Apps Without Code Blog

Project set-backs always feel like crap… but they usually spark exciting new experiments & iterations.

 

This was the theme of my week while building Kollecto- my side project to help young people become art collectors.

Last week I saw lots of user growth due to a Product Hunt post on Kollecto. A good number of people came all the way through the pipeline, filled out client questionnaires, & picked an advisor. But when I emailed people to schedule calls with their advisors, my response rate was low.

Learnings:

• People are using Kollecto advisors to make calculated purchases rather than as ongoing mentors who’ll help you articulate your taste & teach you about developing an art collection.
• The idea of working with an art advisor is still intimidating to the layman
• If I want to help teach people about art collecting & my advisors are being perceived/ used as sales clerks, then I need to front-load Kollecto’s user experience with more education before I throw them into a relationship with an advisor.

So I’m building a side project for my side project!

I’m building a 10-week course for aspiring art collectors. Students get weekly lessons in their email inbox. Upon ‘graduation’ they’ll get their own Personal Art Advisor + other goodies to help them start an art collection. I’ll keep everyone posted on how it goes!

While interning at Foursquare, I was lucky enough to be mentored by two amazing people- Brynne Zuccaro & Jon Steinback.

No really- everything I know about marketing, I learned from them!

 

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So when I started Kollecto & hired an intern (Nahyun Kim), I copied everything I learned from Brynne & JS.  Several times a day, I ask myself, ‘what would Brynne do’ when it comes to partnering with Nayhun. I think Nahyun & I have a really great working relationship largely because I have Brynne & JS as references.

Nahyun & I have crafted a scenario where she manages one of the things I know best- acquisition marketing.

This may sound counter-productive, but it’s allowed me to learn a new set of skills while simultaneously passing a skill-set off to her.

 I guess this is how mentorship is supposed to be… cyclical.

Thanks Brynne, JS, & Nahyun 🙂 

As part of @OrbitalNYC Bootcamp, we have some crazy assignments.

One assignment is to post something on Twitter/FB that gains 20+ retweets. What?! 20 retweets is a lot!!

Another assignment is to get someone to write a blog/news post about something you made.

This week- I tried to kill three birds with one stone…

The first bird was part of the ongoing market-fit experimentation I’ve been doing. I’ve been testing user segments & channels to figure out WHO is interested in a product like Kollecto. I’m learning, for example, that young real-estate brokers love my project!

I’ve also been getting interest from tech early-adopters. So I wanted to, more thoroughly, test this segment.

To do this, I went to ProductHunt.com and searched for Art startups. I then emailed ~5 people who had submitted art startups before. I got responses from 2 people- and Jack Smith was kind enough to write the post for me.

 

Then, I posted a tweet about the Product Hunt post & sent emails to my network asking them to upvote the link.  My upvotes ended up being ~65% from friends & 35% organic. 

I ended up with 13 favorites & 18 retweets (not 20, but close)!

16 retweets were from friends (I guess that’s how twitter works). It was also in my best interest to boost eyeballs on the post- since my original objective was to test the ‘techie market’. So I spent ~$20 on promoted tweet ad, targeting people who follow both @ProductHunt & @Guggenheim.  This got me two more retweets & more Kollecto signups. Maybe I’ll get the final two as a result of this blog post 🙂

 

So that’s three birds-

• Bird #1- 
• Test the ‘tech early adopter’ market (this went well & I got lots of signups- the Product Hunt post drove ~40% of my signups to-date).

• Bird #2-
• Get someone to post/blog about your project

• I got an extra blog post from TechAvenge– they seem to pull content from trending companies on Product Hunt

• POST-PUBLISH UPDATE-I also got an extra blog post from Autosend who featured my blog post here

• Bird #3
• Get 20 retweets (well…18!)

PS-

To prep for this campaign I read the Autosend article on how 23 startups got their first users. It gave me lots of ideas!!

I was also really inspired by an article Gary Chou shared on ‘the forward intro email’ by roybahat. I applied the tactics in the article when asking people to post Kollecto on Product Hunt.