Kim Kaplan Plenty Of Fish
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“Every 8 to 10 years there’s a new dating app that kind of enters into the space and Tinder’s now nine years old. So it is the right time for that next dating app to come in and usurp them. And I fundamentally believe that’s what Snack is doing with a video-first approach.”
HunterStrydome, Jul 27, kaplan early learning company coupon code 2013 That was part of it, but mainly also they only had a partial customer database. Boyne country sports coupons novi month, we'd like to offer a little something extra to boost your winter spirit - bonus BoyneRewards points! The future of online darting business is an exciting one! Today we are joined by Snack CEO and founder Kim Kaplan, former VP and employee number three at Plenty of Fish to explain the dating industry. Snack is not only the future of video dating apps but it's also the future of the online dating industry as a whole!Online dating business is big business and this podcast gives you an.
— Kimberly Kaplan
Snack was created to optimize a single dating platform for Gen Z. What was the problem?
- Users, especially Gen Z, would match on Bumble or Tinder and immediately move the conversation & interaction to other apps like Snap & Instagram
- On those platforms, users would reply to each others’ stories and casually flirt, rather than carrying on in a more high-pressure DM conversation on the dating apps
Learning different lessons from different Match.com properties:
- Tinder: design-driven
- Match: marketing-driven
- Plenty of Fish: data-driven” Match has done a phenomenal job at working with different companies and acquiring different companies.” — Kimberly Kaplan
It has been significantly easier to raise capital for Snack post-Bumble’s IPO.
- A sector can become stale to investors, especially after being burned repeatedly.
- Proof of a publicly-traded challenger company makes picturing startups’ success easier.
Watch the show on Youtube
Ask Jason
From TWiST Slack member Alan from (msb.ai):
Aside from a PR news wire or DIY PR methods, how else can a company with over $1M in revenue let people in VC know about us?
Jason’s Answer:
- Celebrate your wins, write a short blog post when you hit milestones (300–500 words).
- Content Marketing on Twitter, LinkedIn (social media), start following VCs and engage with them. Host conversations where you can share your expertise.
- Run targeted promotions of your best blog posts to VCs and like-minded individuals.
- Send monthly updates to non-investors.
From Jacob:
As a new investor — what key metric would you look for in these 3 different types of startups: consumer subscriptions, marketplaces, b2b saas?
Jason’s answer:
Consumer Subscriptions (Calm, Netflix, Spotify)
- What is the user profile of your top users, and what is the retention and churn like for those top-tier users?
- Customer acquisition cost
Marketplaces (UberEats, Doordash, Zillow)
- Frequency of use (transactions per customer)
Bottom-up Enterprise SaaS
- Land-and-expand, or net dollar retention (NDR)
- NDR measures impact on revenue generation from existing customers
- If your net dollar retention is over 100%…your startup will grow revenue only from its existing customer base, without needing to acquire any new customers
Net Negative Churn:
- When revenue gained from existing accounts exceeds revenue lost from churned accounts — (see David Sacks on churn)
- An example would be: more existing Slack customers expand from free to paid accounts then churn or downgrade from paid to free
- According to David Sacks, the master of bottom-up SaaS, this is a great signal for your B2B company
Guest: Kim Kaplan
CEO & Co-Founder, The Snack App (Nov 2019-Present), launched in 2021
Website: https://www.thesnackapp.com
Formerly worked at Plenty of Fish (2009–2018) sold to Match Group for $575M in 2015
- Started as VP Marketing & Advertising (3rd person at the company)
- Became VP Product Management, Revenue Optimization & Marketing
- Grew Daily Active Users (DAUs) from 1M to over 4M and Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) from $10M to over $100M
“You shouldn’t have to date across two platforms. That’s why we built Snack to pull the best of the two together.”
-Kim Kaplan
What is Snack?
- A video-first dating app that asks users to create a video and post it to a feed.
- Users can scroll through a feed (like Instagram) and when someone likes a video, it opens up the ability to comment.
- Once two users have liked each others’ videos, DMs are open.
- She reached out to a Gen Z focus group to name the app and come up with the logo. Snack is a Gen Z term for cute/attractive.
- Snack is not a static app where you update 5 photos. Snack has more dynamic profiles to show off and interact.
How Kim got the idea
- Saw that people were trying to date on TikTok (making a video with bio about themselves), 13B views of #single on TikTok
- Users, especially Gen Z, would match on Bumble or Tinder and immediately move the conversation & interaction to other social media like Snap & Instagram
- On social, users would reply to each others’ stories and more casually flirt, rather than carrying on in a more high-pressure DM conversation on the dating apps
Dynamics of Modern Dating Apps
- Snack app is breaking out the gender categories to better reflect society.
- Snack is looking more toward social media instead of what the legacy dating apps are doing.
- Most dating apps are now using a freemium model where people can pay more to get more features or matches.
Match.com is the dominant company in the dating apps space:
- 10.9M average subscribers
- $2.4B in revenue
- Brands include: Tinder, Hinge, Match, Meetic, Pairs, BLK, Plenty of Fish, OurTime, Upward, and Chispa
- Bumble has been a strong competitor and allowed more investor confidence for dating apps challenging Match’s dominance.
