The secret to reaching 10 million users in 289 days!

An investor in the circle of friends helped to post a notice of "Lucky House for Rent". A startup company in Wudaoying Hutong, Beijing, rented out an office. Just based on the feature that "a product with tens of millions of users was born here in 289 days", it can be judged that this company is the rapidly growing Keep. There is an unwritten "feng shui" in the venture capital circle. If a company gets financing or has smooth sailing here, the office will be a good feng shui place.

The Siheyuan has grown with the number of Keep users to tens of millions

As a new company, Keep has grown rapidly in the past year and has attracted much attention. It is commendable not only for gaining recognition from tens of millions of users in just 289 days, but also for exploring a new growth model in the field of sports and fitness: taking users as the absolute center and content as the main driver, forming a distinctive brand "tone" on the first day of its business, and constantly strengthening its style. Wang Ning, the founder of Keep, has been labeled a post-90s CEO by the outside world. He represents the characteristics of his generation: a native resident of the mobile Internet , whose understanding of the community ecosystem is written into his growth.

Recently, I had the opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with Wang Ning, the founder of Keep. We talked about Keep's unique growth experience and how he, as a native resident of the mobile Internet, formed a user ecosystem and built a brand.

Founder/Product Fit and Founder/Market Fit

What is it like to have over 10 million users in 289 days?

Keep team building photo

When the number of users exceeded 10 million, Wang Ning held an internal party to celebrate the first milestone in growth with a sense of ceremony. His circle of friends also froze at this moment, "289 days, 10 million users, it's great to have you."

Being able to do all this is closely related to the fact that Wang Ning is a typical native resident of the mobile Internet. Mobile phones are an inseparable tool in the growing up memories of Wang Ning's generation. The biggest difference between him and other entrepreneurs is that Wang Ning is closer to future mobile Internet users.

Wang Ning started using a mobile phone in junior high school. At that time, he used Mobile E-Net to access the Internet on his color-screen mobile phone. When he first came into contact with the mobile network, he was full of curiosity and spent 100 yuan on phone bills in one week, while the weekly pocket money given by his parents at that time was probably only 30 to 40 yuan. Although he was criticized for this, it did not discourage Wang Ning from exploring the mobile Internet. At that time, he had a strong feeling that everything in the future could be done with a mobile phone. Mobile phones could replace PCs and even bank cards to meet most of our daily needs.

Keep has grown from zero to tens of millions, which is also the growth of Wang Ning’s self-learning. This post-90s generation, whose first job after graduation was founder and CEO, is also growing and learning rapidly with the help of various media.

He reads books voraciously. During our chat, he kept going back to the thoughts and inspirations that "Zero to One" and "Participation" brought him. He avoids the pitfalls of entrepreneurship through learning very cautiously. When he first started his business, he went to bed at 11 or 12 o'clock every day. Now he goes to bed at 2 or 3 o'clock every day. In addition to reading, he talks with people who have experience. If he has no personal experience, he can only listen to other people's stories and imagine from the stories what he would do if he encountered such a thing at that stage.

Before inserting the advertisement in "Happy Camp", Wang Ning kept chatting with people who knew more about the business, drawing on their experience to evaluate whether this "big-ticket" market investment was safe for him. Wang Ning possesses the dual characteristics of being ambitious and cautious. Being young represents both unlimited possibilities and a lack of experience that he wants to avoid at all costs.

In Wang Ning's eyes, "from zero to one" represents the birth of a thing. An enterprise forms certain barriers through product innovation, branding, etc. In this process, it opens up a blue ocean market that truly belongs to it and becomes the undisputed number one in this market. This is the entire process from zero to one. From this point of view, from zero to one is a cyclical stage.

Keep's main users were born between 1985 and 1995. They are Wang Ning's peers. As one of them, Wang Ning has a deep understanding of them: they are accustomed to mobile Internet access, and mobile phones are an important tool for connecting life. The focus on lifestyle and appearance, the awakening of fitness awareness, and the pursuit of a "cool" lifestyle by the new Internet population have all become factors that cannot be ignored behind Keep's rapid growth.

Community operation : make users feel cool

Different founders have different Hamlets. When talking about "Sense of Participation" with a founder, the detail that she remembered vividly was that Xiaomi iterated its products every week based on user feedback. What she saw was diligence and execution. Insisting on product iteration requires strong team execution.

When talking to Wang Ning about this book, he quite agrees with Xiaomi's focus on branding. Early users were all chasing after the iPhone. Using an iPhone was cool and fashionable, while using an Android phone was considered LOW. In order to break this stereotype, Xiaomi proposed "Born for Enthusiasts" and repositioned its users. Users buy Xiaomi phones not only because iPhones are more expensive than Xiaomi, but because Xiaomi users have higher spiritual pursuits. "I am an enthusiast. Mobile phones mean more to me. Using Xiaomi is a cooler thing."

