The original idea I had was “Facebook Calendar.” Research showed that 55% do not use calendar apps at all - there was not a good enough business case to move forward with this.

Initial Research

Facebook Calendar (initial idea):

- Problem #1: This idea felt more like a productivity app. It turns out that this isn’t a very fun way to interact with your friends.

- Problem #2: Planning things with your friends isn’t coercive.

_________________________________________________________________________Planning with friends usually starts by a simple suggestion or nudge.

Real examples from text:

- “Hey, let’s go hiking this weekend”

- “You guys down for Vegas sometime this summer?”

- “What is everyone doing next Saturday?”

- “I’m down to do something Friday, what are you guys up to?”

Pivoting from Facebook Calendar to Groupwish

Enter GroupWish

GroupWish is a suggestion-based planning app, allowing you to easily:

1. Share activities that you are interested in

2. Share time(s) that you are available

3. Find and purchase deals and gifts with your friends

4. Make plans and have discussions

Competitive Landscape for group planning

Text messaging/ Group Messaging Apps

Group Planning Apps:

Search and Discovery:

Chatbots / Operators:

E-commerce

There is room for a new Social Commerce player

Why aren’t others tackling this space?

There ARE some other startups in the Group Planning space:

- PlanChat- Mesh- MyHub- Downtyme- LivnList

Biggest Problems with all of these:

1. Onboarding (You get on the app and you don’t see your friends!)2. How do you get each member of your group on the App?

My Hypotheses:1. You can entice groups of friends to join the app by offering exclusive deals along with a platform for

great planning 2. A great planning experience will naturally lend itself to purchases being made and revenue generation

1. Exclusive group deals 2. Freemium (even better deals or better app functionality with subscription)3. Chatbots/ Operators - Deals brought to you by AI or humans4. Advertisements/ Re-targeting5. Aggregate offers around the web (like Kayak)

________________________________________________________________________Examples of existing monetization strategies:

Potential monetization strategies (not decided yet)

Ozlo (chat bot) Operator GroupOn

Facebook Messenger Split Pay

Competitive Analysis

Benefit: SMS Text Messenger GroupOn TripAdvisor Facebook Events GroupWish

Suggest activities to friends within App

Activity feed to see group interests

Have separate discussions for each plan

Easily store details for each plan

Tailored deals delivered to your group

Share what days you are free

Ability to split pay amongst group

1-on-1 messaging

Contextual search and browsing

Easily share content

Easy

Difficult

Not Available

Opportunity Size - There is room to innovate in Social Commerce

● 75 Million total millennials in the United States (age 18-35)

● If each millennial made an average of $100 worth of purchases a year for their group (travel, gifts, activities) then you are looking at a 7.5 billion USD / year market opportunity in the US alone

● If we captured just 5% of the market, this would be $350 Million USD / year (or more) opportunity

● Some reference points:

○ (Group deals) Groupon made $3.1 billion in revenue in 2015

○ (Hotels, rental cars, travel) Priceline made $9.1 billion in revenue in 2015

○ (Travel, hotels, local deals) TripAdvisor made $1.49 billion in revenue in 2015

○ (Local activities) Zozi made $118 Million in 2014

Persona

Groupchat Gary

Age: 26Location: Los Angeles, CAOccupation: Pharmacist

Social, tech savvy, keeps in touch with a few close groups, posts on social networks 1-2x a week

Role: Usually the friend that is facilitating plans in the group chat

Description: Gary is always the person to suggest things to do, but finds it difficult to plan more complex events, such as weekend getaways and birthday celebrations.

Soundbite:

“Now that I’m making money, I want to try new things with friends...

There has to be a better way to plan these things than texting.”

Persona

Goal: Explore and try new things with friends

Details Goal

Wireframes

Home page / Feed Group space Planning Room

Splash Page MVPAssumptions:

(1) There is demand for a group planning app.

(2) People will instantly want to download a planning app if given “credit.”

Test:

An initial splash page will be created to:

(a) Measure click through rate (CTR) for phantom download button.

(b) Collect e-mails for follow-up actions

Success at Groupwish is defined by:

The number of group plans created each month

Product Market Fit achieved when:

There is group activity 3 out of every 7 daysOrganic growth of 100 signups/day

30% of users are active the day after sign-up60% of users onboard two or more friends

Key Performance Indicator / Product Market fit

Q4 - 2016

Create v1 iteration of GroupWish

Q1 - 2017

Customer Discovery/ Learning

Q2 -2017

Iteration and Development of Core

Business Model

Q3 - 2017

Build monetization features

Q4 - 2017

Refine user experience

Prepare for Q1 2018 Public Launch

Strategy

Photo from: The Four Steps to Epiphany (Blank, 2005)

Q4 2016 - Build, build, build

1. Focus will be on building v.1 of GroupWish:

Core Features include:

- Sign-up flow- Home page- Group Suggestions- Group planning spaces- Friend invites- Search and Discovery

Strategy

Q1 2017 - Heavy Focus on Customer Learning and Discovery

Two major studies:

1. Enroll (a minimum) of 30 groups in a Group Texting behavioral study

- Goal: Learn everything about group texting and group planning dynamics.

2. Test Version 1 of GroupWish (invite only)

- Goal: Gather feedback on the first iteration of mobile application.

Strategy

Q2 2017 - Iteration and Development of Core Business Model

1. Continue to iterate on the application based on feedback.

- Goal: Create an app that is LOVED by just 10 groups of people (Idea from AirBnB)

2. Based on learnings, develop a monetization strategy

- Travel bookings? Group Purchases? Chat bots? Re-targeting Ads? Operators?

Strategy

Q3 2017 - Build Monetization Features

1. Build the core monetization feature

2. Continue to iterate on the app/ fix bugs, etc.

3. Hire 1-2 engineers

Strategy

Q4 2017 - Get ready for public launch

1. Launch monetization feature to a small group and get feedback

2. Prepare for a Q1 Public Launch (previously invite only).

Strategy

Ask

Asking for $200,000 for 5% of the company

Current team of 3:- 1 Product, 1 Designer, 1 Engineer

This covers:

- Research and development costs- Engineering costs- Salaries- “Ramen Noodle Diet” (we are a scrappy bunch)

Revenue will begin to be generated by the end of Q3 2017

The GroupWish Mission:

To create lifelong bonds and help friends have fun.

Are you in?