Finding my first users with a win-win approach
I had a breakthrough recently about how I go about getting users for a product. For a long time I was focused on ads, CAC, LTV, ~insert other metric~ here.
But I realized that the best companies have business models that align with their customers.
This is why Costco and Affirm are loved.
Costo provides good food at a great value.
Affirm provides credit with non-preditory terms. They take on the credit risk and if you miss payments they're responsible. This is unlike almost all other lenders that make more money when you fall behind.
I'd guess the take rate for both businesses is 10% or less.
It seems like the exception to the rule to think about the alignment between the customer and the business.
In the Class Action Settlement space consumers can find new class action settlements two ways:
- check out news aggregation sites and manually filter through. This works but is slow. And the class action site makes money through referrals so they don't really care if you're able to successfully claim
OR
- they can use an app, that will aggressively upsell and usually overpromise and under deliver
The basic premise of both is that there isn't a way to directly align the interest of the user -- getting paid for all class action settlements they're eligible for -- and the interest of the business -- turning a profit.
This is the battle. Because apps have underdelivered for so long (and focused on lifetime user value and cost of acquisition), rather than focusing on aligning value with the user. The default thinking is to focus on extraction.
And that is the real solution to the question, 'can we align business interest with user interest'?
This is a rare approach. Because it requires believing in the power of the goodness of the human spirit, technology empowering everyone to do more with less, and the ability of people to be able to judge what is good from what is bad.
The main challenge is always framing the question to find the blind spot.
Like the fish that looks over at the other fish and asks "What is water?"
I'm currently working on: https://claims.digitalsurfacelabs.com/
It helps people find class action settlements. Right now it's free.
In the future we'll charge for auto-filling and auto-finding settlements. And this will cost 10% or $10, whichever is less.
Feel free to give it a try and let me know what you think!