The three hour startup -- From idea to revenue in 180 minutes
At 5pm on Thursday 12th June 2014, I launched tinderus.com -- a $50 Tinder Profile Consultancy Service.
I came up with the idea in London at 3pm that exact day and within two hours I had tinderus.com up and running. I chucked it on ProductHunt and within minutes received a wave of traffic, two $50 bookings and a whole host of comments, including a nice little comment from Tinder Co-Founder Jonathan Badeen.
Since that day, TinderUs has received around 138 paid bookings for $50. I’ve been featured in Business Insider, Huffington Post, Venture Beat, Inside Mobile Apps, Tech and Bits.
The truth about the birth of TinderUs is that it started as a joke; "You should start a Tinder Consultancy for all the people out there who can’t get many matches". Thus, TinderUs was born!
In terms of the business' functionality, this is again a simple, stripped down process. Customers book through a simple PayPal button (with Contact Us form for queries). When we receive a booking, we prompt them for a time and date for a consultation to take place, including asking them to add us on Facebook so we can see their profile.
When the time arrives for the consultation, a member of staff will get online (I have a few friends who work in Fashion who are excellent at giving advice on appearance, conversation and overall personality). The consultant goes through five key areas:
- Picking your best five photos from Facebook
- Choosing your main image (this is key)
- Curating your profile tagline
- Giving you ideas and advice on opening lines
- Providing you with expert advice on flirting and what to say in a conversation
Simple, quick and effective!
I created the site on Strikingly’s platform -- an incredibly easy web page editor that allowed me to produce a beautiful website in a rapid timeframe. I don’t have exceptional design or coding skills, so Strikingly is ideal for me.
Reaching out to journalists for press is another key angle to TinderUs' growth. This process is always over-complicated by startups -- just remember that journalists are real people, whose job is to write up interesting news. If you email or Tweet them with something interesting, there is a good chance they’ll get back to you.
This short journey proves that anyone can build a simple site and generate revenue with the correct idea. "Build something people want" is a fantastic mantra, but there’s a lot to be said about hacking stuff together for fun.
Michael Raven is Founder and Managing Director of TinderUs and Catch London, a PR & Strategy Agency focusing on Technology Startups. Based in London, UK, Michael has worked with Technology companies all over the globe.