Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (October 16, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (October 16, 2019)
- After trouble sleeping we created sleep headphones and sold 1,000,000 pairs
- I built a $6M/year brand as an active duty soldier.
- Feeling lonely / lost after everyone quit our startup.
- How Much YouTube Pays Me For My #1 Ranked Video
- What's the proper way to get more recommendations on my Linkedin profile?
- How do you deal with stress?
- For people who want to are planning to start a blog...
- So i need to make at least $1000 a week (from home) advice?
- Video Editor or VFX?: Confused on Type of Freelancer to Hire
- Education; starting a preschool/daycare/charter-type school.
- Advice on starting a technology company in the era of Google and Apple
- Business Owners, would you be upset if an employee was starting the exact same business way outside of your business area?
- Bringing on CTO - looking for interesting profit sharing ways
- Fresh egg selling business idea.
- Round 2, Review my website you beautiful bastards
- Health insurance options when starting your own company?
- Really Struggling
- Platform for Founders a.k.a. YC Group Sessions
- What additional skills can I learn that will one day help me grow and scale a business to 7 and 8 figures?
- Wedzee - The ONLY marketplace for the wedding industry to buy and sell your new, used and custom wedding items nationwide!
- What is with the rampant downvoting in this sub
- How To Grow A Personal Account On Instagram (Works For Brand Accounts As Well)
- A note to upcoming entrepreneurs on how to get started
- A change in iOS 13 can put an end to Calm’s 1B valuation (and make AppStore better)
| Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (October 16, 2019) Posted: 16 Oct 2019 06:10 AM PDT Please use this thread to ask questions if you're new or even if you haven't started a business yet. Remember to search the sub first - the answers you need may be right at your fingertips. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| After trouble sleeping we created sleep headphones and sold 1,000,000 pairs Posted: 16 Oct 2019 08:16 AM PDT Being a family doctor, I needed a way to get back to sleep after taking patient calls in the middle of the night. My husband, computer programmer Jason Wolfe, suggested listening to soothing music to fall back asleep, but headphones were bulky and earbuds were extremely uncomfortable. Since there were no headphones specifically designed for sleeping on the market, we invented our own. We came up with the idea of putting soft speakers inside of a headband. I wore it that night, was able to fall asleep faster, and was amazed to find that it had stayed on all night. The idea actually worked! As a doctor, I saw so many patients taking sleeping pills, so I thought that maybe we should make some more to see if it could work for other people too. We set up a website, and even before we were done putting it together, someone stumbled upon it and emailed me. I asked him how he even found the page - there was no shopping cart, and we didn't even advertise it. He said that it was because the name just seemed to fit. He typed in SleepPhones.com on a whim! That was all the validation we needed for our product name. When we made him one, he loved it. Then the orders started coming in from all corners of the world. Since we were hand-making each one individually, we were busy just fulfilling orders along with working in our day jobs. I sewed and my husband soldered the first 500 sets at our kitchen table. Now, we are winning multiple regional and national awards, and my husband and I are committed to ensuring people all over the world live and sleep better. Because of this, AcousticSheep has been at the forefront of the sleep industry for the past 12 years. Who is your target demographic? Our biggest customer groups include people who have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, have a snoring bed mate (even snoring dogs!), and travellers. We have multiple models too, some geared towards people who fall asleep watching TV, people who don't have a smartphone, and people who like listening to ASMR . One guy in Kentucky told us that he was skeptical when his wife ordered SleepPhones because he was snoring. Well, after a week, she started to sleep so well that she started snoring. So then he had to order SleepPhones® for himself! How did you fund the idea initially? We started the business very organically. We went to Jo-Ann Fabrics to buy their on-sale fleece. We ordered speakers from Mouser.com. My husband bought a sewing machine for me for my birthday, and I bought him a soldering iron for his birthday. Getting off the ground was really inexpensive. The first major investment was filing for a patent. We used our savings to pay for that. We've been profitable since the beginning because we just bought what we needed. What motivated you to start your own business? We had no previous business background. I was a doctor, and my husband was a game developer. We were motivated to start the business because there were no similar products on the market. As a family doctor, I was able to assist ~20 patients a day. With SleepPhones®, that reach has grown exponentially. We are motivated by helping people all over the world achieve quality, restorative sleep. Our family and friends thought it was a cute idea in the beginning. We didn't say much about it for a few years while we were growing it at the beginning. When it was obvious that it could be a commercial success, everyone was very supportive. We didn't quit our day jobs until we were sure we could live on the business earnings. Do you have any advice for someone just starting out? One of the things we've learned is to follow our gut rather than fully trusting "experts." There are many people who speak very confidently and want to sell you their services. If they didn't really listen to you when you were telling them your needs, they probably can't really help you. Over time, our success has attracted people who want to either ride our coat tails or push us down. Our knockoffs are a problem, but we can also choose to view it as flattery. Ultimately what motivates us is simply that we are really helping many people throughout the world get better sleep. How do you protect yourself from competition? The best defense is a strong offense in our case. The more SleepPhones® we sell, the more we are able to insulate ourselves from knockoffs. As the originals and the best, we need to continue to innovate, releasing new and more advanced products over time. While patents and other IP are helpful, and we have several, it doesn't benefit the world to spend an inordinate amount of time and money paying lawyers. It's more important to win on the business side of things and sell products to the people who want and need them. So having the best products and the best business strategy is our offensive strategy. What are the top 3-5 apps your business could not run without? As a mother of two, I cannot always be in the office. With our internal messaging system, all internal communications are archived and I can review conversations between employees and contribute when need be. Shopify lets us sell securely to people all over the world. G Suite allows us to collaborate and share files seamlessly in real time. Are there any releases you can tell us about? We are transitioning from being a purely hardware company to incorporating software. My husband, a former video game developer, has created an artificial intelligence system that will help the world figure out what types of music helps people sleep the best. The project is in Beta testing now, and it is available for download in the Apple and Android App stores. If you enjoyed this interview, the original is here. [link] [comments]  |
