20VC: The Dubsmash Memo: Scaling to 43M Users in 10 Days, Why TikTok Was a Competitor Like Never Seen Before, Good vs Great Consumer Products and What Every Consumer Product Needs & The Future of Consumer Social with Suchit Dash

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Suchit Dash is the VP of Core Product Experience at Reddit, responsible for the surfaces that millions of users interact with daily. Prior to Reddit, Suchit was a cofounder at Dubsmash, a short video platform that was used by millions globally and acquired by Reddit in December 2020. In just 10 days, Suchit scaled the product to an immense 43M users, and gained fans such as Neymar and Jimmy Fallon. Suchit previously held roles at Soundcloud and PayPal.

In Today's Episode with Suchit Dash We Discuss:

1. The Founding of Dubsmash & V1:

How did the founding of Dubsmash come to be?
Suchit scaled V1 of the product to 43M users in 10 days, what was the secret? What worked?
What were the first signs that all was not right?
How did the team respond to the realization that their retention numbers were terrible?
What are Suchit's biggest lessons and pieces of advice from this massive V1 and launch?

2. Data: Retention, Cohorts and The Smiley Face:

What specific data did Suchit and the team really use to understand their level of product market fit?
What level of retention were they looking for? What is average, good, and great in terms of retention in consumer social?
What is really important for founders to try and observe and analyze in net new user cohorts?
When and why did the team start to see the hailed smiley face of consumer returning to the app?

3. Battling TikTok:

Despite the resurgence, TikTok was roaring, what did TikTok do so well to take the market?
How did TikTok leverage both FB and Snap's ad platform to acquire so many users so fast?
What did TikTok not do well? What could they have done better?
How did TikTok pay and incentivize the creator community?
What are some of Suchit's biggest lessons and advice for founders battling a better-funded incumbent?

4. The Decision to Sell: Being Acquired by Reddit:

Ultimately, why did Suchit decide to sell the company to Reddit?
Why did the first two acquisition attempts fail?
What are 1-2 of the biggest pieces of advice Suchit has for founders debating whether it is right to sell their company?
What do all founders being acquired need to remember?
With the benefit of hindsight, if Suchit could do the acquisition process again, what would he do differently?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good products make it to your home screen.
0:02.8	Great products make it into your mind.
0:04.9	When you're not using the products, you're thinking about them.
0:07.7	That is so hard to do.
0:09.2	This is 20VC, The Memo, with me, Harry Stebbings,
0:11.7	and today we're focusing on an incredible company journey,
0:14.4	a company that scale to 43 million users in just 10 days.
0:18.7	They receive funding from some of the best in the business, and then
0:21.6	they battled TikTok, an opponent like never seen before. This is the story of Dobsmash.
0:26.6	To tell the story, I'm so excited to welcome Dobsmash co-founder, Sujit Dash. For those that do not know,
0:32.6	Dobsmash was a short-form video platform. As I said, they scaled to millions of users, including Namar and
0:38.2	Jimmy Fallon, before being acquired by Reddit in 2020. Today, Suchet is the VP of Core Product
0:43.6	Experience at Reddit, where he's responsible for the surfaces that millions of users interact with
0:48.2	daily. But before we dive into the show today, we need to talk about SANA. SANA is an AI-powered
0:53.4	learning and knowledge-sharing platform.
0:55.7	Think of it like ChatGPT for all your company's knowledge. SANA integrates with all your
1:00.7	company's apps in under five minutes and can search through every single file, dog, pull request,
1:07.0	video and more in under 100 milliseconds. Assistant is generative AI at its most useful.
1:12.6	Say you need to create a course on OKR fundamentals for your employee onboarding program,
1:16.6	and you're just really short on time.
1:18.6	Well, Assistant can generate the outline and contents from scratch,
1:22.6	complete with relevant imagery.
	...

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