Download - Startupfest 2017: Justin Schier (SCRUFF)
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whoami? JUSTIN SCHIER @justinschier on instagram/twitter [email protected]
Building Companies since 1999 Designer + Developer + Entrepreneur NYC Based Third Year with SCRUFF Gay as the day is long
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ON A GIVEN DAY• Write and deploy some server code
• Design a graphical element or entire new look & feel
• Fight some spam
• Execute an engagement campaign
• Migrate some data
• Work on a new feature with the team
• Morning Coffee
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OBSESSED WITH
TECHNO
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WHAT IS
AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
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Hookup Dating
Social Appfor gay and bisexual men
worldwide
(Nah, it’s a Hookup App)
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The Guys You Like Are Here*
• 12 Million Profiles since July 2010 • 70 Million Chats sent per week • Highest Rated Gay App • Active members spend 77 min/day • 150k API req per min - 24/7/365
avg 100ms response time
*Ok, not YOU in the back
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Things we’ve figured out•Design is king
•It has to be better than the competition
•Know and love your community intimately
•Evolve your revenue model
•Some Killer Principles and Tech Tips …
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Unique challenges• Out of 196 countries, 74 have State-Sponsored Homophobia
• Gays are a vulnerable group - bias and hate crimes are real
• Immediacy v App Store Guidelines - Brazilians are real
• Fixed community size
• FIND YOURS AND PLAN AHEAD
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Real Brazilian SCRUFF Guy
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Unique advantages
• The need Scruff helps fill NEVER goes away, and is constant
• New competitors don’t have street cred, but SCRUFF has built it
• Worldwide brand awareness - People want to wear our shirts and hats
• Humor is a mighty weapon
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Design is KING
•Start designing by intuition, evolve todesigning based on data without bias
•Surprise and Delight
•Start collecting data and telemetry ASAP
•Have a very good reason for adding new UI
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Design better
•Solve customer problems in new andclever ways
•Simpler to use and more Intuitive
•Get people what they need faster
•ABI - Always Be Innovating - get everyone involved
•Balance utility against time to market
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Community = Family•“Is he/she family?” - Special meaning to us
• Many of us have been rejected by our bio families
• We choose our family and we’re in this together
•Family = Community
•Start seeing your end users as your family - treat them accordingly
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Love your family
• Make conscientious decisions, always
• Respect the people you work with
• Thoughtfulness goes a long way
• Celebrate in good times / help in tough times
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Protect your family and keep them safe
• One of the main reasons I wanted to work for Scruff
• Benevolads - FREE ad network for non-profits (education and services around HIV / Suicide / Homeless Teens)
• Use targeting abilities to send push notifications in a crisis
• We always want everyone to feel included
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How we protect our members
• Security and Defense in Depth
• Rate Limiting
• Preventing Location Pinpointing by Trilateration
• Gay Travel Advisories
• 10X less spam than other apps (scammers too)
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Security and Defense in Depth
• Know what you’re protecting
• Know why you’re protecting it
• Own your security - Use the Golden Rule
• Get Help from experts
• Security is only as good as the weakest link
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Rate Limiting *Key to hacker detection and lockout
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Preventing Trilateration
Eric Silverberg, CEO
http://huff.to/WKqk3c
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Location Randomization *Based on Density
Freely share with your competitors any advancements that protect your community!!
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Evolve Your Revenue Model• Started out free, now << 5% of income is from ads
• Find many small pain points wherecustomers will be willing to pay
• Ad-free, Unlimited Private Albums, Advanced Search + Filters, Stealth Mode, Send and Receive Video
• Be aware of competitors
• TECH TIP: Graph sources of revenue over time as % of total!
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Killer Principle #1•If something’s worth doing, it’s worth
spending the time to do it right
• In the fast paced startup climate, the temptation is always there to rush
• At first, everything is a rush, but it’ll ease up
• Choose wisely what you spend your time on
• KILLER TIP: Work with a mentor on larger projects, touch base weekly
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• Good developers know how to work through and around a problem…
• Great developers don’t stop until they FULLY understand aproblem, then solve the root cause - EVERY TIME
• This goes for both technical and business problems
• And everything’s a problem in your first 2 years
• TECH TIP: If you must “patch” an urgent issue, create a highest-priority ticket to do a deeper fix
Killer Principle #2
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•If you’re a technology company,you better be/become AN EXPERT at itand
•Development methodologies like Agile are great and all, but it’s really about keeping people unblocked
Killer Principle #3
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•ABU: Always Be Up
• So much easier said than done but it is possible
• Reachability: Be available when customers need you - over 50% of Scruff’s employees are part time customer service all over the planet who speak 9 languages
• Uptime: 10X better than your competitors
• TECH TIP: Queue All Writes!!
Killer Principle #4
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•Look HARD for the right people. No, HARDER!!
•Find people that also have a love for your community, who are conscientious and thoughtful
•Make it so people are dying to work with you
•KILLER TIP: Make the time to teach, teach, teach
Killer Principle #5
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•EXPERIMENT!!
• Figure out what you don’t know first
• Use the scientific method, collect BEFORE data
• Set a goal for % improvement, even if it’s a wild guess
• ANALYZE the results (get help if you need it)
• Make changes to your product and run more experiments
• Don’t be afraid to make big changes when necessary
Killer Principle #6
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SCRUFF IS HIRING scruff.com/jobs
•New York City or Remote
•Free Equinox and Great Benefits
•Smart, conscientious, fun people
•iOS/Android/Ruby Developers, Data Scientists, COO, Product Manager
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Questions?