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Description

Are you looking to grow or start your two-sided marketplace? Well today’s guest is talking about how the app, Tophatter, has grown to over $300M in sales. You will discover how they have gamified the buying process, how they get users back into their app and how to take calculated risks to help you scale a mid-size startup.

Sree Menon is the Strategy & Global Sales Operations at Tophatter.

Show Notes

How Tophatter has Gamified the Buying Process

Tophatter is a mobile discovery-based shopping app. All the products that they sell started at a dollar. Everytime users bid, the auction bid goes up by a dollar. This provides a lot of gamification experience to the users because it gives one the thrill of winning and discovering and finding great deals. They also display the names of the winners which makes it even more exciting for the users.

Only the winner will have to pay for the item so those who lose can continue to bid for another item. This is free which makes it addicting because you don’t lose money unless you win the bid. If you do, then you get the item you want. It’s a win-win.

How Tophatter Gets Users Back Into their App

The gameplay itself is addicting so users will probably come back to it to try to win but aside from this, they also send push notifications or alerts if the user loses the bid and a similar type of product is up for auction.

Tophatter invites the users back to engage them through email campaigns to notify their customers because they know that some do not turn the push notifications on. This way, they have another channel to reach out to their users.

How to Take Calculated Risks And Scale Up

According to Sree, as a start-up business, they look for multiple metrics at a micro level and they find balance all the time. When making a decision, they try to understand what is absolutely crucial that needs to be fixed.

To scale up, they have a tiger team that focuses on scaling the business that their big customers are interested in. They also have a tactical team that continues to keep the users engaged and look for better ways to keep their business model.

Show Mention

– Fav app: Airbnb: (iTunes | Google Play)

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