What cities is Banter currently available in?
While this seems like a simple question at a high-level, I'll explain not just where Banter is available, but where specific features area available, and why that is so: 1) Party Discoverer: The Party Discoverer on Banter lets users see all the shows and parties going on in their city, up to a week in advance. Where available, they can even buy tickets or make bottle service reservations. This feature is available in over 80 cities across the globe. We were able to scale this so rapidly because 1) it does not require any other users in a city for the feature to work well (i.e. first user to download Banter in Phoenix can use our Party Discoverer) and 2) our web scraping technologies find tens of thousands of events across the globe each week by scraping websites and other event platforms, without requiring us to engage with a specific venue or event organizer directly 2) Party Chats: The Party Chats let users interact with and meet other users that are going to the same events that they are, and browse and chat with other users that like to go out where they go out. This feature currently works well in a few cities in the US including San Francisco, New York and Boston, and a few cities in India, including Bangalore and Mumbai. It really only requires a hundred or so active users in a specific city for it to begin providing value to other users, so we're able to launch in new cities fairly rapidly by merely targeting potential users in those cities via our Ambassador program, social media accounts and/or Facebook ads (no physical presence required) 3) Live Feed: Given this is the feature that requires the largest level of critical mass (but which will be the most powerful once that level of critical mass is reached), it really only works well in San Francisco, where most of our users are. We see hundreds of users active in San Francisco each day, many of which post photos and updates, meaning there's generally enough real-time info for people in San Francisco to be able to look at the local Live Feed and see local hotspots.
It seems like you have three features (Party Discoverer, Party Chats and the Live Feed). Wouldn't it be better to focus on only 1 feature and do that well?
Similar to the previous question, the simple answer would be "yes," but as we've learned, it's all about execution and product design. Because our "Live Feed," which, in our opinion, has the highest potential value, requires the largest level of critical mass in a city to work well. Ultimately, Banter's value and competitive advantage comes from its network effect. However, there's various ways to achieve network effects, some of which require larger or smaller levels of critical mass. In terms of Banter, specifically, we started by developing our Live Feed feature first because it is the core of our value proposition. However, it requires "multi-player" value to work, meaning it needs other users active on the platform for any other user to get value from it. We therefore added our "Party Discoverer", which provides "single-player" value, meaning a single user in any of our cities can find value from this feature even if there are no other users already on Banter in their city. When you think about it, if you look at some of the most valuable networks, they started in similar ways. Facebook, for example. When Zuckerberg launched Facebook at Harvard, it already contained the information on other students that he got from the Harvard Directory. Therefore, when the first user of Facebook signed up, he could already browse and see public info on other students (single-player value). Then, as more students signed up, they were able to interact with each other (multi-player value). Similarly, most of Instagram's early users downloaded the app for its filters, which didn't require any other users on the platform for Instagram to provide value (single-player value). Then, as more users signed up, people began to simply browse Instagram to see other people's photos (multi-player value). More recently, we added our "Party Chats" feature, which lets you chat with other Banter users that like to go out where you go out, because, while it does require other users in your city for the feature to work, it does not require as many users as the Live Feed does. Once approximately 100 people have downloaded Banter in a given city, we begin to see the Party Chat feature working and being used consistently. Again, if you look at another platform like SnapChat... SnapChat began as a messaging platform, with the uniqueness being you could send disappearing photos. It was only until several years later, once there were millions of daily users, that SnapChat launched their Live Feeds, which is what has led to their most recent bursts of growth. Many dating apps also are able to grow so quickly because in reality they don't really need thousands of users in a city for the app to work, they merely need a hundred or so. Similarly, on Banter, we believe our Party Chat feature is providing a stepping stone from the single-player value provided by the Party Discoverer to the highest level of multi-player value provided by our Live Feed. The Party Chat needs a critical mass somewhere in the middle. I hope this LONG answer to what could seem like a simple question makes sense. Reach out if you'd like to discuss further.