| I built a $6M/year brand as an active duty soldier. Posted: 16 Oct 2019 09:44 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Nick Bare of Bare Performance Nutrition, a brand that makes sports nutrition supplements Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Nick Bare and I own Bare Performance Nutrition. We are a sports nutrition and health supplement company based out of central Texas, just about 20 minutes north of Austin. Other than being an entrepreneur, I also create social media content for hundreds of thousands of people, spent 4 years in the US Army as an active duty Infantry Officer and am a soon to be published author of my book titled, 25 Hours A Day. I started my company in 2012 making around $15,000 in the first year of business and today we are on track to do $6 Million in revenue for the year. I built the brand while working as an active duty Soldier, sleeping very little and working very much. Bare Performance Nutrition has always specialized in sports performance (pre-workout, pump enhancers, whey protein, BCAAs) but is now adding to the line of health supplements (greens superfoods, red superfoods, multi-vitamin, joint support) due to the increased demand and popularity from the current customers. The flight is our flagship product (pre-workout) which launched the brand in 2012 and has been one of our fastest moving products to date. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvDLNE0ysjM What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?In 2012 I was a junior in college studying Nutrition at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I was also in the ROTC program there so I knew that upon graduating college I would be commissioning into the US Army as an officer. My friends and I were your typical broke college students and we loved weight training. Because we couldn't continue to buy our own pre-workout supplements due to personal funds, or lack thereof, we decided to all go in together and purchase bulk ingredients to make our own pre-workout supplements. We purchased caffeine, beta-alanine, citrulline malate, tyrosine, etc. We would mix them up in my dorm room, throw them back and hit the gym every day. We didn't know how to flavor them properly and didn't have the correct scales to measure anything less than a gram so who knows how much caffeine we were consuming! My friends loved it and I would even have kids from other dorms stopping by to try my "homemade" pre-workout. As this became a huge interest to me I decided to pursue it further but knew that if I wanted to create a business I would have to work with an FDA regulated manufacturing facility. After returning from a 30-day training exercise at Fort Lewis, WA I decided to go all-in and work to launch Bare Performance Nutrition. Sports performance and especially dietary supplements had always been a massive passion and interest to me. At the time, the military associated bank, USAA, was offering a loan of up to $25,000 for ROTC cadets about to graduate. Many of these college students and friends of mine took out this loan to buy new cars, take vacations, get engaged and married, but I decided that this would be my funding to launch my company. I worked with a US-based manufacturer to formulate, produce and test my first two products, which were Flight (pre-workout) and Intra-Flight (BCAAs). Other than my burning desire and passion for sports performance, I had absolutely zero experience building, operating or scaling a brand. To this day I will always remember telling my dad about the plan to launch Bare Performance Nutrition and how successful it was going to be in the first year of business. I vividly remember him saying, "if it were that easy then everyone would do it" - and he was right. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.I found my first contact manufacturer online through some deep google researching. Over the years we have worked with a few different manufacturers until we found the perfect ones. Today, we work with two contract manufacturers (one is in Texas and the other is in California). In the beginning, when we were just getting started and moving very little volume, there was never a relationship established between myself and the manufacturers. We were a small fish in a large pond. Today we talk with our manufacturers on a daily basis, and usually multiple times a day. I personally formulated our first two products that entered the market. I worked with the contract manufacturer lab team and R&D department to bring it to life, but the majority of the input came from my research. Even though I was studying Nutrition in college, we never covered sports performance and especially dietary supplement research, so I would spend hours in the evening researching ingredients and their effectiveness. I initially put together a formula, sent it over to the manufacturer to price and received the quote - over $30 per bottle! At the price point, I would have to sell this pre-workout for it would be shunned in the market! Over the next couple of weeks, I went back and forth with the manufacturer to create the best product possible at the most reasonable price too. We removed some ingredients and added others, changing the dosage of some and ended up getting our price point to exactly where it needed to be. It ended up taking about 12 weeks to approve a formula, finalize the flavoring profile and put everything into production (which was another 12 weeks). After locking in the product with the manufacturer it was time to set up my logistics/ warehousing space - AKA my bedroom. At the time I was living in a small college apartment, on Philadelphia Street at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, with 5 other guys. My room itself was about 100 square feet at the most. I set up a packing station, filled the room with boxes and packing supplies, and prepared for the big launch. Because I didn't have enough room for all the inventory in my apartment I had to store some of it at my parent's house, which was 3 hours away! Prepared? Probably not, but I was like a kid on Christmas morning ready to go! That first launch, while was extremely exciting, didn't play out as I quite imagined. The loan that I took out just about only covered the cost of the inventory, so I had no money left over for label design, graphic work, marketing agencies or business advisors. I became the swiss army pocket knife for Bare Performance Nutrition. I had a friend design our labels in exchange for some free pre-workout (once it launched), another buddy designed our website and I dieted down for a photo shoot to create some marketing material for the product launch. Even the photographer was a friend who helped for free. The Evolution Of Our Labels: Our first products and labels Our second round of labels The third round of labels Our current labels (after our rebrand) Some of our first marketing material pieces and the result of the photoshoot I dieted down for in 2012. Describe the process of launching the business.I thought my launch strategy was going to kill it. I linked up with some fairly successful fitness YouTubers and negotiated some free products for a shout out/review on their social media platforms. In 2012, the fitness industry wasn't nearly as saturated as it is now and large fitness YouTube channels weren't one in a dozen. I sent the YouTubers their product a few weeks before launch, gave them enough time to test it out and then waited for their reviews. About half of the YouTubers talked about the product and the other half I never heard from, but it wasn't necessarily the hype I was expecting. Launch day was here. I had the website built, marketing material and information displayed, and ready to make it live! I pressed "GO" and ...nothing…. A few sales trickled in from friends and family over the next couple of days but not the buzz I was expecting. I thought that at least a few thousand people that heard about it from the YouTube mentions would stop by the site, all of my friends and family would have supported my new project and at the very least I would sell out of half the inventory - I was wrong. I quickly learned that this was going to be harder than I ever imagined and launching a successful business wasn't this fairy tale dream. Year 1 = $15,000 in revenue. I continued to work on building the brand over the next 12 months or so in my free time but I was also preparing to enter the US Army. In May of 2013, I was commissioned as an Infantry