How does the start-up product start cold?

Absrtact: [Core Tip] no money, no flow, no content, entrepreneurial team will inevitably experience the "cold start" dilemma. But these small teams still seize the fleeting opportunity, seemingly inadvertently inserted Liu accident, inseparable from careful planning and painstaking. In the last six months,

[Core Tip] no money, no flow, no content, entrepreneurial team will inevitably experience the "cold start" dilemma. But these small teams still seize the fleeting opportunity, seemingly inadvertently inserted Liu accident, inseparable from careful planning and painstaking.

In the last six months, every time in the circle of friends will appear a gun and red products, whether it is the recent "surround the nerve cat", or a period of time before the demon diffuse camera, face Meng and anonymous social products are not secret. Coincidentally, none of these "lucky" ones come from big companies.

No money, no flow, no content, entrepreneurial team will inevitably experience the "cold start" dilemma. Especially when large companies have firmly mastered the Internet's core channel resources, and have a stronger line under the ability, leaving from the beginning of the start-up company to promote the opportunity seems less, but these small team still seize the fleeting opportunity, seemingly unintentional inserted Liu accident, inseparable from careful planning and painstaking work.

In the recent spate of red products, the hit of social applications this April has been a classic case-a bite team, a product that triggers a product that has to be run by time, is a synonym for anonymous social products within a very short period of time, with the help of a mobile phone book and a circle of friends. From their body, many for the product cold start and scratching head of the entrepreneurial team will be reference and reference.

Pre-product preheating

April 4, was also called "secret" application to the Apple Store in China, on the day of the rapid detonation, so as to become a phenomenon.

"Few people know that the team did a lot of work on the detonation before it went online," he said. ”

The secret team first launched a Twitter account with the same name, a public account that has three columns of functionality--friend impressions, anonymous text messages and downloading secret apps.

By "Friend Impression", you can post a question in your circle of friends, and your friends will answer anonymously below. During that time, my circle of friends often had "what was your first impression of me?", "What do you think I am?" This kind of question, these are in fact the reference question which the secret provides, clicks can quickly ask questions, they successfully touches the user psychology, quickly causes the viral transmission.

No secret founder Lin Chengren introduced, friends impression on the March 22 night 8 o'clock online, the line after half an hour of traffic soared one times, and the whole evening by the number of points of speed growth, the server soon down, the night of the crazy growth until 4 o'clock in the morning to ease down.

Anonymous SMS features specifically selected on April 1 April Fool's Day online, through the secret public accounts, users can send anonymous messages to friends. After this function is used in the product on-line "unlocking mechanism", the user only through the anonymous text message invites enough friends to join can begin to use the application.

This practice is also used for anonymous applications that appear later, but there is more to be considered here. Some applications are to direct the user to all the friends in the Address book to invite, so it is easy to be used as a nuisance message, at the same time, so attracted to the user is difficult to retain. The secret of the practice is to let users manually to pick the friends who want to invite, and then also let users edit the text message, the last to send, so that users are actually easier to accept.

These two successful marketing ideas directly led to the "secret" application of the explosion after the launch, how did these ideas come from?

The moment of inspiration can naturally be described with a flash of light, but it does not mean that you will be hit by it when you walk on the road, which is often a long time of pondering and testing.

In the secret story, the team read the marketing case extensively, listing 15 ideas and deleting them, until eventually there were only 2, and 2 were the last "friend Impressions" and "anonymous messages."

such as the secret of the use of micro-letter has a social relationship of the hot case in the past 1 years Bhing, the first demon diffuse camera with a good idea of the red, and then there are Flappy Bird this brain residual pixel games, the popularity of the recent face Meng. Once the social-networking product is on a micro-credit social highway, the tipping point is significantly lower than before.

But this does not mean that any good idea can be so red, there is actually a deeper motivation behind.

80% members of the team are involved in the cold start

A successful cold start is difficult to boil down to a few marketing methods, that is to say, even if the next product is copied without secret the way it will not necessarily have the same effect.

A fact to be reckoned with is that 80% members of the entire team are involved in the cold start process. This means that for the team, cold start is not the work of a few full-time marketers, but the focus of the entire team.

"It's not just marketing, it's the product itself." ”

Name, for example. Before the product is known as a "secret", Lin Chengren and his team for the product of a long list, such as "Private Circle", "whispering" and so on, the final selection of the word "secret" is to value its most popular, most convenient to spread the characteristics of the most refined in place to convey the connotation of the product.

Also like the product icon. The secret was rejected many times when the store was online, because the icons were like the micro-letters, which was the result of the team's deliberate effort. "At first we wanted users to know that the product had something to do with the micro-trust circle, and even wanted them to think the product was micro-mail." Lin Chengren said to the Geek Park. This kind of deliberate and micro-letter approach is also reflected in the beginning of the product slogan-the circle of Friends anonymous explosion.

Today's mobile internet products so many, single anonymous social products have been more than 10, in the form of similar products, can be detonated at the outset becomes particularly important. Immersed in the product is true, but the bouquet can not withstand the deep alley, it is difficult to return to the product to throw there is someone to use the era. It is even more rare to be willing to devote so much energy and strength to the cold start of the matter.

Failure experience before success

If not before the fall of the somersault, no secret team will not be in this product on the line when the cold start so full of devotion.

Lin Chengren is the first entrepreneurial project, the University of California, San Diego, after receiving a master's degree in artificial intelligence, Lin Chengren went to the United States Amazon engaged in providing users with personalized recommendations for goods, back to business when he has a lofty goal-personalized the entire internet. No network by providing personalized recommendation engine to the site to understand the needs of users, want to let users go to any site will be automatically recognized, and recommended personalized content.

Lofty ideals will not be realized overnight, the lack of experience so that no network has been tepid, to the later companies face financial pressure. The team did not give up, looking for the transition direction, but has not been able to put the previous achievements, the transformation is not successful.

The success of today's headlines has largely touched Lin Chengren from the outside. Today's headline founder Zhang Yixi and Lin Chengren are friends for years, both of whom are obsessed with artificial intelligence, either without a net or today's headline is but a different path to artificial intelligence, but the former is a dismal success. Lin Chengren's summary is, "No search nets in the early focus on the 2B business, from the user too far." And the product shape is too high-end, from the real user demand is relatively far. 」

Anonymous application just as opposed to finding a net, its product form to the grassroots too much, at the beginning of the human needs to target the most primitive-glimpse of selfish desires, the masses loved the gossip psychological play to the extreme. At the same time, he realized that

"If the product is not detonated at first, it will be difficult to have a future." ”

At this time another thing gave the whole team more pressure, February, no net for the second time by government departments closed.

"If we don't do this this time," Lin Chengren said to the team, "if you do it, you're going to do it first, and you'll get killed sooner or later." "This bite may be the deeper impetus for this successful cold start outside the methodology.

Regardless of any methodology, which ultimately needs to be implemented, that time the team is the most poor execution, and finally the entire product from the design, planning to the implementation of the 2-week time complete, usually this will take several months.

That period of time Lin Chengren himself also has been in a state of excitement, he said in a circle of friends "old Sleep", and every day to forward more than 10 from the "secret" message. The excitement of his at that time in fact already how much of the product's popularity is expected, even including outside the controversy, he later said these are "happy troubles, expect the matter."

This is why it is not possible to replicate another secret successful cold start because not everyone is going through a similar situation (no one is expected to). But things are so interesting that you can't find the right path without tumbling.