Here's what you'll find in this issue: - **Clubhouse reached a $1B** valuation in 10 months. Here's what indie hackers need to know about this booming platform. - **This founder hit $3M ARR** when he stopped chasing unicorns. He shares his top tips b
Here's what you'll find in this issue:
-
Clubhouse reached a $1B valuation in 10 months. Here's what indie hackers need to know about this booming platform.
-
This founder hit $3M ARR when he stopped chasing unicorns. He shares his top tips below.
-
App marketplaces are one of the most under-utilized platforms for gaining paying users. Learn how you can take advantage of them.
As always, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🎧 At $1B valuation, Clubhouse Grew Faster Than Any Other Startup
from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch
Clubhouse reached 600K users in six months, and is now at 2M. The app is currently only available to Apple users, but once it hits Android, users will likely triple.
No startup has ever grown as fast as Clubhouse at this stage of its development. Let's explore.
Clubhouse 101
The no-background: Clubhouse is an invite-only audio platform that provides forums for casual, live conversations with people from around the world. The platform launched in March 2020, and allows users to join a broad range of conversations. Everything from brand strategy to space travel is being discussed on Clubhouse.
Unicorn upgrade: As recently as December, Clubhouse was valued at $100M. However, the latest funding round valued the platform at $1B, representing a tenfold boost for the San Francisco startup. At the moment, Clubhouse isn't a profitable app, following suit with Uber, Lyft, and others.
The moderation issue: As momentum grows for alternatives to mainstream social media platforms, moderation will continue to be a key area of discussion. Clubhouse has firmly stated that it will not allow abuse, racism, religious intolerance, sexism, or hate speech. The company says that moderation is a "critical area of investment," as it works to create tools and policies that address the unique dynamics of real-time voice conversations.
New opportunities for monetization
What's next?: Days after earning their staggering $1B valuation, Clubhouse announced plans to unveil a suite of products geared towards allowing creators to monetize their content. Over the next few months, the company plans to test creator payment systems through features like tipping, tickets, and subscriptions. It also plans to use part of its new funding round to launch a Creator Grant Program to support emerging Clubhouse creators.
What this means for you: Clubhouse's rapid success can serve as a useful guide for indie hackers looking for growth hacking ideas. Indie hacker Malav Warke created a great rundown of 11 insights on Clubhouse's success, including its exclusivity, endorsements, social currency, and more.
Social media's brightest star?
Looking ahead: Some are speculating that Clubhouse could surpass TikTok as the next "social media star." Clubhouse's invite-only approach provides an exclusive appeal that is highly reminiscent of Facebook's initial (Ivy-only) user base.
COVID-19's shelter-in-place orders have increased social media consumption, prompting some to question whether Clubhouse will retain its popularity after things have reopened. It remains to be seen whether Clubhouse will go the way of other social apps (including Vine, Meerkat, Yik Yak, and Google+) that have rapidly grown, and then quickly deflated.
Will the giants replicate? Considering that Snapchat's story function was replicated by Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it is possible that giant social media platforms will attempt to edge Clubhouse out by replicating its popular features. Twitter launched its Spaces feature in December, which seems to be a first attempt to replicate Clubhouse's offering. We'll see if Facebook, Instagram, and others will follow.
Do you use Clubhouse? What are your thoughts on the platform? We'd like to hear them!
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Economy for more.
📰 In the News
💰 Twitter jumpstarts a monetization plan for creators by acquiring Revue, a service that helps writers grow their paid subscribers.
🎮 GameStop short-sellers have lost $5B in 2021 as Reddit users trolled Wall Street.
🛠 VC investor Li Jin is launching a new course on building for the creator economy.
🛂 Big tech is tackling vaccine passports in an effort to create a standardized system.
⌚️ Apple crossed $1B in quarterly revenue for the first time ever.
🛣 Tyler King Hits $3M ARR by Doubling Down on Values
from the Milestone Road newsletter by James Fleischmann
Tyler King of Less Annoying CRM just hit $3M ARR, and he's thrilled about that. But what happens when a founder has to choose between values and profit?
Over the course of his journey, he's reset his expectations of unicorn-hood and learned to pursue the joys of having a solid business framework.