Officer and was shipped to Fort Benning, GA to complete the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Ranger School, and Airborne School. After spending a year in Georgia I was sent to Fort Hood, TX for my first duty assignment. When I arrived in Texas in early 2014 I decided to start my own social media platforms. Initially, I started by sharing workout and nutrition advice on YouTube but over time I started adding some military topics and behind the scenes of building Bare Performance Nutrition. The intent, in the beginning, was not to drive sales to BPN but I knew I had to create an online community around my personal brand and eventually the company. I quickly realized the power of providing value to the online fitness space, creating that online community I was looking for and eventually the time to sell would come. This wasn't necessarily a strategic plan but after a few years of very little sales, I was willing to try something new. Getting comfortable talking to a camera, editing the footage and turning it into a story was definitely not one of my strengths (in the beginning) as you can see by one of my first videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjOaiSqJBSc Year 3 was doing about $20,000 in revenue. After being in business for 4 years and in the Army for 2, my unit was sent to South Korea for a 9-month rotation. At this point, my YouTube channel was sitting at around 30,000 subscribers and we were generating between $2,000 and $3,000 a month in revenue. I decided when I arrived in South Korea that I was going to spend every waking moment, that wasn't spent doing my Army job, building my business. My duties and responsibilities as an Infantry Platoon Leader always came first, but when I was in my barracks off work - I was building my brand. I listened to podcasts, read books, taught myself videography and photography, social media marketing and even how to code our website. After 9 months in South Korea, I was able to grow my YouTube channel to over 100,000 subscribers, generate over $10,000 a month in revenue and build out a new website for Bare Performance Nutrition. We finally hit the six-figure mark as a business and the following year hit seven-figures. As my social media platforms grew, so did Bare Performance Nutrition's revenue. With more exposure to my story, the brand and my work ethic, we had people from all across the world showing up to our site, purchasing products and supporting our vision. This is when I finally realized that there had to be a strategic plan that grew the social media platforms and ultimately our business. In the first year of producing YouTube content, I was able to grow my channel to 20,000 subscribers. I had no clue what I was doing but just kept throwing darts at a dartboard hoping one would stick - and one did. In the fall of 2016, I uploaded a YouTube video while stationed in South Korea called, "The Day In The Life Of An Infantry Platoon Leader" and it took off. It grew my channel about 50,000 subscribers in a month and the video reached over 1,000,000 people. I then realized that there was a recipe for creating good YouTube content. For starters, there has to be some type of value that is offered in your videos and content. In my case, it's educating people in fitness and nutrition to improve their health and help them reach their fitness goals. I also share my life and how hard we've worked to build our company over the past 7 years. There are education, motivation, and personality behind the video series. We add comedy, humor, and context to what we are talking about through story-telling and real-life experiences. As the creator, you have to find out what problem it is you are trying to solve in your online community and add your own personal touch behind it. YouTube Video (Day In The Life Of An Infantry Platoon Leader) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CogKnDZziBI YouTube Video (Field Training In Korea) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEer_dMLeMk imageLeft: Me with my platoon Non-Commissioned Officers in South Korea. Right: My brother, Preston, packing orders in our first warehouse in Round Rock, TX Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?As a brand, we have always focused on the consumer, the community and driving engagement through education, motivation, and storytelling. We leveraged our social media following to create interactive, relatable and valuable content over the years. After starting a YouTube channel in 2014 I realized the power it had to create a community. Bare Performance Nutrition is not a product - it is a brand. A brand has a voice, a vision, values, and a story. I came to realize while building Bare Performance Nutrition, that one of our competitive advantages was transparency. We took the consumer and audience behind the scenes of everything. We documented the process of moving into new warehouses, products being created at our manufacturing facilities, packing and shipping orders all over the world and handling customer service 24/7. Here are some examples of how we've done that: How We Make Our Supplements https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwWodbDx4zE Making changes to our old warehouse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ch6VSFCSDg&t Current Warehouse Tour https://www.instagram.com/p/B2zo7ImgCf-/ Up until 2017, we had grown Bare Performance Nutrition 100% organically with no paid advertising. We were able to generate 7-figures with zero facebook ads, email marketing or planned campaigns. All of the team's efforts to grow the brand and drive sales were focused on social media. We launched 2 YouTube videos a week, stayed active on Instagram and Snapchat and posted regularly on Facebook. After 2017, I decided to take a more deliberate and proactive approach to scale the brand, and it paid off. We focused efforts on paid Facebook ads (both prospecting and remarketing), started placing emphasis on building our email list and began utilizing social media influencers to share the Bare Performance Nutrition brand with their followers. In 2017, with a planned execution of facebook/Instagram ads, email marketing, and organic social media posting (with paid influencers as well) we were able to generate over $120,000 in 24 hours on a 20% site-wide sale - our biggest up until that point. We spent a total of $10,000 in ad-spend leading up to and on the day of that sale which generated $120,000. To this day - I am a very strong believer in the way we have built our brand and will continue to build the brand. Like I said earlier, we are not a product. You will not find us on a late-night infomercial selling a product for 3 easy payments of $9.99. We are a brand. Our focus is on the consumer and how we can help them. We use social media content (that is generated daily) to educate, motivate and inspire our audience to take action on their lives and push past physical and mental barriers they place on themselves. Our job is to help people reach their goals. After we create content that is valuable, informative and useful we will then place it into a marketing sequence. We run Facebook/Instagram ads split between prospecting and remarketing, send out 2-3 emails to our email list each week and work with an outsourced SEO company to optimize our content and back-end network. There isn't a day that goes by where we don't receive an email, DM, phone call or social media comment that says, "I can't believe how fast you guys shipped out my order!". That is our goal and our mission. Create the best products on the market, educate and inspire our audience and take care of our customers as quickly and correctly as possible. Our Black Friday Instagram Promotional Video https://www.instagram.com/p/BqapD38nPi7/ An Instagram promotion we did for our whey protein product https://www.instagram.com/p/BvhUTixAsDP/ An Instagram video we did to show customers how much we care about fast shipping https://www.instagram.com/p/BqFsvE_FNII/ How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Our current headquarters is located just north of Austin, TX in a 10,000 sq. ft. warehouse. My brother, Preston, moved down to Texas in 2016 to help grow the business while I was still stationed in South Korea and today he leads operations and purchasing for Bare Performance Nutrition. We have two full-time employees packing, shipping and receiving every day. On an average day, we will send out between 200-250 orders. Big sales or new product releases usually result in about 3,500-5,000 orders (over 48 hours). Our revenue is about 80% direct to consumer, 15% amazon and 5% wholesale accounts. We pride ourselves on not being a huge discount brand and only run two sales each year - Black Friday and 4th of July (each being 20% off site-wide). We use the Shopify Plus platform and our current analytics are listed below:
