The Rain
Going into the day, between August 2024 and that day, we had 40 subscribers (24 live and 16 in trial) and 1228 accounts created. After 3 Instagram story posts, one from each creator, we are now at 253 subscribers (28 live and 225 in trial) and 2868 accounts created. That's 532% growth in subscribers and 133% growth in accounts created.
These are great signs. But the key for this to be very big very fast is to get the flywheel going. The Upspace flywheel is the following:
- Creator A joins Upspace -> Creator A creates content on Upspace (workout, recipe, meditation, etc.) -> Creator A invites outside audience (ex. Instagram followers) into Upspace -> New users join and some of these users are creators (Creator B, C, etc.) -> Creator B starts creating on Upspace... -> flywheel continues.
So, a sign that the flywheel is starting is new creators joining without us directly inviting them. In other words, Creator A invites their audience in (like the story posts), and then Creator B follows the link and joins themselves.
Going into Jan 1, we had about 70 or so creators. Since then, about 40 creators have joined, a 75% increase. This is great to see, but there are two more steps in the cycle for the Flywheel to get going - 1) the creator needs to create content on Upspace, and then 2) the creator needs to invite their outside audience into Upspace.
Since Jan 1, about 4-5 creators have joined and created content on Upspace. This is awesome to see because they did it without also telling them anything, showing the ease of use. Plus, they have to pay $12.99/mo (same subscription as users) to be able to share, showing the value prop of the app. Many creators even messaged us on Instagram saying things like "this platform is epic," and a half dozen or so somehow found our old "Apply to be a creator" flow, which is buried in the settings page, and went ahead and applied.
While these are all great signs that the app is "coming alive" and the flywheel is beginning to move, it has not quite broken through the point at which the force from the momentum is greater than the friction where the wheel lifts off the axel (flood lifts the boat) making it almost "frictionless" and begins to spin in increasing perpetual motion that cannot be stopped. This is the point at which we take off and compounding effects start to be seen. We are close but still have work to do to get to that point. I will share our plans for doing so in the next email.
Thank you,
Shaughnessy
P.S.
I was talking to our biggest investor on the phone the other day and mentioned a thing I told him a few times before. For context, I would always say I believe this will be bigger than Spotify ($100B+) one day. It could be bigger than Netflix even ($300B+). He would laugh and say, "I'd be happy with $1B." My response was, "Yes, but I don't think that is possible. Because of the nature of the flywheel created from this business model, this is either a failure or a massive success that skyrockets past the $1B mark. And I won't let it be a failure."
This early traction is a good sign to see that failure is less likely than the flywheel. And once again, the growth perpetuated by that flywheel is only limited by the market size. The market size is one of the biggest in the world and is growing like crazy right now as real health is fundamental to every human ever born and ever will be born, and now, with the #MAHA and creator-led health movement, in both public and private sectors, proactive health is gaining more attention than reactive health which currently brings in $4T+ in the U.S. annually.
About a year ago, I spoke about and even went to the extent of writing to hundreds of Venture Capitalists at the best firms in Silicon Valley, explaining that this trillion-dollar pendulum swing was about to take place (less than 1% responded). I understood people's doubts, but it's cool to see it finally happening. The good news is that it is just getting started, and Upspace is positioned to be the platform that powers it.
P.P.S.
I had to update the number of subscribers 3 times while writing this. Subscribers are still trickling in.