Existing Market
I interviewed three of my friends that I have already described the product to. They think all the features I have are good and two of them did not have any more ideas. One of my friends said that maybe we could figure out how to do an organic rating system that no one else sees and just affects the algorithm.
I would have to work with my software engineer to develop this and try to figure out how to incentive the "good dates". I don't want people to be rated poorly because their date did not hook up with them or things along that nature. However, I do want the good dates to be incentivized and get matched with the other good dates. If the good people are getting matched with people who are rude or boring they will stop using the app.
Since there are no other direct competitors, it is hard to see what others are doing to combat this problem. Maybe I could team with psychologists to create very objective questions to rate dates. These are things I will have to figure out as development progresses.
New Market
I want to look at the baby boomer market. This is radically different from my target market of Gen Z'ers. They don't go on date functions so for my product it is kind of hard to expand to different consumers since it is so niche.
I interviewed my parents since they are in this generation. I explained my product but they obviously can't relate since they are not longer in greek life and married. They did however think my idea was clever.
I don't think I can expand my product into other markets since it is for a specific demographic and it is a niche product. This could be a downfall, but could also be one of my values since I have no competitors and if I make my product the best right off the bat, there will be barriers to entry to for copycats.
Hi Courtney, I really enjoyed reading your post. I am pretty wasted right now so take what I say with a grain of salt. i like your idea of anonymous rating so there is less external variables. I also like the idea of objective questions instead of subjective ratings. This will put less pressure on people I think. I agree that your service is very specific so it will be hard to expand to different markets.
ReplyDeleteHey Courtney, Thank you again for the post, I enjoyed reading it. I think targeting baby boomers is interesting. I see current dating apps do provide services for baby boomers however they are not the prime audience. I think targeting them specifically is definitely an interesting idea however technology could be an obstacle in reaching this audience. Still an interesting idea for sure.
ReplyDeleteHi Courtney. I enjoyed reading your post about what markets you are trying to target with this service. I think your new market of 'baby boomers' is a very interesting take. This generation, in my opinion, would have a lot of trouble using this app as it is radically different from what they are used to. On contrary, that could be the reason why it could work well.
ReplyDeleteClever ideas tend to get the most traction. There's a lot you'd need to account for when creating an app, making sure key words can be matched accurately and correlate correctly and the like. I like your idea of questioning psychologists, but you could go even more basic - asking other matchmaking app makers. Sure, you're technically competition, but many fields don't have such an exclusionary mindset and you also have access to ex-employees of those companies (so long as they don't have NDAs active).
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