Bare Performance Nutrition's focus for the next 12 months is very heavy. We are positioning the brand to scale. As mentioned earlier, we have a full line of performance supplements but are now breaking into the health and wellness category even more. Right now we have a reds superfood supplement, multi-vitamin, joint health product and nutrition bars in production. We are also working on a sleep aid and collagen powder supplement for future release and launch. We recently released phase 1 of our app (available for iPhone and Android) and will be launching phase 2 in the middle of 2020, which will be a customized training platform run by our newest employee joining the team this spring. For the past three years, we have doubled revenue year-over-year. We expect to do the same moving into 2020 with annual revenue to reach over $10 million. Our long term goals are aligned with the company's vision and mission. We have recently hired a full-time videographer/photographer which will allow the team to create more content, for more platforms and reach/educate/inspire even more people. The focus behind the majority of our content right now is to provide the education, resources, and motivation to facilitate changes to improve our customer's lives. While doubling revenue year-over-year seems very bold moving forward into the future - it is always the goal. However, a projection is just a wish without a plan of action. With a whole new line of supplements (health line - called the Strong series) added to Bare Performance Nutrition line-up, we have the opportunity to generate more revenue from our current customers and to also reach a new market. In the next week, we are also launching our first nutrition bar called the Field Bar, which has been a work in progress over the last 12 months. The team has outlined a plan to align content through podcasts, Youtube videos, and collaborations, influencer marketing and my new future book launch, 25 Hours A Day, to drive more traffic and sales to our website. Our Book titled, 25 Hours A Day, launching early 2020. 25 Hours A Day is about my story of building Bare Performance Nutrition while serving as an Active Duty Infantry Officer, stationed in South Korea. Lessons I've learned in the military, stories from Ranger School and the power to "GO ONE MORE". Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Over the past 7 years of scaling Bare Performance Nutrition I have learned endless amounts of lessons, made countless mistakes and wasted tons of money, but all for a good purpose. Learning through experience has been the most rewarding and beneficial aspect of being a growing entrepreneur. Looking back to our first year in business I realize I did just about everything wrong. I think my biggest mistake is that I didn't personally have a vision for the company. Yes, I wanted to obviously grow it as large and as fast as possible, but I somehow missed the valuable lesson of supply and demand. I had the supply. I had a couple of hundred bottles of pre-workout and amino acids but I had zero demand. I was trying to sell to everyone and everything, with no target market, no niche branding, and no voice. Nothing made us stand out. A few years after our initial launch in 2012 I completely rebranded the company. This meant new labels, new logos, a new website and a fresh new look to Bare Performance Nutrition. I attacked this rebranding opportunity to give a voice and vision for the company. Not only for my personal vision, but also for everyone who came across BPN, bought from BPN and worked for BPN. This rebrand, new look, and new target resulted in a 750% increase in revenue in just one year! If you haven't picked up on it by now I love building Bare Performance Nutrition to help people reach their goals, improve their lives and grow a massive community. As stated before, we are a BRAND and not just a PRODUCT. We pride ourselves in the content we create via YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Podcasts. With that being said, all of the content we have created also amplifies our paid advertising efforts. Whether we are running Facebook and Instagram ads (prospecting/remarketing) or sending out email campaigns, we have endless content online to back it up and support our brand. Social proof is a powerful tool and helps provide the context of where we are heading next! The vision of Bare Performance Nutrition is now clear as day and I can firmly say that it is understood through the consumer, the team and anyone else who comes across our social media platforms. We are here to be the best supplement company ever by educating, motivating and building a family through BPN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2AD_i0uhTo&t=512s What platform/tools do you use for your business?There are a million and one third party apps and solutions out there to help run your business, but many of them don't deliver! We have tested what feels like hundreds of them, but are now set in a schedule with a few that really do drive results. Shopify - As I've stated earlier, we do use Shopify Plus. I can't say enough great things about this platform and everything that it offers. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to create an online eCommerce store. Email Marketing - We started using FAM (Fully Automated Marketing) for our email marketing a few months ago and have seen some pretty great results! We were not harnessing the power of email marketing to our full potential over the past couple of years but FAM has helped us re-engage that audience. We recently ran a 60-day contest on social media that offered a FREE home gym giveaway ($5,000 value). Through the efforts of organic social media and paid advertising ($5,000 ad spend), we grew our email list by 25,000 and Instagram followers by 20,000! Yotpo - We use Yotpo (powerhouse plan) to ask for and receive reviews on our products. This has been a great source of verified social proof and helps increase conversions for not only returning but more importantly new customers! We are now approaching 10,000 verified reviews on our site with the majority of them being 5 out of 5-star ratings. Shogun Page Builder - Shopify's page templates are fairly generic and hard to customize without some complex coding. We have found a third-party app called Shogun Page Builder to really help transform our product pages resulting in greater conversions! Product Page Example on this link. Final Cut Pro - We produce A LOT of video content each week. Final Cut Pro (for apple) is great and easy to use tool for video editing and producing. Photoshop/Lightroom - In addition to video editing, we produce about 10x as many photos and graphics as we do videos for social media. Photoshop and Lightroom (adobe products) are great tools to create banners, graphics, ads and to clean up photos in post-production. