I think we found product/market fit. Choose market or revenue?
Hello IH,
Beginning this year two friends and I started https://mailbook.nl (Dutch) as a side project. It is inherit viral, because every new user, sends our product to on average over 50 other people (in the same demographic).
In 6 months over 25k people added their addresses to our user's Mailbook. And it only continues to grow. The majority of our users are Dutch + female + pregnant, but we have no business model... (or tried any).
I build an English version (for the 🌍) at https://mailbook.app and want to launch that soon. But not sure if that should come first ("launching to the world"), or the finding a business model in our current market ("revenue")?
What would you focus on?
My experience with freemium startups: Don't scale/interantionalize them before you figured out how you make money. One way or another freemium models at some point always start to cost/burn money. The more users you have, the more you need to provide infrastructure for, handle service requests etc. If you have not found a way to make money, I would not call it product-market-fit.
Good points!
I would do a soft international launch (but it depends on how much work it is going to be) so it can grow organically.
Right after I would focus on the Dutch market and use the Dutch version as the "pilot" to try to get revenue. You know the market, it is small, and it is easy to connect with potential partners for example. Once you have something figured out, I would take the model (and social proof) international.
This essentially kills your most likely business model. ;-)
Or maybe you could make it fly without giving away the complete data and only offer "adress data validation / enhancement / etc." to data companies.
I'd say test the most appealing business model in NL first and give yourself 2-4 months before pushing the international version trough marketing.
Wow, that's amazing! 6 months to 25k+ addresses; wonder how many users have got the 25k+ address on your platform.
To answer your question, do you have any competitors at the moment? And not just in Netherlands, but world wide.
NL no. But there is also not really a market. At least I don’t see it. Its a handy tool.
Worldwide we found postable.com to do something similar as a feature with their card business.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
Yes, but money for freedom not the issue ;)
Im worried the NL market is too small to find a business model (and it restraints growth by not going international?)
This comment was deleted 7 years ago