We learned a hard lesson with our first startup, HealthWorldWeb and while the startup was sold, we only grew to about 1,000 users over almost 3 years for many reasons. Main reason is that we did not have a geo-focus and ended up with a “sparsity and scarcity” problem of doctor reviews on our site. The social matching technology was interesting enough for the acquirer!
A ~year ago, we decided to build Q! – http://questiongr.am - the main premise is that it is still difficult to find the right information at the right time and search engines are not cutting it anymore. I want information now, I don't have time to search and research and because we all live across many social networks all of our friends and followers has expertise in many different areas: from movies to health.
So we had a dilemma once again, just like with the last business - do we focus on particular vertical and geo-location or go wide and see what the market brings.
Well, once again we decided to go wide and for full transparency, we launched the app in the Apple App Store in October ( ~400 DL). We followed with Android in Dec with now (~200 DL) and now Windows (6 DL – ha) to be the only cross-platform social search but all of this currently is not yielding results.
We brought on a marketing person and in the last 3 months got some nice mentions but purposely staying away form the big techcrunch & etc because we want to grow "dedicated" users who believe in the world of social intelligence.
We launched a Kickstarter campaign - http://kck.st/1hhT3n6 -(20 days ago), to find these believers who can help us shape the product and provide feedback. We got a few for sure, but we now have 8 days to go with only 7% funding reached.
Would love to hear people’s thoughts on growing a following for Q! – is the message clear, is our mission clear, is the broad approach the right way to go!
Thanks!