We were asked to present at Founder Institute from a startup perspective on marketing panel and to tell our journey. Here we detail how we launched our startup and how we promoted our products for Native Tongue. We also told some stories on mistakes and successes we learnt along the way. This was presented to the 2014 intake of startup founders in Founder Institute Sydney. If you would like to design/develop an innovative technology product, we'd love to get in touch with you. Email us at hello at tapmint.com

1. Our startup journey: Mistakes,
successes, and lessons
Presented for Founder Institute Sydney
on 29 July 2014

2. Matthew Ho
● Digital Producer background
● Worked online for 7 years
● Next Digital, Deloitte, Airbnb
● Love TV series, movies & sports
● Twitter: @inspiredworlds
Head of Product Development at Tapmint

3. Tapmint
● Provide consulting services on
innovation & rapid experimentation for
web/mobile
● Native Tongue - First winning team in
Startup Weekend in Australia
● 4 language game apps
● 400,000 downloads
● Twitter: @tapmint

4. _v
What did you do when launching a
start-up in your first year?

5. ● We won Startup Weekend Melbourne in
May 2011
● 5 months later - launched Mandarin
Madness, our first mobile app on
Android, then iOS
● $1k in our first week on iOS
● #2 top paid education iOS app
● We were starting to get press

6. ● Decided to do more apps
● If we had 5 apps x $1k per week
x 52 weeks = $260k p.a.
● Our second app came out a
month later
● We botched the second launch
● Spread too thin with 3 apps -
Chinese, Spanish, English
● On 3 different platforms - iOS,
Android, Amazon

7. ● 400,000 downloads, played 2 million
times.
● Used in a number of schools around
the world
● It was a really rocky ride in 1.5 years.
● We then launched LP Strategy, a word
game cheat app in 2 weeks
● Applied our learnings in App Store
Optimisation, how to get a product to
market quickly and iterate
● One of the top cheat apps for this
game

8. ● We could build innovative apps fast
and iterate
● Started a new business Tapmint to
provide consulting services on
innovative apps/websites
● Leveraging our startup experience &
skills building products and our prior
work experience
● Built 8 products in 12 months
● Employ 9 people

9. ● Get product to market sooner.
● Stay focused on a single product with a
narrow set of features
● Should have focused on Mandarin or the
Spanish app.
● Faster iterations with smaller updates.
● Android has advantages for launching first as
there is no approval process
● Wouldn’t have spent money going to the
overseas conference and exhibiting
Lessons Learnt

10. How did you promote your product
once launched?

11. ● App Store Optimisation
● Experimented with mobile ads
● Experimented with paid downloads.
Pay per install
● We had PR - 60 articles
● Best publications was in education
article in #1 English newspaper in
Hong Kong
● Paid for articles - mobile blogs will
review if you pay
● Adwords

12. ● Partnerships with other apps and blogs
● Best way - marketing via the product
● Experimented with different pricing
models and business models
● Understood the freemium model
● What we wanted to do was send
language challenges
● Majority of our downloads to date are due
to our app store position for searches
such as “Learn Mandarin”, “Learn
Spanish”, etc...

13. Any good stories about previous
successes/mistakes?

14. Lesson #1: Start a business with a great founding team
● Biggest reasons for startup failure is the
founding team
● Not that you ran out of money, or didn’t
get product/market fit
● Need to have the same vision,
commitment, and complementary skills
● I’ve been working with the same co-
founder for the past 3 years across 2
businesses

15. Lesson #2: Focus on your strengths
● With a complementary team, we
leveraged our strengths
● In our complementary team, non-tech
founder shouldn’t be learning how to
code
● But at least understand the technology
and get involved in the product
● One founder needs to have more focus
on the customer and customer
acquisition (sales/marketing)

16. Lesson #3: Don’t spam journalist with your launch
● After finally launching a side project to
rate Angel investors, I decided to email
20+ journalists
● We had a PR strategy in place
● I ignored it and got caught up in the
excitement of launching a product
● What I should have done was
reference their previous work, also
created content based on our analysis

17. ● Build a relationship with journalists
● Sometimes they come to us as a
source of information or for some
insights
● Refer them to other people
● Offer to write guest articles,
comment on their articles
● Show them articles you’ve written
previously
How to do it

18. ● If you have any startup questions, looking to
design/develop an MVP, please contact me
● Matthew Ho, Tapmint
● Email: hello@tapmint.com
● Website: http://tapmint.com
● Twitter.com: @inspiredworlds
● Personal blog: http://inspiredworlds.com/
Contact Me