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Google is a powerful tool. Every question you have, every example you need and every problem you are experiencing has answers online. It's how I learned everything. I vividly remember sitting in my barracks room while stationed in South Korea spending 4-5 hours a night learning how to build a business. The result was transforming a $15,000 brand into multiple 6-figure brands in less than 9 months. It's 2019 - there is no excuse for not being smart enough, for not having the resources and for not having the knowledge. Much of my influence has been driven by life experiences and putting myself out there - something I recommend to everyone. With that being said, I'll leave part of my upcoming book below as context: Conventional wisdom tells you to live as if you have fewer hours in a day. They say to cram everything in as if you only had 23 hours in which to get it done. This never made sense to me. It gave you less actual time and often results in rushing to failure. I'll never forget the moment I learned to stop rushing toward failure. I was a student in the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, working with some Captains from the hard-core 75th Ranger Regiment. I asked one of them for advice on how to be the best leader possible when I arrived at my platoon at Fort Hood, Texas. He pointed to another Captain across the room. "You see that guy right there? When the shit hits the fan, when chaos strikes, that guy stays as cool as the other side of the pillow. He doesn't rush to failure but takes the time to assess the situation, develop a plan quickly, and executes it on demand. That is the guy you want to be." I realized that the goal isn't to rush but to slow things down as much as possible, even time itself. We all have 24 hours in a day, but it's how you choose to live those 24 hours that makes the difference. When I started my business, I sacrificed sleep in order to find extra time. The bottom line, I was in control of the day. I controlled my time, and in the end, I controlled what it was I was about to create. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?I'll give 2 pieces of advice to entrepreneurs who want to get started and believe it is their passion because your business must be that - 100% passion. Your business is a living, breathing model of yourself as the owner. First - you MUST go all in. There is no dabbling as an entrepreneur in the beginning. You may find exceptions to the rule or experienced entrepreneurs who have systems in place to delegate brand building, but in the beginning, you MUST go all in. It wasn't until I dedicated every waking moment to building Bare Performance Nutrition, spending every ounce of energy and focus after working a full-time job, that I saw results and growth. Going all-in also doesn't come with a timeline. You may see results in 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years but if you have a vision and a solid brand/product then it is working through the wins and learning from the losses that direct you to where you want and need to be. Second - many don't take action due to paralysis by analysis. This was something I never feared or had a problem with. It is probably why I started Bare Performance Nutrition from the start, took out a loan as a broke college student, had zero experience or knowledge on how to build a brand or held any skills required to make it work. I ran off pure passion from the beginning but was never stopped by over-analyzing every step along the way. It is something I see and hear from new entrepreneurs every day. They question every move they think about making, they wait for the perfect time and in the end, they never end up moving forward at all. Why? Their ability to over-analyze everything keeps them in the same place - stagnant. Don't be this person. Mitigate risk, weigh your options and make educated decisions but don't be paralyzed by analysis. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?At the moment we are looking to bring someone in house to take over all paid advertising. A highly motivated individual who wants to be part of a fast-paced team and has the skills required to run Facebook/Instagram ads, google ads and optimize our content through SEO. I personally do not like hiring remote employees. We have done a great job at building an amazing culture at Bare Performance Nutrition and much of that comes down to the entire team seeing and believing in the vision. Being a team player and bringing positive energy to work is a requirement to be part of the Bare Performance Nutrition staff. Where can we go to learn more?If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM [link] [comments]  |
| Feeling lonely / lost after everyone quit our startup. Posted: 16 Oct 2019 04:28 PM PDT To keep this short because the world knows I could ramble my fucking head off.. (spoiler : it's still a long ramble) I think I've used business as a form of survival, the way people do with love. I constantly have business ideas, always making money here and there, I'm always helping my friends and family with what I know. I work third shift and the entire time I'm listening to Ted Talks on business. I recently shifted all focus to a startup, a couple of people I know and myself came up with. I put everything into this. When everyone quit yesterday, I was okay at first... I brushed it off and took it as a, "this sucks but oh well". I genuinely felt fine as I know this happens, a lot. Then last night at work, I'm listening to a podcast and realized I have no business plans. I have no partners. I have no ideas. I have nothing in the works. It sent me into a almost panic attack that I had to redirect with conscious breathing techniques. I all of a sudden felt VERY alone, very scared, and very.... for a lack of better word, like a loser. I feel I have become codependent on having a business idea to grow. That the idea, the process, keeps me from feeling lonely. I know you're wondering why I don't just start my own. Something entirely for myself.. I'm a wedding photographer. It's solely supported me at times, but it's not something I love anymore. The pay isn't all that great either. I hate being the face of things, because well, I'm ugly. I don't feel comfortable going live on social media, posting selfies, you know, the whole "you are what people want" bullshit. That's why I focus on other people's dreams instead of my own. I believe in myself, I have a strong work ethic, I'm resourceful, well rounded, business savvy & creative, I just don't want to share all of who I am personally. If I could do away with personal social media all together, I fucking would. Having a business with other people, I can get away with hiding behind the scenes. Anyway.. I'm sure by this time next week, I'll figure it all out. I'm just feeling defeated by the new findings of myself. [link] [comments]  |
| How Much YouTube Pays Me For My #1 Ranked Video Posted: 16 Oct 2019 05:56 AM PDT There seems to be a cloud of mystery around how much average YouTube channels earn. I regularly post YouTube videos and thought It'd be interesting to share how much my videos make including one that is number 1 ranked. My videos fall into two categories:
I have a few videos ranked for various searches but one in particular is ranked number 1 over 10 or so search phrases. This is a video where I learn to build a card pyramid with an entire deck of cards (silly I know) but it averages around 200-250 views every single day. With the number one ranking in just about every related search this video earns an average of $0.43 cents per day or around $13 a month. (full analytics for geeks) For comparison another one of my skill learning videos is ranked 3-5 for various search terms. This video averages 40-50 views every single day and earns a whopping $0.04-$0.05 per day. (full analytics for friggen nerds). A lot of what matters here is the CPM or amount you earn per 1000 monetized views on a video (monetized views is important because only around 50% of all views are monetized due to ad blockers and whatnot). The CPM on my skill learning videos averages around $2.50 where my business related content averages a CPM of around $10.00. The trade-off here is that in my case skill learning (entertainment based) content gains a larger view count per video while business content (educational based) gets fewer, so they tend to average each other out. In one case a business related video of mine hit a CPM of over $20.00 and out earned the combined total of every other search ranked video for it's first month. (more analytics, seriously?) However this video will quickly die down and earn less in the long run when it is not being regularly searched. Why even run ads?
