Our startup journey: Mistakes, successes, and lessons

Presented for Founder Institute Sydney on 29 July 2014

Matthew Ho

● Digital Producer background● Worked online for 7 years● Next Digital, Deloitte, Airbnb● Love TV series, movies & sports● Twitter: @inspiredworlds

Head of Product Development at Tapmint

Tapmint● Provide consulting services on

innovation & rapid experimentation for web/mobile

● Native Tongue - First winning team in Startup Weekend in Australia

● 4 language game apps● 400,000 downloads● Twitter: @tapmint

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What did you do when launching a start-up in your first year?

● We won Startup Weekend Melbourne in May 2011

● 5 months later - launched Mandarin Madness, our first mobile app on Android, then iOS

● $1k in our first week on iOS● #2 top paid education iOS app● We were starting to get press

● Decided to do more apps ● If we had 5 apps x $1k per week

x 52 weeks = $260k p.a.● Our second app came out a

month later● We botched the second launch● Spread too thin with 3 apps -

Chinese, Spanish, English● On 3 different platforms - iOS,

Android, Amazon

● 400,000 downloads, played 2 million times.

● Used in a number of schools around the world

● It was a really rocky ride in 1.5 years. ● We then launched LP Strategy, a word

game cheat app in 2 weeks ● Applied our learnings in App Store

Optimisation, how to get a product to market quickly and iterate

● One of the top cheat apps for this game

● We could build innovative apps fast and iterate

● Started a new business Tapmint to provide consulting services on innovative apps/websites

● Leveraging our startup experience & skills building products and our prior work experience

● Built 8 products in 12 months● Employ 9 people

● Get product to market sooner. ● Stay focused on a single product with a

narrow set of features● Should have focused on Mandarin or the

Spanish app. ● Faster iterations with smaller updates. ● Android has advantages for launching first as

there is no approval process● Wouldn’t have spent money going to the

overseas conference and exhibiting

Lessons Learnt

How did you promote your product once launched?

● App Store Optimisation● Experimented with mobile ads● Experimented with paid downloads.

Pay per install● We had PR - 60 articles ● Best publications was in education

article in #1 English newspaper in Hong Kong

● Paid for articles - mobile blogs will review if you pay

● Adwords

● Partnerships with other apps and blogs ● Best way - marketing via the product● Experimented with different pricing

models and business models● Understood the freemium model ● What we wanted to do was send

language challenges ● Majority of our downloads to date are due

to our app store position for searches such as “Learn Mandarin”, “Learn Spanish”, etc...

Any good stories about previous successes/mistakes?

Lesson #1: Start a business with a great founding team

● Biggest reasons for startup failure is the founding team

● Not that you ran out of money, or didn’t get product/market fit

● Need to have the same vision, commitment, and complementary skills

● I’ve been working with the same co-founder for the past 3 years across 2 businesses

Lesson #2: Focus on your strengths

● With a complementary team, we leveraged our strengths

● In our complementary team, non-tech founder shouldn’t be learning how to code

● But at least understand the technology and get involved in the product

● One founder needs to have more focus on the customer and customer acquisition (sales/marketing)

Lesson #3: Don’t spam journalist with your launch

● After finally launching a side project to rate Angel investors, I decided to email 20+ journalists

● We had a PR strategy in place ● I ignored it and got caught up in the

excitement of launching a product● What I should have done was

reference their previous work, also created content based on our analysis

● Build a relationship with journalists● Sometimes they come to us as a

source of information or for some insights

● Refer them to other people● Offer to write guest articles,

comment on their articles● Show them articles you’ve written

previously

How to do it

● If you have any startup questions, looking to design/develop an MVP, please contact me

● Matthew Ho, Tapmint ● Email: hello@tapmint.com ● Website: http://tapmint.com● Twitter.com: @inspiredworlds ● Personal blog: http://inspiredworlds.com/

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