When starting out, Tyler's goals were simple:
In the very early days, just being able to work for myself and pay my bills would have been more than enough. So in that sense, it's surreal to be at $3M ARR.
However, with growth comes reassessment.
Goals can change, and it may not always be for the better. In Tyler's words:
As soon as we started finding traction, my ambitions got much bigger. Too big, actually. We had a couple of years of 5-10x growth. That's easy when you're really small, but I was naïve enough to think we were on pace to be a unicorn one day. If you'd told me then that we'd be at $3M, 11 years into the business, I'd have considered it a failure.
Eventually, Less Annoying CRM's growth rate slowed, and it had no growth capital. Employees left the company as they secured bigger opportunities, and Tyler began to reevaluate the trajectory of the company.
When he realized that Less Annoying CRM operated better as a smaller business, he embraced that insight:
We decided to stick to our guns and keep doing what we loved, even if it meant lowering our financial ambitions...I think too many people think the only way to be ambitious is to try to get as rich as possible. There are other forms of ambition. It's okay to be satisfied with modest growth and channel your energy into other things, like the impact you have on customers, employees, and your community.
So yeah, I'm thrilled to reach $3 million ARR, and I realize how lucky I am. But unlike the early days, I'm not desperately fixated on the next revenue milestone. I'd rather focus on other things because I know the revenue will follow in due time.
Key takeaway: As your business grows, you'll probably face situations that challenge your values. Your decisions will set the tone for your company. They may also determine how satisfied you feel with your work a decade in. Choose carefully, and remember why you're doing what you're doing.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Milestone Road for more.
🧠 Harry's Growth Tip
from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry
Verizon bragging about their 5G is boring. T-Mobile roasting Verizon's 5G is hilarious.
Don't confuse what you want from your content with what your audience wants.
Go here for more more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.
Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.
📊 A Founder Compiled 67 App Marketplaces for Indie Hackers
from the User Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko G.
My research found that app marketplaces (think the WordPress plugin store and the Shopify app store) were the second-highest channel for founders in terms of effectiveness.
We'll cover this, and 2 other unique acquisition opportunities. Let's dive in.
1. 67 marketplaces for your product
Rocket Gems recently released a comprehensive list of 67 of these marketplaces that indie hackers can tap into. Many products have their own dedicated app marketplace. The marketplaces are separated into 7 categories:
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Customer support
- Developer tools
- Website builders
- Marketing
- Design tools
- Other
I originally found this list on Hacker News, and some of the HN comments there were quite interesting. This user said:
The Atlassian marketplace is how we're able to make Draw.io free everywhere else. We don't have to handle any licensing or billing and it's a commercial market where users expect to pay. We generate 8 digits annually there with 5FTE people... you can build a medium sized company around just one of these marketplaces.
Wow. Eight figures, with the Atlassian marketplace being their main acquisition channel?
What this means for you: App marketplaces are an under-utilized acquisition channel. They're also the only channel group where the saying "build it and they will come" still holds true (I wrote a post on this recently).
2. Pinterest ads improve user targeting
Pinterest just launched a "dynamic creative" ad process where you can target users based on their behavior.
According to my research, the #1 reason that founders fail with paid ads is bad targeting, not bad copy. That is why I'm excited that a major platform like Pinterest has improved its targeting capabilities. One reviewer said:
The process essentially responds to how users interact in the app — if a user is searching for 'decorative lights' for example, and they narrow their search for specific items, the system will then show ads for items from your uploaded catalog which best match the users' stated interest.
What this means for you: You'll find this change extremely relevant if you're selling many products, or many variants of the same product. Pinterest is actively working to continuously improve its targeting, so even more smaller advertisers will likely find the platform relevant in the future.
3. Quora's new search method
Quora is currently the most popular Q&A website in the world, with over 537K visitors per month. Chances are, there are people in your niche asking questions there.
The problem: It's hard to find valuable questions that are unsaturated with answers. The goal is to find questions with a high number of views and a low number of answers.
Solution: A Twitter user created a thread containing a simple Google query that can help identify these type of questions. Here is the improved version of this query:
Will you be incorporating any of these tips in your user acquisition plan? Let me know in the comments below.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to User Acquisition Channels for more.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, James Fleischmann, Harry Dry, and Darko G. for contributing posts. —Channing
