Sadly, Decibel will not receive any more updates… We got to over 60k users and 250k posts, but deep down we know something is off.
Sharing what I learned from it 📀
It took my last startup 12 months to get past 60k users and we put it down. Now I’m back with
@sincerely_app
and blew past that mark in just two months.
Here’s what I learned from my mistakes and did differently🧵
Starting a consumer founder Tiktok house in NYC:
- Hackathon style
- Can't leave until you make 10 tiktoks
- Must be founders who are ACTUALLY making them
Who's in?
App
#2
: Sincerely
- Get things off your chest in anonymous letters
- Receive 3 letters every night at 10pm
- Respond, send hugs, and support others
There's always someone out there for you 📙
1-yr anniversary of leaving my corporate consulting gig and diving into early-stage consumer tech. Plenty of big changes ahead.
Sharing personal updates as soon as the details are finalized... 🛠✈️
So I built a music app... If you get in your feels when listening to music, this is for you
Comment below your favorite song atm and I'll send over the Testflight 🎸📱
Editing the deck and realized that Sincerely has 430k letters + responses written in 2 months
Kinda crazy that this idea is literally from a Japanese novel...
2. Launch asap and see your DAU/MAU for PMF potential. D1, D7, W1 retention can all be tricked higher, but D30 can’t. DAU/MAU is the best proxy for D30 and long-term fit.
Update: I'll be in China until EOY!
Covid has been wild and US-China politics have not made it easy. I haven't seen my parents for 2 years and haven't been home for 3 years. I also gotta figure out some visa/legal stuff. It's time to ✈️🏡
Founders and hustlers, please take care of your health. We can always raise more money, build new products, build new companies, but good health is the foundation for all
🙏🙏 best wishes to those on the journey
@sincerely_app
is so simple that I thought it was TOO simple at first.
Write letters, read letters, respond to letters. With my last startup Decibel, I couldn’t even explain what it does in a full sentence.
Lesson: Start simple. Avoid feature bloat. Less is more.
I started *hardcore* testing on Tiktok. I typed out the app’s value prop in text and made a text overlay video.
That’s enough to go semi-viral if you’re on to something people want.
Lesson: Be uncomfortably specific with your value proposition and test on Tiktok asap
What’s next? Keep growing.
30k letters and responses are written in Sincerely daily and we are feeling the pull. Every self-care and mental wellness app now looks the same with extremely high CAC. We found our edge and we are doubling down :)
NYC founders & VCs! 🍔🍻 Hosting Wed dinners starting next week with
@ohlookitserik
@anukeganegoda
, inspired by
@kylebrastrom
's great initiative in LA
Comment, share, & DM if you want to hang. NYC is back!!
Editing the deck and realized that Sincerely has 430k letters + responses written in 2 months
Kinda crazy that this idea is literally from a Japanese novel...
I've seen quite a few cases where consumer social founders unknowingly use unbounded retention instead of N-Day retention. It's misleading and it makes product-market-fit seem much closer than reality! Here are the differences👇
2 months ago I built Offbeat (), a simple tool for friends to make group playlists in just a couple clicks. The playlists will also refresh daily with everyone's recently listened.
Just hit 10k total users 💨
starting to see more and more founders doing face/talking tiktok videos for their apps
you live long enough to realize that no one knows the story better than yourself
🧵This current crypto selloff brings back a lot of painful memories for me.
Here's what I learned about investing from hodling ETH from $150 to $1.4K to $80 to $4K to now 📈📉📈 (1/x)
Thanks for the feedback.
I understand and love that you wanna inspire yourself… but “experiencing” a social product without friends or camera access doesn’t make sense 🙃
It’s just impossible.
It’s like trying to play badminton alone.
We aspire to build social.
Not media.
The toughest part of this VC job is not saying no to founders, but hearing founders confessing their vulnerabilities that are often looked down on. "It's very lonely/depressing/stressful" - we have to remember that founders are human first. Stay strong! 💪
Another little W. Rankings fluctuate a lot but a W is a W.
The best part is our community has laid out our roadmap for the next 6m already. Execution time. 😂
Been on a 2-week tiktok grind to learn more about the platform and hit a viral video with 600k+ views. Highly recommend any founder/investor to give it a try. The amount of free traffic and learnings on “going viral” 👀
Been on a 2-week tiktok grind to learn more about the platform and hit a viral video with 600k+ views. Highly recommend any founder/investor to give it a try. The amount of free traffic and learnings on “going viral” 👀