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| What's the proper way to get more recommendations on my Linkedin profile? Posted: 16 Oct 2019 03:01 PM PDT |
| Posted: 16 Oct 2019 03:20 PM PDT I recently launched a photography business. It's been going good. Like, really good. It's literally the most successful thing I've ever done and I feel like if I fuck up, all my reputation that I used to start the business will be lost and I won't be able to recapture the success. It's enormously stressful. How do you deal with the fear of failure? [link] [comments]  |
| For people who want to are planning to start a blog... Posted: 16 Oct 2019 02:02 PM PDT Money can be tight when you're just starting something new. I wrote a step wise tutorial on how to setup a forever free blog using Google cloud. It's primarily focused on the forever free VPS that Google provides which can easily run WordPress site of upto 10k users per day. So if you're short on money but want to start blogging, check it out. If you're just entering the blogging world and want to try it out before committing [link] [comments]  |
| So i need to make at least $1000 a week (from home) advice? Posted: 16 Oct 2019 06:49 PM PDT so like i want to give more funding to my youtube channel, to gain more audince = more money. Which to put it simple, money make money and im sure you know what im saying. Here's the thing, i dont have job for now, which i dont want to have job actually. But, i want to make at least $1K a week with my studio equipment, fast internet, high end pc, professional camera gear and so on. Yes this is funny, i have this expensive setup but why im still asking to ask how to make money, dont ask why its complicated lol but yeah back to topic how can i do it? any advice? what should i do? [link] [comments]  |
| Video Editor or VFX?: Confused on Type of Freelancer to Hire Posted: 16 Oct 2019 06:44 PM PDT Bottomline I'm working on making a dating/singles lifestyle YouTube channel and will take care of the voiceover but need someone that is able to insert videos, memes, audio, and intro/outro. I'm on upwork and fiverr trying to search for the right mix of talent - what exactly are the working titles for these video Jedis? [link] [comments]  |
| Education; starting a preschool/daycare/charter-type school. Posted: 16 Oct 2019 06:39 PM PDT Background: I've started 2 small business and sold them. I've worked for various marketing agencies. My entire family is a bunch of teachers, like 4 out of 7 immediate adult family members. I've been mulling over opening a charter type school (ex. Montessori) or a hybrid daycare/pre-k/elementary kids for ages 3 to 5 (pre-school) or 5 to 11 (elementary school). This is what I have so far.
Questions/comments/concerns:
This idea has been festering for far too long. Tell me I'm stupid, poke holes in this idea, and hopefully you'll give me good advice. Thank you for your thoughtful response. Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on starting a technology company in the era of Google and Apple Posted: 16 Oct 2019 01:54 PM PDT I believe that I've got an original a future-thinking idea in the advertising technology space. However, I'm fully aware that the likes of Google and Apple have hundreds of thousands of patents each in this area spanning from the sublime to the ridiculous. What advice can you give me for starting a business? It's virtually impossible to determine whether my idea is already (at least partially) covered in an existing patent and I would hate to invest time and resource into my idea, only to get a cease and desist letter if it succeeds. Has anyone already walked this path? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Oct 2019 01:45 PM PDT The company NEVER works with clients from the area of your employees, so they really are not a threat. The business idea is not uncommon, and a lot of competitors do business the same way, so they aren't taking any specific ideas from you, they are just running their own in a different region. The employee still represents your company well, and has no intention of doing your company dirty Would this upset you if you found out? [link] [comments]  |
| Bringing on CTO - looking for interesting profit sharing ways Posted: 16 Oct 2019 05:15 PM PDT I am bringing on a CTO to my company - the product is already built and he is coming in to fix some bugs and further develop and maintain the platform. We do not have the money nor cash flow to pay him, so we are offering him equity. He says he doesn't want equity, just wants profits. I told him that I'd prefer if he has equity to have a vested interest. I want to make sure we are fair to him, yet protect myself and the companies interest. I own 50% of the company now, and would want to assign around 25% to him. Also, I want to ensure that moving forward, if the company were to be doing hundreds of millions a year in profit, that he isn't getting 25% of it. Just trying to think of innovative ways to profit share with him if he doesn't want equity in the company. [link] [comments]  |
| Fresh egg selling business idea. Posted: 16 Oct 2019 07:11 AM PDT I stumbled upon a business idea I can do after hours,I have converted our currency into dollars so please don't use the price as a comparison but rather to gauge ROI.There is a egg farm close to my condo that sells a tray of large eggs for $1.94,this sells for $4.01 in the supermarkets.Going rate for reselling these trays of eggs in the informal market is $4.01,and that gives you a profit of $1.07 per tray excluding gas money which is minimal.So my idea is getting a cheap mobile phone for orders via whattsapp and advertising to all the condo complexes around me and there are plenty and setting set delivery days and times for each and having dedicated whattsapp groups for each condo housing complex.I don't need any health licensce or permit to resell eggs where I stay so keep that in mind.Any advice regarding any aspect of this venture? [link] [comments]  |
| Round 2, Review my website you beautiful bastards Posted: 16 Oct 2019 03:16 PM PDT Hey r/Entrepreneur I have once posted before my URL, I then took yalls feedback and improved my beloved site. Now it is time for ROUND 2. Fight! [link] [comments]  |
| Health insurance options when starting your own company? Posted: 16 Oct 2019 03:06 PM PDT This is for Americans. I'm about to quit my job and start my own thing, but trying to figure out what I should do for health insurance. What are good plans and options to look at outside of Obamacare? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Oct 2019 02:52 PM PDT I'm dropshipping on shopify, and whilst my stores are built fairly well, I have been IP and MAC address banned from facebook ads, google ads and twitter ads, which leaves me with very few traffic source choices, and I'm really struggling for options. Any help would be greatly appreciated [link] [comments]  |
| Platform for Founders a.k.a. YC Group Sessions Posted: 16 Oct 2019 02:18 PM PDT For those of you who never attended YC Startup School let me explain what group sessions are. It's an hour long video call meetup of founders. They meet weekly and share their experiences, give feedback on products, discuss various startup topics 'et cetera'. School is 10 weeks long. That means after 10 weeks all the meetups are closed for another year. Until another Startup School starts. So I have put together a similar platform called [Wiikly](www.wiikly.us). Here you can schedule as many meetups as you need. You can discuss various topics like: market research, user feedbacks, growth, technical stuff 'et cetera'. Please, join me on this journey to help each other. You can sign up online. If you have any questions feel free to e-mail me at: giorgi.kakhiani13@gmail.com P.S. if you are in the business of providing services to startups I'd recommend you to attend/schedule meetups, consult founders for free and build relationships to turn us (founders) into your customers later on. P.P.S. if for some reason above link doesn't work click here to visit wiikly - www.wiikly.us [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Oct 2019 02:05 PM PDT I know this might sound like a ridiculous question, but I've recently come to the realization that I have no hard/technical skills. I work in tech sales and my day to day consists of cold calling, emailing, networking, giving presentations, etc. I'm grateful for the job because it's very lucrative and has flexible hours, but I'd like to do more. My only skills in life are sales, communications, networking, management, etc (all soft skills). I really have no interests or hobbies other than working and hanging out, but I think it's time that I develop more as I've hit my mid-20s and have a ton of time with no real responsibilities. Dropshipping interested me at first because of the success stories, working from a laptop at home, and scaling fast, but I have no interest in scamming, selling courses, or having customers wait 3-4 weeks to receive a shitty product, so I dropped that idea quickly. I'm looking for ideas/suggestions on what skills I can start learning that I can eventually pair with sales to build a business that I can scale and work on long term. