Market fit… why is it SO DAMN HARD!?
Stiya started as a ‘memory in your pocket’.
Making memories and experiences captured automatically. Aiming for active consumers to share details of trips and activities.
A year later I am a featured speaker in one of the biggest real-estate conferences in the world and we removed the original Stiya from the app store.
What happened??
Stiya was born
Planning for winter break I needed travel ideas.
I asked a few friends and received various answers in many formats, from a quick jotted email with inaccurate names of places, link to some photos or excel with a daily plan.
Is this really the best we can do?
I wanted a map with where everything is, together with the names of places, photos, notes and more.
It was too hard to remember our own details and was hard learning from others what they’ve done and where.
I started validating the idea. I talked to everyone I could find about it to try to understand if it’s a real problem. I even went to a pitch competition to see what the feedback is and got first place. Everywhere I went people’s eyes lit when I told them about it. I was totally on to something huge!
Stiya (=Stories In Your Attic) was born aiming to make everyone into a visual storyteller using automation and AI.
The MVP
I knew I had to get the MVP out as soon as possible and I did. On January 2016 Stiya saw the light of the iOS app store.
I sent a proud email to all the people that really wanted a solution among my friends… Some downloaded but the feedback was really so so.
Our MVP was too basic.
We lost many of those initial users but we heard the feedback and fixed many of the items.
Back to the app store end of February. Now the usage started looking better…
Up Up Up but why so slow?
Stiya was supposed to be inherently viral.
If you share an experience others will see how beautiful and useful it is and download the app to get their own automatic journal…
But people weren’t really sharing, they were using Stiya to remember details better for themselves or share with grandparents via text.
On social, they’d go back to the habit of picking few pictures and posting vs the Stiya experience link we provided.
SO who was using Stiya and why?
I made sure to always try to learn as much as I could about my users. Analytics weren’t enough — I’d reach out personally to the first 1000.
That’s when I realized how many different use-models I see on the platform.
Too much variance –make the options endless
I certainly had some travelers I was aiming for but I also had many other types of users:
- Bloggers — remembering details so they can blog about them later
- Mothers journaling their babies
- Families with remote grandparents to share the days
- Alzheimer patients — that want help remembering details
- Nannies journaling the kids when the parents are at work
- Tour operators — sharing the tour day with clients
- Realtors — sharing house hunting stories with clients
Decisions Decisions Decisions
Lets be honest, an app that doesn’t have a clear way to monetize has to be able to get to a million users quick — Otherwise they need to pivot.
If my app isn’t going as viral as I think there may be a few options:
- Need to add features
- The UI/UX isn’t good enough
- Competing with the consumer habit may be tougher than I think and I need to find alternatives
I evaluated the first two options but this didn’t seem to make a difference in the sharing behavior. People weren’t sharing as much as I wished… except for… businesses!
Businesses started using the app to share the story of the day and experiences with their clients. From nannies, tour operators, realtors and even a few hotels.
That’s an interesting direction and can monetize quicker but how do we choose?
Quick to analyze and dismiss
For many small businesses, creating personalized and branded content fast is an important sales tool.
I had to make small tests towards each direction and evaluate the potential quick.
This is a long and tough process that makes your nights sleepless. You can’t stop thinking about it and its crucial to get it right.
I wrote the pros/cons for each group, what it would take to reach them, monetization potential etc.
When I got to evaluate why realtors started using Stiya — I found a surprise.
The number of users wasn’t as big but they seemed to have a much bigger benefit from it.
One wrote on Facebook:
I reached out to Mary Shannon Moore, an influencer and the founder of a FB group (Out of the box owl) who has over 20,000 realtors. I wanted to hear her thoughts on the value of Stiya for Real-Estate. She loved the idea and posted on her page:
Who would like to test this kind of software?
No better test I guess.
Within minutes we had over 130 comments with email addresses interested in having this in their hands and others that want to write about it.
Are we on to something?
Our software was really not adaptable to real-estate use model. Unless someone is super early adaptor they wont know what to do with it. We’ll need more work to make it more agent-specific. So I wanted to control who plays with it from the industry. I gave it to a few more early adopters and started seeing more positive comments including one that sold a house thanks to Stiya.
The gap between the static flyers and MLS printouts that agents bring with them to a house tour vs what the newer generation is used to (all mobile) — was becoming too big.
Clients want more relevant info that was personalized to them.
They want to add their own photos, videos and notes of the houses to remember better and share the house tour story with family.
Agents want to differentiate themselves and give better customer experience so they can sell faster and more.
SO what now?
There was enough happening in this direction for us to explore it full force.
We are enhancing the MVP to be more real-estate specific and evaluating the reaction in this week’s conference at Inman Connect.
I was invited to speak in the main stage in front of 3500 agents and brokers. Certainly the biggest conference I ever spoke at.
There are still many risks and the exploration isn’t over.
Maybe its never really over.
Market fit is the number one cause of death for startups and it’s the most important piece of any startup. At the early stages any marketing activity outside of finding your fit is a complete waste of time and money. Its brutally hard but its has to be done. Only when its found — the startup will succeed.
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