PinYada
A time & place based consumer mobile messaging app that manufactured serendipity.
Overview
In 2014 I was keeping an eye out for a consumer mobile startup in the DFW area I could join to learn more about building a digital startup. I came across a compelling time and place based messaging platform back when messaging platforms were gaining notoriety that was looking for someone with app design experience to take over the product. Messages could be pinned to any location on earth or to any time in the future which gave the messages more context and meaning when opened and resulted in some pretty powerful moments for recipients. When I first met the company the app was being built by a full-time team of half a dozen designers and engineers over a period of about seven months but was struggling to launch. I took over as the sole, full-time team member to try my hand at leading a digital product.
Objective
Take over a unique, time and place-based messaging app struggling to launch and make it a commercial success. (no pressure)
My Role
Product Owner responsible for product vision, brand, experience, delivery, and growth.
Collaborative Leadership
Vision & Strategy
Team Building & Management
Skills
Brand Identity
Comm Design & Illustration
Product Design
Mapping & Blueprints
Wireframes
Prototyping
Creative Direction
Motion Design
Copywriting
Positive feedback from users about how the app was creating unique and unexpectedly delightful moments
Learned a lot about launching a consumer facing digital product
Reimagined, repositioned, and launched a beautiful and innovative messaging app on both iOS and Android phones in a few months
Raised $125k
Results
Reimagining the Product
The Product I took over was called “Capsule” as in a time capsule. It wasn’t a bad name but it conjured a feeling of cold steel and dirt or a pill and medicine. Imagining the ability to leave surprise messages for people at a moment in time or space feels more surprising and delightful - like finding money on the ground. With that in mind I went to work on re-positioning the product, purpose, and presentation.
Instead of solving a real-world problem there was a belief in the opportunity to create a compelling product that leveraged a location-based experience similar to the Pokemon Go app which was the runaway hit at the time. I believed what we created needed to be visually and experientially compelling to have a chance.
Brand Identity
I started by coming up with a new name & tagline - PinYada, Messages When They Matter since we were delivering messages at a specific time or place that added context. From there I hired a talented local designer to collaborate with me on crafting a visual identity. The goal was to design an identity that made you want to engage with it once seen and I knew just the designer to nail the tone I was envisioning for both the brand and product.
The business cards had example app message (Yada) layouts on the backs.
Product
White boarding and wire framing happened quickly - we kept the experience very straight forward to support the core experience and make it easy to get started right away. Sketch was used to generate final app artwork. I’m a big fan of using motion in experiences when helpful and/or to add personality. Keynote was used to generate transition and icon animation examples to communicate to the developers.
Pencils and wires of the product experience happy path which is where we started our build.
The pre-registration app intro flow utilized beautiful animated transitions triggered and controlled by the swiping.
Various app screens from the cards, card location & time details, card detail, and time and location pinning selection.
Pitch
Below are some slides from the pitch deck that outline the app experience, how we were leaning into people’s short attention span to generate serendipitous moments, example reasons to “pin-a-Yada”, and potential brand partnership experiences.
Looking For Growth
This was my first foray into attempting to generate growth for a digital product. I was furiously reading and researching growth tactics to determine what experiments I could start running to see what methods would find traction. One of the concepts I tried was creating “moment cards”. My hypothesis was that an inexpensive set of a few hundred business cards left in random places for people to find - like behind a box of cereal at the supermarket - would create a moment similar to what the app created which people might enjoy, reuse the card to pay it forward, and/or take a photo of to share on social media. Needless to say it didn’t work.
Reflection
I knew taking this role was a career risk, in my mind it was a calculated one where I’d learn a lot in a compressed amount of time. Learnings I could apply to other products if this one didn’t pan out (which ended up being Cariloop and DASH). I was up front about not having the fundraising experience or network to raise funds quickly so support there will be needed. The concept was intriguing and I was 100% confident I could create a compelling product vision, design a cohesive brand and app experience, and launch an impressive product. I also believed I could figure out the marketing and growth while building the product – this is where I was most naive.
“Solution in search of a problem” and “if you build it they will come doesn’t work” are concepts I became familiar with. I learned the importance of building an audience before and/or while you build your product to validate ideas and understand what they deem as valuable. Just how difficult fundraising is and how long a runway you need to successfully raise and keep things going. That it helps to have some idea of how you’re going to generate revenue to keep things going even if the strategy is user acquisition. And I learned it takes patience, consistency, and grit to make a product a success.
In the end the experience was incredibly rewarding. While the product never took off we built a truly innovative app, received a lot of praise from investors we pitched to about it being ahead of its time, and people who used it raved about the moments they were creating and experiencing through it. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to lead the product, and for the engineers that built and maintained it, the advisors who guided our efforts, and the few investors that believed in it.