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 16 Oct 2019 01:57 PM PDT We are Wedzee, a spanking brand new marketplace site solely dedicated to wedding decor and items. We are looking for all recent brides that may have leftover decor they would like to sell, heck it's FREE to list! Wedzee is a marketplace designed to connect former and future brides, wedding planners and small business owners. It is a safe and secure way to buy new and gently used wedding dresses, décor and other wedding and event-related items. Our vision is to be the premier destination for discovering classic and trendy wedding items at great prices. We are a unique community that allows former brides to easily turn used items into cash, and future brides to find great deals for a memorable touch to their special day. Our Wedzee Guarantee protects buyers from fraud or misinterpreted items with a money-back Guarantee. Products ship quickly and easily through pre-addressed, discounted priority shipping labels downloaded directly through Wedzee. Support is also available to ensure that all buyers' and seller's experiences are successful each and every transaction. [link] [comments]  |
| What is with the rampant downvoting in this sub Posted: 16 Oct 2019 01:50 PM PDT Just looking through the first and second page and nearly 50% of posts are at zero. This is ridiculous. What is with the culture of downvoting every post that isn't your own? Some of these posts are perfectly on topic. [link] [comments]  |
| How To Grow A Personal Account On Instagram (Works For Brand Accounts As Well) Posted: 16 Oct 2019 01:42 PM PDT Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well. I've just published a video that I've promised I will on how to grow a personal Instagram account. About a month ago I've published a video on how to do follow-unfollow method properly in 2019 and it received pretty good feedback, but as you all probably know, follow-unfollow doesn't really work for a personal account, especially not since the June 2019 update. But there is a twist that you can apply (actually 3) to make it work for personal accounts as well. Since I've seen a lot of people struggle with growing on Instagram in 2019 (especially when it comes to personal accounts) I wanted to share my methods with everyone. All three methods work pretty well in 2019 (especially method 2 and 3), since I'm not doing any client work and I never did, I didn't need to grow my personal account and I actually didn't even have a personal account until a month ago, but I've grown 2 brand accounts (ecom stores) using these methods and I also have friends who are successfully growing their personal accounts using these methods. If you want you can check the video here: https://youtu.be/mo8PCQeLuOQ I'm really sorry I haven't transcribed this video yet and that I'm posting like this, but I've just got my first 200 subscribers a few minutes before publishing the video, and I'll go celebrate with my friends (I didn't have much time to celebrate when I got my first 100 subs, so I've promised that I'll make up once I hit 200). I will find time to transcribe it tomorrow and I'll be posting a transcript for those of you who don't like to learn by watching videos. I really hope this helps some of you and that you don't mind me posting just a link without much else. Hope you have great rest of your day & if you have any questions feel free to post here and I'm going to answer tomorrow as soon as I wake up + I'll be posting a full transcript, so if you don't like watching videos just wait till tomorrow! [link] [comments]  |
| A note to upcoming entrepreneurs on how to get started Posted: 16 Oct 2019 05:18 PM PDT Don't try to be smart. Don't try to be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Don't try to create the new IG or Slack. Don't try to chase customers. Don't try to change the world. Just sell what people want to buy. And how do you know? Observe. Ask questions. [link] [comments]  |
| A change in iOS 13 can put an end to Calm’s 1B valuation (and make AppStore better) Posted: 16 Oct 2019 09:37 AM PDT A change in iOS 13 can put an end to Calm's 1B valuation (and make AppStore better) "You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out." The last few years were big for non-gaming subscription-based apps in the Apple App Store. During this period, several simple apps started making millions of dollars per month. For example, Celebrity Voice Changer makes over $3M per month and raked in almost $30M in the past few years. QR Code Reader by Tinylab made over $800K last month and over $13M over the last few years. An app called Life Advisor generated over $1M in revenue in the last month alone. Some of the companies developing pretty basic apps have even become unicorns. In February, Calm raised $88M in funding at a $1B valuation. The maker of Facetune app raised $135M at a unicorn valuation In July. But how do they do this? These apps aren't powered by any innovative technology; they don't have network effects; and they are pretty easy to copy. So what is their secret sauce? Subscriptions. To be more specific, the obscure way that subscriptions used to work in iOS. I said "used to work" because Apple made a small change to subscriptions in iOS 13, the latest version of its mobile operating system. This change went unnoticed by media outlets covering iOS 13's release, but I believe it will have a profound impact on the mobile apps ecosystem in the Apple App Store. In this article I will use revenue and downloads estimates provided by Datamagic to explain why I believe the following will happen after Apple's new adjustment to iOS app subscriptions:
Only 59% of the top 100 Grossing apps on the Apple App Store are games compared to 90% on Google PlayAs of the end of September 2019, 90% of the top 100 grossing apps in Google Play in US are games. In contrast, only 59% of the top 100 grossing apps in the App Store are games. This contrast becomes even more evident if we compare the share of gaming apps in the top 200 or 500 grossing apps on each platform. But why is there such a big difference between the two major app stores in the US? Оne could say that iPhone users are different from Android users: iPhone users play less games less, and meditate and work out much more than Android users. Believe me, this is not the case. Interestingly, of the 41 non-gaming apps in the top 100 grossing on iOS, only 15 are also included in the top 100 grossing on Google Play. 97% of these apps are monetized through subscriptions. The truth is, the difference between how subscriptions work in the two platforms gives iOS apps an unfair advantage. Here's why. ARPU of apps monetized through subscriptions is 2.5-25x higher on iOS than on AndroidLet's see how big is the advantage that mobile apps monetized through subscriptions in App Store have over Google Play apps. We will calculate the ratio of Lifetime ARPU (lifetime revenue divided by lifetime downloads) of different apps in App Store and Google Play in the United States. For this, we will use a mobile market intelligence tool called Datamagic, which provides download and revenue estimates for mobile apps. But before we get to non-gaming