5 things we did to get our app’s first 100,000 users in 3 months

Photo credit: Picjumbo.

I had always wanted to build an app. But after a few years, I was still twiddling my thumbs. I kept telling myself that maybe I was just complacent or too busy working on other projects. But these were all excuses.

My name is Jon Tse and I am co-founder and head of mobile at Zookal. I previously wrote an article here on Tech in Asia about raising capital. Now, I want to share my recent experience in building an app, particularly the five things our company did to get our first 100,000 users in three months.

1. Research with a twist

The word research sounds tedious, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of pouring over large chunks of data and getting lost in the statistics on the internet, my very first point of call for market research was meeting up over coffee with people from the country where we wanted to launch our app—the Philippines.

Our business has a presence in Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, but we have always taken risks. This time, we wanted to launch something into a large market (with a population of more than 100 million), and the Philippines made sense for us. Being a largely English-speaking country in Southeast Asia, the archipelago seemed like a big and untapped opportunity for an education company like ours.

The reason I like to have coffee catch-ups (make sure you pay for the coffee too!) before doing my full internet research is I get to start with a clean slate. I can actually use my two ears to listen and my mouth only to ask more questions. (I learned a few years ago that one of my biggest mistakes as a founder was listening to respond. The right thing to do is to actually listen to understand someone’s point.)

I can actually use my two ears to listen and my mouth only to ask more questions.

One of my first coffee catch-ups (make sure you bring your diary and take plenty of notes) was with Valeri Inting of Tech in Asia. Working at an education company, I asked questions about study habits, class curriculum, and the students’ perception on academia. After our meeting, my notes were filled with new terms and acronyms that I was not familiar with. So later that night, I researched online while keeping the things I learned in mind. I was then able to narrow down my search and really identify the opportunity before us.

Most people tend to do research and then find industry experts who could validate the market or the market sentiment. I reversed the process and found that being a contrarian worked as an excellent starting point to learn more about the market and the potential demand for a product. It also gave me confidence that there was a big opportunity for us (not that I did not do comprehensive research after the coffees, of course).

2. Attack a problem

The last thing I wanted to do was launch an app into the Apple Store and Google Play Store and hope that it would be a raving success. Hope does not pay the bills, unfortunately, so I wanted to maximize our chances of gaining traction by going to where I knew demand was (in other words, creating something that solved an existing demand).

My company digitized high-quality educational content by making it accessible through an app. We saw that traditionally, many students could read textbooks and visit tuition centers. But what if we could create a high-quality supplementary resource that’s cheaper and more accessible?

By maximizing our chances of success, I also mitigated the risk of failure. The app still has a long way to go in terms of growth and we will continue to evolve the product. But this article is about what to do at the start to build strong momentum for you and your team. Sometimes, in a world full of information and updates, keeping things simple is the best way to find clarity and focus.

3. Choose content first

Design is super important. Some of the best apps in the world are so intuitive that they never cease to amaze me. But ours? Not yet. With creating a new project or launching a new product, it is important to have a budget—at least a rough one—to go by.

I chose to invest more heavily in content first rather than splurging on a beautifully designed app with no or low-quality content.

4. Be the face of your product 

5. Double down on what is working