Kim learned from each different portfolio company in Match.com
Tinder: design-driven
Match: marketing-driven
Plenty of Fish: data-driven
- Facebook is a massive channel for dating app acquisition
- Apple is stingy about dating app approvals, Kim had to pull strings to get it approved. Apple has a high-quality bar for these apps.
Startup vs. Large Company
- In the early days of Plenty of Fish, “we could sit around a table and drink wine in the afternoon because there were only 6 of us.”
- There are clear changes in how an organization feels at 30, 60 and 90 employees.
This Week in Startups on Apple Podcasts
To achieve sustainable long-term growth in bookkeeping, put the product before the marketing.
Recently, I attended a tech talk by Kim Kaplan, vice president of Revenue Optimization & Strategic Growth for Plenty of Fish (POF), during which she reflected on how, through sustainable long-term growth, POF was transformed from a one-person start-up into an international, publicly traded company.
Kaplan’s role with POF is unique in that she manages marketing, as well as product development. In most tech companies – in most companies, period – these roles are separate, so why did POF choose to combine them? According to Kaplan, the biggest increases in user engagement and paid user subscription are driven by product innovations. Marketing helps in the short term, but delivering a better product has a far greater impact on sustainable long-term growth.
So, what does this mean for you? How might this message apply to individual bookkeepers and firms offering outsourced bookkeeping services?
Ensure the quality of your product and services. The only way to achieve sustainable long-term growth is to ensure you have a top-notch product. POF’s products are their apps, website and matching tools, which provide a service – matchmaking. Bookkeeping starts with a service that results in a product – completed financial records. So, first and foremost, improve the quality of the client files and accounts you handle. Be accurate. Be precise. Eliminate mistakes.
Good work encourages referrals from existing clients and their accountants.
If you work independently, your work reflects directly on yourself. If you run a firm with a team of people like our team at Legacy Advantage, it’s more challenging because now it’s not just you and your work, but also your team and your team’s work that reflects on them, on you and on the business.
There’s not one way to manage this, but I can tell you from experience that at Legacy, we learned the truth of the adage “quality over quantity.” Our company grew from one to 15 people in just two short years. During that time, we were also taking on more and more clients, and the pace of our client growth began to outstrip our ability to train our staff or review their work. This posed some quality control challenges, and even though 90 percent of the time there were no problems, the 10 percent resulted in some client turnover.
Recognizing this, we righted the ship. We made changes to our leadership team, doubled down on file reviews (don’t underestimate these – they are an important part of the process!), increased employee training and tied a portion of our associate’s income to the quality of the work they produce. These measures have prevented further loss of clients, and, in fact, have even brought in new clients who are confident in our quality management process.
Create an outstanding client experience. Bookkeeping is a back-office service, almost like a utility, and the better your service, the more invisible you are. Therefore, it’s up to you – the service provider – to ensure that your clients have an amazing experience each time they interact with your business.
For example, a friend of mine runs an auto body chain called Colorworks. After my stolen car was recovered, I took it in for service and picked it up a week later. So far so good … an overall bland experience. A week later, I got a call from a Colorworks employee, Patricia, asking me how things were going and how the car was doing. I was ecstatic! No auto body shop had ever called me to check in before. It was a very memorable experience – a WOW moment.
Ask yourself, is your firm delivering any WOW moments? Are you even thinking about it?
To be honest, Legacy Advantage is just beginning on this journey. We’ve mapped out our “Customer Experience Journey” and identified “Customer Interaction Points” where we can do better or show more care. Here are some areas that we’re working on:
- Onboarding. Whether they’re switching providers or simply unsure of the new processes, this is a very emotional time for clients. We provide an onboarding process checklist and offer weekly updates by phone or email. We also send them a gift basket and card thanking them for their business.
- Major fiscal year events. From annual taxes to audits and end-of-year fiscals, there are plenty of financial milestones that cause anxiety for our clients. On these occasions, we send them a gift basket, treat or other indulgence, and offer some words of encouragement.
- Client anniversaries. It sounds simple, but it’s important – recognize and thank your clients for their ongoing support. We send a card, email or even pick up the phone to acknowledge their client anniversary with Legacy. Personalized acknowledgements are also great – we send “Happy Birthday!” notes.
Kim Kaplan Plenty Of Fish Youtube
Add fuel to the fire with marketing. One of my mentors told me, “A good product makes marketing super easy. A bad product makes marketing almost impossible.” So, to be clear, product = fire and marketing = fuel, not the other way around. For bookkeepers, this doesn’t mean your files must be 100 percent correct and your clients 100 percent satisfied before you engage in marketing. Let’s be honest, that’s never going to happen. But, as you make progress in these two areas, you can increase your marketing spend and start building momentum.
Kim Kaplan Plenty Of Fish Photo
How do you handle quality control? How do you make your clients feel special? Connect with me to let me know.