subscription-based apps, we need to get a benchmark to know what is the normal difference in monetization between Google Play and App Store. On the chart below, you can see the ratio of ARPU(LT) on App Store and Google Play in the US for several popular gaming apps from the top 100 grossing chart. As you can see, the monetization of gaming apps is similar on both platforms. The ratio of of most of the apps is clustered around 1.1. A few outliers have a 2x difference. Let's do the same exercise for non-gaming apps from the top 100 grossing chart in the App Store for US. I have excluded apps that do not monetize through in-app purchases in Google Play. Most of these apps are generating 2.5-8 times more revenue per download on App Store compared to Google Play in the US. As we have seen before this cannot be attributed to the difference between the platforms in the US, because gaming apps have similar monetization on the App Store and Google Play. Neither this can be explained by the difference between the iOS and Android versions of the apps—they are usually identical on both platforms. The only difference is in the subscription models—or namely, how subscriptions work on iOS. What's wrong with iOS subscription-based apps? First, it's important to know that there are many useful and high-quality apps that monetize through subscriptions on iOS. In fact, many of the apps in the top 100 grossing chart are very useful. They generate more revenue than they should on iOS (we will get to this later), but their teams' goal is to build high-quality services and provide value to end users. A suitable real-life analogy for some of these apps would be fitness gyms. Fitness gyms don't do anything bad. Neither do they deceive their customers. But many of their customers purchase a three- or six-month membership, and then stop going to the gym after a couple of sessions. However, if you go beyond the top 100 grossing, there will be lots of sneaky scammy apps that provide almost no value and only exploit the subscription system to intentionally deceive users. Such apps are pretty easy to spot. They usually have lots of negative reviews with angry people demanding refunds and complaining that they keep getting charged after deleting the app. You usually won't see these reviews on App Store page, because the developers are smart enough to buy good reviews to bury the bad ones. But when you look up these apps on Sensor Tower, everything becomes clear pretty quickly. You can find more examples of scam apps here. What's wrong with iOS' subscription system?When you register for a subscription or a free trial in an iOS app and then delete the app, your subscription remains active. This means you will keep getting charged until you figure out that you have to go to the App Store settings and turn off the subscription. The probability that a regular user will know this is close to 0. Even people working on iOS apps often don't know about this. Why did Apple designed subscriptions to work in this way? There are a few possible explanations. First, users might have several devices and use an app on all of them. In this case, it would make sense to not cancel a subscription if the users delete an app on one of their devices but keep it on others. Second, revenue from subscription-based apps was one of the main drives of the revenue growth of the Apple App Store in the past several years. Per Sensor Tower data, the average spending per active device in the App Store's gaming category increased by 20% in 2018. Meanwhile, in categories dominated by subscription-based apps, the growth has been considerably higher. Two examples are the the Entertainment and Lifestyle categories, which respectively grew 82% and 86% in 2018. The impact of subscription-based apps on the App Store's revenue also becomes evident when comparing the percentage of non-gaming apps in the top 100 grossing charts of the App Store and Google Play. This data indicates that subscription-based apps play a significant role in helping increase iPhone consumer spending. Considering the slowdown in iPhone sales and Apple's focus on growing revenue from services, Apple's team might have turned a blind eye on the fact that iPhone users don't understand how subscriptions work and some developers are exploiting it for their own benefit. Turn a blind eye or kill one of the main growth drivers? What would you choose? What has changed in iOS 13?The way subscriptions work in iOS 13 is different: When you delete an app with an active subscription, you will now see a system popup asking if you want to cancel the app's subscription. It's still not super-easy to cancel subscriptions even with the help of this popup, but at least people will now become aware that they are still subscribed to the app even after deleting it. Subscription-based apps will see a 2-8x drop to their iOS revenue in the next few yearsIt is still too early to evaluate the impact of the change to the way subscriptions work in iOS 13. However, I expect that it will solve the problem of people not understanding that they will keep on paying for an app even after deleting it. In the best case, the monetization of iOS' subscription-based apps will become similar to their Android versions. The first signs are promising. RevenueCat looked at the difference in trial conversion rate between iOS 12 and iOS 13. 80% of the apps they looked at showed a statistically significant decrease in trial conversion rate for users on iOS 13 vs iOS 12. RevenueCat measured an average drop of 9% in absolute conversion rate, which translates into a median relative drop in conversion rate of 29%, but with a pretty wide range depending on the app, anywhere from 0% to 60%. But we should keep in mind that the overall impact on the revenue of the subscription-based apps will be delayed for a few reasons. First, iOS 13 adoption rate was only 25% as of the end of September 2019. It will only reach 80% by the end of 2019 (based on how iOS 12 was adopted). Second, most subscription-based apps have already reached a significant number of active subscribers. They won't be affected by this change and will keep generating revenue. But even though the impact of the iOS 13 change will be delayed, it will still be massive if our assumption that the revenue of App Store's subscription-based apps will reduce to the level of Google Play is even half true. There are few areas which will be impacted:
Forecast of Calm's iOS revenue in the coming yearsLet's see how these changes will impact Calm. Below you can see Calm's revenue for the last couple of years based on Datamagic. Now we will need to make a few assumptions:
In case the above assumptions are correct, Calm's iOS revenue in the following years will look like the following chart. * The big difference in Jan-Sep 2019 period is because Calm mostly sells yearly subscriptions, but in the model, I assumed that they mostly sell monthly subscriptions. That is why the revenue based on Datamagic data goes higher than the forecast in Jan-Apr 2019 period and then lower than the forecast in May-Sep 2019. In the worst case scenario, when LTV and paid traffic are affected, iOS revenue will drop by almost 2.5 times in the next few years. It's unlikely that with such revenue dynamics Calm will be able to maintain its $1B valuation. Another interesting fact is that, in case nothing changes, revenue growth will slow down significantly. Maybe that's what Apple App Store executives expected and that's why they decided to make the change now. ConclusionSince Apple has rolled out iOS 13 just recently, we don't have factual data on how the changes made to subscriptions will affect the monetization metrics of subscription-based apps. However, if my predictions are correct, the impact will be significant. And it will impact both:
However, I believe that Apple should have made this change a long time ago. That way, the App Store would not have been flooded with lots of products from the second category (sneaky scammy apps), and the companies from the first category (useful apps) would not be overvalued (which might create problems for them in the future). [link] [comments]  |
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