Every week, we'll be picking a startup to profile. Our theme this week is tech, so we chose a rather unique messaging app from a team that won TechCrunch's Disrupt Europe Hackathon in London last year.
Who are they?
The team, Matthieu Rigolot, Andriy, Eleanor and Arnaud, have international roots and are from France, South Africa and the Ukraine.
Matthew and Andriy previously worked together on another app which successfully placed in the Top 10 out of over 400 competing apps in The Big App Fund competition, a contest organised by Worth Capital and Facebook.
Matthieu and Eleanor worked together on a project called The Ultrascope, led by the Open Space Agency, which ended up being shown to President Obama at The White House.
Arnaud has previously helped grow a food delivery app from 0 to 250K Monthly Active Users in four months. He is also a professor in Digital, Social & Mobile Marketing at the prestigious CELSA Paris-Sorbonne University.
What's the business?
Rigolot tells UKBusinessForums the idea came about from the frustration of how slow texting can be.
'Andriy once tried to explain a complex technical problem to me via SMS. I waited for what felt like a year while he was typing and then had to read it in full before replying to him. We just thought: 'This is so slow, we should be able to see every keystroke in real-time instead!'' he says.
The team decided to present the idea during a brainstorming session at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, which they ended up winning with another idea.
'The concept of real-time messaging stuck on our minds and we decided to push it further to become the fully-fledged product that it is now. We've worked during a year to build the product, first by continuing our freelance activities part-time, and then by involving ourselves full-time in the project,' Rigolot adds.
How's it funded?
According to Rigolot, the company is fully bootstrapped.
'The first reason for that is that we believe strongly in our concept and execution. Our team is very technical and we were able to develop our product without having the need to hire external talent.
'Also, pure consumer apps are a tough market to tackle and investors and understandably frisky about it. They want to see enough traction to make a decision and we wouldn't probably have been able to raise a seed round before launching our product. Now with 15,000 monthly active users three days of launch, we are in a better position,' he tells UKBF.
What's its marketing strategy?
The team organised a big, coordinated PR push for the time of the app's launch on 30 January and launched in exclusivity on productHunt two days before.
'We've been featured as the number one top free app on the Portuguese app store and in major publications in Latin America markets. We haven't spent a cent in ads for our launch. Most of our growth is organic and we plan to use the metrics collected so far to focus on better targeted marketing campaigns, in order to optimize our cost per user acquisition,' Rigolot says.
But now, it's set its sights on the UK and US markets.
What does the app do, in depth?
Hiboo is a messaging app to see what your friends type while they're typing.
As Rigolot puts it: 'Who has never been frustrated by the three rolling dots appearing while waiting for an answer? Your girlfriend is typing. You know she's typing. She's been typing for four minutes. She finally sends "I'm fine'. Annoying, isn't it?'
Instead of waiting for a message to be completed before it goes through, the messages are sent while you type them. This, he adds, removes the latency between sending and receiving entirely and adds a new dimension to text message communication.
What are your top three tech tools for running a business?
Rigolot says: 'We use what we call the magic stack: Crashlytics, which alerts us of all the crashes our users might experience in our app, Instabug, which allows users to send feedback and report bugs in a non-intrusive way, and Mixpanel, which allows us to track us events inside the app.
'We can use this to see our most used features, improve and refine them accordingly to the data we track.'
Final advice for aspiring tech entrepreneurs?
'I'd say don't create a startup just because it looks trendy and cool these days and because you're getting bored of your daily job.
'It is extremely hard to succeed for a simple reason: you have to create so much value out of almost nothing to be able to compete. This means you have to be prepared to give everything you have into your business. Another piece of advice I'd like to give is focus, focus and focus - it is so easy to get distracted,' Rigolot adds.
Have an idea for an interesting Startup Snapshot? Comment below (make sure you're logged in or signed up!)
Who are they?
The team, Matthieu Rigolot, Andriy, Eleanor and Arnaud, have international roots and are from France, South Africa and the Ukraine.
Matthew and Andriy previously worked together on another app which successfully placed in the Top 10 out of over 400 competing apps in The Big App Fund competition, a contest organised by Worth Capital and Facebook.
Matthieu and Eleanor worked together on a project called The Ultrascope, led by the Open Space Agency, which ended up being shown to President Obama at The White House.
Arnaud has previously helped grow a food delivery app from 0 to 250K Monthly Active Users in four months. He is also a professor in Digital, Social & Mobile Marketing at the prestigious CELSA Paris-Sorbonne University.
What's the business?
Rigolot tells UKBusinessForums the idea came about from the frustration of how slow texting can be.
'Andriy once tried to explain a complex technical problem to me via SMS. I waited for what felt like a year while he was typing and then had to read it in full before replying to him. We just thought: 'This is so slow, we should be able to see every keystroke in real-time instead!'' he says.
The team decided to present the idea during a brainstorming session at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, which they ended up winning with another idea.
'The concept of real-time messaging stuck on our minds and we decided to push it further to become the fully-fledged product that it is now. We've worked during a year to build the product, first by continuing our freelance activities part-time, and then by involving ourselves full-time in the project,' Rigolot adds.
How's it funded?
According to Rigolot, the company is fully bootstrapped.
'The first reason for that is that we believe strongly in our concept and execution. Our team is very technical and we were able to develop our product without having the need to hire external talent.
'Also, pure consumer apps are a tough market to tackle and investors and understandably frisky about it. They want to see enough traction to make a decision and we wouldn't probably have been able to raise a seed round before launching our product. Now with 15,000 monthly active users three days of launch, we are in a better position,' he tells UKBF.
What's its marketing strategy?
The team organised a big, coordinated PR push for the time of the app's launch on 30 January and launched in exclusivity on productHunt two days before.
'We've been featured as the number one top free app on the Portuguese app store and in major publications in Latin America markets. We haven't spent a cent in ads for our launch. Most of our growth is organic and we plan to use the metrics collected so far to focus on better targeted marketing campaigns, in order to optimize our cost per user acquisition,' Rigolot says.
But now, it's set its sights on the UK and US markets.
What does the app do, in depth?
Hiboo is a messaging app to see what your friends type while they're typing.
As Rigolot puts it: 'Who has never been frustrated by the three rolling dots appearing while waiting for an answer? Your girlfriend is typing. You know she's typing. She's been typing for four minutes. She finally sends "I'm fine'. Annoying, isn't it?'
Instead of waiting for a message to be completed before it goes through, the messages are sent while you type them. This, he adds, removes the latency between sending and receiving entirely and adds a new dimension to text message communication.
What are your top three tech tools for running a business?
Rigolot says: 'We use what we call the magic stack: Crashlytics, which alerts us of all the crashes our users might experience in our app, Instabug, which allows users to send feedback and report bugs in a non-intrusive way, and Mixpanel, which allows us to track us events inside the app.
'We can use this to see our most used features, improve and refine them accordingly to the data we track.'
Final advice for aspiring tech entrepreneurs?
'I'd say don't create a startup just because it looks trendy and cool these days and because you're getting bored of your daily job.
'It is extremely hard to succeed for a simple reason: you have to create so much value out of almost nothing to be able to compete. This means you have to be prepared to give everything you have into your business. Another piece of advice I'd like to give is focus, focus and focus - it is so easy to get distracted,' Rigolot adds.
Have an idea for an interesting Startup Snapshot? Comment below (make sure you're logged in or signed up!)
