A 'worm' hug to @erictwillis and my fellow PH lovers! Here's our little story on what inspired us to create Get Worm!
As early adopters ourselves, we always get excited to be a part of something we believe in. But what we found that though there are many avenues to promote startups, not many have made attempts to credit one of the most important factors behind successful startups - their early adopters!
Get Worm is our effort to promote early adoption through rewards & recognition. Or in simpler words - Let early bird get the worm!
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With Get Worm, a startup can come up with creative ways to appreciate their early adopters. For example: skipping the waiting list, profile badges, social mentions, stickers, extra discounts and freemium time.
We did a massive update to the platform a few days ago, and would love to get feedback from the best community of early adopters here on PH! We also need your help in making Get Worm a place that creates value for both Startups and Early Adopters.
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And if we are promoting "incentivizing early adoption", we must eat our own dog-food! :) So here is something for our Early Adopters:
Startups:
Please show your love to the Early Adopters community by signing up and submitting a 'worm-campaign'. Just mention "Product Hunt" in the "Note to reviewer" section and we will give you a LIFETIME FREE account!
Early Adopters (Users)
Sign up and start engaging with startups through comments, follows, votes and of course, Get Worm! The 3 most engaging users every month will get on our early-board with lots of cool perks like exclusive deals, special badges, profile displayed on about us page etc. And the top-bird will get an Apple Watch (or iPad Mini 4).. woohoo!
Thanks!
@sarthakmoghe, @vinnybhaskar, @adityamoghe, @agami
@sarthakmoghe@erictwillis@vinnybhaskar@adityamoghe You guys are awesome! With the help of GetWorm, our unknown social media posting tool @kukupost got its first users (and they continue using KUKU.io!). As a reward, we've sent them postcards and cool stickers. We had a lot of fun and everyone loved it! Thank you so much for such a cool platform, your enthusiasm and love you're helping to spread! :)
Thanks @alexstrvinsky. You are awesome as well.
Great to hear that Get Worm was able to help @kukupost get its early bird users. :)
And thanks a lot for being a part of our journey too. For those who don't know, @alexstrvinsky has been a part of Get Worm from the very beginning and has provided us a lot of valuable feedback, immense support and inspiration to help us shape the platform.
And that makes you more than awesome. :)
How beneficial is this to either party though?
Being rewarded for being an early user is nice, sure - doesn't make me any more inclined to use the startup.
Same for the startup, giving away these rewards are likely costing them (whether or not directly through cash/time) when realistically the users are just in it for the reward and don't actually care about the startup...
Do you think this is a sustainable model?
Reminds me a bit of Rocketclub where they'd promise shares in early startups and all that jazz... sounded amazing, did really well on PH and there was the financial dream of (imagine I had shares in the next Uber).... honestly have not heard a lot from them for a while, don't even know if they are doing well - I don't know anyone using them, or if they are, they are certainly not shouting it to the world how awesome they are (which is a problem) - and when I look at their website the quality is pretty low.
I feel like you could see similar issues.
How do you plan to tackle them?
@bentossell Ben, can't speak for all startups that were presented on Get Worm, but even though we've sent only postcards and stickers as a reward in July, 60% of people who came to us from Get Worm have been our active users almost 8 months since. Just for statistics :)
@alexstrvinsky yeah and I'm sure sometimes stickers are all it takes to please some people... it's crazy to see how kuku people are for stickers in the startup world (see what I did there 🙃)
Just not sure this strategy will be replicable across many startups and I have doubts on the quality and longevity
@bentossell You are right! And hence besides stickers and free beers, we also encourage startups to create a worm out of their own product/service offerings. We think this provides startups a cost effective way of making people to start using their product/service instead of spending on advertising with no guaranteed results.
And as PH community would agree, Early Adopters first and foremost are interested in the startup's product or service. So just like kickstarter and indiegogo, worms provide a little incentive and excitement to the process of joining a startup.
Finally regarding RocketClub, I believe @erik2048 is doing a great job - I recently saw RocketClub featured on TechCrunch! However, the fundamental model behind RocketClub and Get Worm is quite different. RocketClub promises to offer Stock Appreciation Rights to Startup's adopters in the long run, while we provide that "instant gratification" to the users through little worms! :D
@erik2048, feel free to jump in! :-)
@alexstrvinsky : Thanks for those stickers, our users loved it (including myself) :)
@sarthakmoghe My issue is that early users is always a tough set of users to satisfy....
Early users can be early for a number of reasons:
- exposure on a new platform (self-promotion)
- to have that username
- because they are genuinely interested
and many more... I guess you've added "to get t-shirts, stickers, beers etc to this too 😛"
Problem with early users is that they can be quick to get involved, give feedback, break the product, give suggestions, tell their friends etc etc but they could be the totally wrong target group. They could get involved for a number of reasons (some outlined above) - and incentivising them to jump on a new product with stickers (or similar) can also contribute to the declining quality of early users.
One of the best pieces of startup advice in the early stage is "Talk to your users" but its useless if all they did was come for a free t-shirt and they couldnt give a f*ck about your company.
Granted this is not going to be the case all of the time but it will certainly be a factor, I'm sure. Just trying to see the viability and longevity of something like this
I know the models between RocketClub and Get Worm are fundamentally different but the process seems familiar to me.
No disrespect to anyone... but being mentioned in TechCrunch doesn't mean you are necessarily doing well.
@bentossell I agree! I suppose there is always that "crossing the chasm" element to a startup's success. And while we may be able to boost their initial growth and increase adoption, user retention and loyalty can only come with a good product and customer service. I still believe that Early adopters get more excited to discover something new, something better over free tshirts. IMHO, both entrepreneurs and early adopters can be characterized as "pioneers" - people who aren't afraid to try.
And while we talk about the quality of early users, we should also take into account the quality (and quantity) of startups emerging everyday. So it may happen that a good startup might get a few 'free-loaders', there is a fair possibility that a poorly conceived startup can set its course on track with the feedback from some amazing early users who may have joined for the worm, but then felt invested in it. I remember @alexstrvinsky once told me that one of the EA she got via 'stickers' on Get Worm helped them translate kuku.io in a different language... I think this is the beauty of this relationship! (sorry went a bit poetic there :P)
And since we are not (yet) published on TechCrunch, I can't comment on its success. Perhaps @catherineshu would be kind enough to feature us like RocketClub and I can share my findings :D
Get Worm rewards early adopters for their critical role in helping a startup "start-up". Startups create exclusive early-bird offers (worms) for users to join them.
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