Hello there, how’s it going? Today I’ll be chatting to David Woodworth, CMO and Co-Founder of Hilokal, a drop-in language learning social app.
David has grown the app from zero to 200,000 users with a highly engaged community.
We discuss his journey from where he pivoted out of his brick-and-mortar business into a technology-based application with significant month-over-month user growth.
Things I learned:
- Finding product market fit before scaling was a smart move, and not just theory
- The Hacking Growth book is very practical and a key to the success of the app
- Pivot to something related to your core offering, see what was accepted vs not
- Use Redash and SQL to analyze data on your user feedback
- Try a few marketing approaches, mainly organic, community, and ASO (app store optimization) before calling out the winners and losers, then invest more
- Even if you can grow a userbase through ads, the quality will be different
- The Cold Start Problem is a useful book in learning how to develop community apps like Clubhouse, Uber, etc.
- Work out the main pain points for your community, and improve those, including removing friction
- Usability itself is a powerful growth lever