Keep has been pursuing a unified brand style since day one

This is also the reason why Keep has come from behind. Last year was the year of explosion in sports products. Many products that came before Keep and were larger in scale did not achieve the same growth curve. "They don't think sports are cool."

The spirit that Keep conveys is: using Keep is a cool thing, and exercising without Keep is a low thing. To put it in a more personal way, “he” is the cool kid at school that you want to hang out with, and he’s always the same.

Brand temperament is achieved imperceptibly and silently. For a startup company, everything is about quality control and detail management. Any picture of Keep on social networks, Weibo and WeChat has a clear and unified visual style. "We don't just upload a picture casually. Every picture has a dedicated person in charge. They decide how to match the picture, where to put the logo, how to present the color tone..." Wang Ning said. If you look closely at Keep's social accounts, you will find that every background picture behind the official Weibo is unique.

As a startup company, Wang Ning constantly emphasizes the concept of "brand", which means the formation of a unified style. "Even if you cover all Nike advertisements with the logo, you will know it is Nike. It has already formed a brand tone. This is very important and it is something we are constantly learning," said Wang Ning.

Wang Ning's original intention of founding Keep was not just to make some money and make a good product, but to create a very good brand. So from the very beginning he regarded user experience as the most important factor in product marketing decisions. No matter what he did, he would do it around the word user experience, which meant that sometimes he had to say no to the temptation to destroy the user experience.

With the awakening of brand awareness among the new generation of Internet users, an important turning point in the mobile Internet is the increasing importance of users. In his latest speech, Zhang Xiaolong, the creator of WeChat, mentioned that "everything is based on user value."

Social media: the driving force of rapid growth

Good things are made by smart people using stupid methods. "How to increase the number of users to 10 million within 289 days?" Although I really want to find the answer to this question, this is not a standard answer to this question. Although the growth process may not be replicated, the growth experience can still be traced.

Accurately obtain seed users . What Keep is most praised for is its cold start, which allowed it to find a group of loyal fitness users when it started from scratch. When the product was first launched, Keep's operations staff lurked in vertical forums, small BBSs, and QQ and WeChat groups for weight loss and fitness, and went deep into the user base. When Keep was first launched, the first batch of users emerged from these very vertical user groups. Keep's initial core users were introduced in this way, and they also became the most active users in the early community.

I once talked with Wang Yuxiang of Douguo.com about the growth of Douguo.com. In the earliest stage of acquiring core users, they also adopted this "stupid method". By finding KOLs in the field of recipes, they moved the users with the most core needs into the community, thus maintaining a good community vitality on the first day.

Users first. Listen to user feedback. User feedback can reach the product manager directly. The product manager needs to listen to a large number of user opinions every day, collect and organize these opinions, and adopt them in product iterations.

In the early days, Keep distributed 3,000 T-shirts to users, which was a big expense for Wang Ning, who was very careful with marketing expenses. After the first batch of 1,500 T-shirts were sold out by users, Wang Ning gritted his teeth and made another 1,500 pieces to distribute to users. T-shirts are a medium for conveying brand culture and have further consolidated Keep's position in the hearts of existing users. Looking at the enthusiastic feedback from users, Wang Ning also has a feeling of "spending all the money and making it back again".

Make good use of social sharing. Social Internet can be an engine for accelerating user growth. Keep has completed two rounds of financing, but has hardly spent a lot of money on user acquisition. Most of the user acquisition relies on product and sharing to gain return. Keep fitness check-in once became a phenomenon in the circle of friends. From Wang Ning's experience, sharing feedback from social networks is a good way to acquire users, just like the early Didi taxi red envelopes. The core part of marketing must be the product itself. In addition, the product must have a point that can be spread and attract users to return. The sport itself conveys a positive life philosophy, and users are also happy to share it on WeChat Moments.

Take social media seriously. Keep has dedicated people in charge of Weibo and WeChat, who insist on producing original content every day and acquire new users through high-quality content. In marketing, Wang Ning adheres to the principle of using little to achieve great results. For many things, one only needs to grasp the details and be well prepared, and good results can be achieved without spending a lot of money.

The brand's coordinated style will be reflected in the details

Wang Ning wants to create a sports brand with a strong sense of technology. Although the product starts with a mobile phone, his goal is not to stop at one product, but to create a cool brand that can influence more users. For his generation, it is difficult to create a product by opening a store and producing it, but the Internet has provided new possibilities. Creating a new brand through the Internet's marketing methods and influence and taking root in the new type of mobile Internet users is his first step.

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