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4 Comments

Tinder's success can be boiled down to one thing: keg stands

I remember when Tinder started to get traction back when I was in college. It spread like wildfire.

How'd they pull that off in such a rigid industry where the big dogs had such market cap dominance?

Simply put:

  • gamification

  • the network effect

  • keg stands

Wrt gamification, they created a product that was frictionless and reduced the anxiety of rejection. The swiping gamified nature simply made it a better product. Safe to say their product was good.

The network effect is a phenomenon whereby increased numbers of people or participants improve the value of a good or service

Tinder’s early customer acquisition strategy involved the ex-CMO Whitney Wolfe traveling to colleges around the country to different chapters of her sorority and onboarding the sorority sisters. Kind of an OP strategy considering this solves one part of the equation – and arguably the harder side to solve.

She’d then go to the corresponding fraternities and entice them to join by showing them all the girls already using the app. And when I say “entice”, I imagine the pitch was not very difficult.

Tinder then hired college campus reps to host college parties with entry requirements being to install the app, match and bring a date, etc. So in other words, they used keg stands and beer bongs. That was the strategy.

This was an unobtrusive and mutually beneficial way to boost word-of-mouth and signups. This was a fantastic example of the network effect taking the reins.

Total users went from 5,000 to 15,000 from this strategy.

In my booze-filled brain, I want to believe it was the keg stands that sealed the deal.

What do you guys think?

Why did Tinder succeed?
  1. Gamification (product was actually better)
  2. Network Effect (went viral among frat/sorority kids)
  3. Definitely keg stands
Vote
  1. 1

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  2. 1

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  3. 1

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