How does Lift (app) make money?
What is the business model behind the app? Are they going to monetize the service at some point and if they do, then how?
1 Answer
This could be a generic Silicon Valley startup answer: we currently don't make money and are funded by investors who want to see us focus on product market fit and growth first.
I know there are so many companies like this who come into existence, burn through someone else's money and then disappear. But let me give you what I think my investor's perspective is before I go into mine.
Our two main investors are Evan Williams (co-founder of Blogger and Twitter) and Bijan Sabet (investor in Tumblr, OMGPOP, Foursquare, Twitter, StackExchange). All of their biggest successes were in companies that didn't make any money at first. Here's Evan answering a related question:
Evan Williams' answer to What consumer Internet companies had a large number of users but failed to monetize?
My perspective is that I really want to make the largest possible impact on human potential and there are two ways that making money plays into that.
First, the longer we stay in business the more of an impact we can make.
We've been setting huge records for daily check-ins this week. When we break that down to the number of improvements people have made in their lives, it's really mind boggling.
On a per employee basis, a member of the Lift team working for a single day has the impact of a life coach working full time for almost ten years. That's the leverage that technology gives us (and it gets even better as we put Lift into the hands of actual coaches and trainers to multiply their own expertise).
Imagine if we could pull that impact off for a ten year or hundred year period?
Well, that's going to require finding a source of revenue so that we can be a sustainable business.
Two, sometimes charging for something allows us to provide a service that we couldn't otherwise.
For example, we ran an experiment with actual human accountability coaches who checked in on you, answered questions, and gave you prompting. It was a successful experiment in that it nearly doubled people's success rates.
For the experiment, we charged $10/month. Economically speaking, this was way too low given the amount of human time that went into it. But a service like this could probably be done in the $20-50/month range.
An eventual paid feature in this category would be my ideal business because it has the following characteristics:
For what it's worth, I actually really enjoy making money because it's very clear feedback from users that we are providing value. Right now we have to read the tea leaves of user feedback and retention graphs.
That probably sounds like we're planning to offer paid subscription services at some point. And, if you interpret the word "planning" loosely, we are.
But the more honest answer is that we don't have any certainty, because we haven't even finished the foundation of the product yet.
Lift 2.0, which will come out in January, will be substantially different. I want to see what opportunities pop up after we launch that before making any firm pronouncements about Lift's business model.
I know there are so many companies like this who come into existence, burn through someone else's money and then disappear. But let me give you what I think my investor's perspective is before I go into mine.
Our two main investors are Evan Williams (co-founder of Blogger and Twitter) and Bijan Sabet (investor in Tumblr, OMGPOP, Foursquare, Twitter, StackExchange). All of their biggest successes were in companies that didn't make any money at first. Here's Evan answering a related question:
Evan Williams' answer to What consumer Internet companies had a large number of users but failed to monetize?
My perspective is that I really want to make the largest possible impact on human potential and there are two ways that making money plays into that.
First, the longer we stay in business the more of an impact we can make.
We've been setting huge records for daily check-ins this week. When we break that down to the number of improvements people have made in their lives, it's really mind boggling.
On a per employee basis, a member of the Lift team working for a single day has the impact of a life coach working full time for almost ten years. That's the leverage that technology gives us (and it gets even better as we put Lift into the hands of actual coaches and trainers to multiply their own expertise).
Imagine if we could pull that impact off for a ten year or hundred year period?
Well, that's going to require finding a source of revenue so that we can be a sustainable business.
Two, sometimes charging for something allows us to provide a service that we couldn't otherwise.
For example, we ran an experiment with actual human accountability coaches who checked in on you, answered questions, and gave you prompting. It was a successful experiment in that it nearly doubled people's success rates.
For the experiment, we charged $10/month. Economically speaking, this was way too low given the amount of human time that went into it. But a service like this could probably be done in the $20-50/month range.
An eventual paid feature in this category would be my ideal business because it has the following characteristics:
- Improves user success rates, i.e. impact.
- Provides functionality that couldn't exist without payment (i.e. it's not an artificial freemium cut-line).
- Is straight forward for the users to understand where we make money.
For what it's worth, I actually really enjoy making money because it's very clear feedback from users that we are providing value. Right now we have to read the tea leaves of user feedback and retention graphs.
That probably sounds like we're planning to offer paid subscription services at some point. And, if you interpret the word "planning" loosely, we are.
But the more honest answer is that we don't have any certainty, because we haven't even finished the foundation of the product yet.
Lift 2.0, which will come out in January, will be substantially different. I want to see what opportunities pop up after we launch that before making any firm pronouncements about Lift's business model.