How to Grow from 0 to 1000 Daily Active Users

Speaker 0: how would you recommend going from zero to one thousand daily active users for their web app? yeah, for their chess skill gaming web app. and i would expand and say, for anybody who's got, a web app or an app, what strategies would you suggest to go from zero to a hundred or a thousand daily active users? and, trevor, if you're there on your cell phone, let's start with you.

Speaker 1: i am. thank you for, for giving me the the hardest question of the bunch. it really depends on the nature of your audience. i mean, if your target audience likes that kind of stuff, then you just need to find out where they're at and put yourself out in front of them. because, i mean, at the end of the day, we all know that if nobody knows you exist, they're not gonna buy your stuff. so for me, it's figuring out where the audience is that you want to actually do to take advantage of your service offering and put yourself in front of them every day, all the time, and provide some value. and that, in theory, should get you to where you need to go. how fast that happens is gonna be the depend on the type of product that you have, but that's that's literally, the playbook for for doing something like that.

Speaker 2: can i step in here, craig? of course. so i i like that. and, i was just gonna say just because i well, just thinking about facebook, community groups, one of the things that i find really effective, especially if you have something that's, like, fun, that's community based, like a you know, web based chess game. can, know, you can tap into the groups that already exist that really, really, love doing board games. you know? catan. i don't know if anyone plays those games. you know? any kind of strategy games, go out there and then you know? i think that dual competition gives something to the people. so, typically, for our dry businesses, we would do a lead magnet. for them, they can do a competition. right? some kind of fun competition. you can make it, you can, you know, draw a lot of attraction using that. even for one of the company startups that i worked with, which was during covid, it was like a, it was a private studio gym. we did a comp because we couldn't bring anyone in the gym, we did a competition online, which was, like, you know, who's the fittest, you know, trainer in the like, because their whole customer base was trainers. so we did who's the fittest trainer in canada, and then we got people to submit, like, you know, how many push ups they could do, how many run you know, how far they could run. so i think something interactive like that and banding people around that tapping into existing communities on facebook is a great way to, you know, basically use other people's audience and, you know, get their app out there. so i just something that popped in my head. i just wanted to jump in. so thanks, alfred.

Speaker 1: that's that's one hundred percent. i totally agree with that. that is probably the best way. and, you know, trying to figure out where they hang out, it may not be in those community groups, but just wherever they hang out so you can get in front of them.

Speaker 3: love the idea of a competition. you know, i think a lot of purchases, a lot of, you know, things are driven by emotions, and ego. and when it comes to chess, i'm sure chess players are very, you know, cerebral, but they're also very competitive. so i think that's a great idea. love that. i've also had like the idea of maybe having a competition where you bring people together physically. so you bring them from the web app into the physical world, whether it's in a central community or with different communities, and, you know, trying to leverage the power of your own community, to generate, you know, evangelism, referrals, and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: and chess tournaments at schools, i think, are still a thing, aren't they?

Speaker 3: absolutely. yeah. daniel?

Speaker 4: yeah. i was gonna add that even though you're building an app or, you know, any online product, you know, we often forget about, in person experiences in irl marketing. and if you look back to, you know, the top apps that have grown, some of the biggest ones ever, like tinder, uber, you know, doordash, all of these started with, like, in person experiences where the founders were running around pitching. you know, doordash had flyers, and they manually charged six dollars for delivery and put them all over their university and visited restaurants. getting and the reason for that is, yeah, that's not scalable. but the reason for that is you need your first ten users to get your first hundred years to then get your first thousand. you can't just say, i'm gonna go from zero to a thousand. so that's kind of where it is. and to everyone else's point, those first fees will then spread it. right? and you can incentivize that. but that's definitely what i would do you know, to get to your first thousand.

Speaker 0: yeah. and they mentioned here that assume influencers and chess clubs and communities aren't an option due to risk aversion of gaming sector. so i don't really wanna touch that, but i like pretty much what all of you said, and i sit back and say, alright. if i just need daily active users, and i got this free web app that's teaching people how to play chess and up their skill game, then i need to get in front of people who are learning to play chess. that? why would i not offer after school class to learn other people who play chess weekend classes, free on eventbrite, free locally, free? and you write them in and you show them how to do it, and then you, you know, here's your free access to my app. we want you to get so far. even offering a contest saying, you know, the person that wins the most games or will have a competition at the end of whatever and give prizes. it it's not a hundred percent sustainable because unless, you know, you're really building people up if you're not making money, but you can do it online. you just gotta get in front of those people who don't know how to play and wanna scale up. and local libraries will do that. there's a lot of local communities will say, oh, let's you're teaching people how to play chess. sure. come on in. it's a natural thing to do. so leverage those communities as much as possible, and i think you can find users.