#heycrowd

This is a story about HeyCrowd and how they went on to win the Silver trophy at LeWeb's Startup competition.

It is not a product review, but I encourage everybody with an iPhone to test it. The app is free.

Last week, HeyCrowd landed on the 2nd place on the podium of LeWeb11 Startup competition. First of all: Congratulations to HeyCrowd's team for this awesome award in such a competitive environment.

Gold went to Beintoo, Bronze to Bableverse and the people's choice to Eco Labs.

For those who don't follow the startup scene: LeWeb takes place in Paris and is one of the most visible and recognized web-conferences outside of the US, shining well beyond France and Europe. The Startup competition received over 500 applications; an international jury narrowed the group down to 32 semi-finalists, public's votes determined the 16 selected companies (aka finalists) who presented to LeWeb's judges. The top 3 companies had the opportunity to pitch on the main stage to an all-star jury.

My story starts in 2010

I first met Emmanuel (Twitter @ebellity), HeyCrowd's founder and CEO one year ago at LeWeb's 2010 edition. He contacted me to pitch a project called Opismart, which he started a few months earlier.

I have been in contact with Emmanuel since then and am following his project closely, challenging him, connecting him with people, helping when possible and trying to give my two cents (I don't take any credit whatsoever).

In this past year many things have happened to Opismart. Emmanuel has repositioned his product, learned how to write code, participated in several startup meetups here and there, spent time in New York, and most importantly found somebody to embark with him on the adventure: Matthieu, his co-founder (Twitter @matthieurouif). He has also received backing from some remarkable entrepreneurs and changed the name to HeyCrowd. A major product update launched for LeWeb.

(Emmanuel also has a beard now: maybe it is by choice or just because he is too busy. I will need to ask him.)

The pitch

HeyCrowd is a mobile app for iPhone (iOS only right now) at the cross-roads of social entertainment and quick opinion or sentiment polling. This is my personal definition, no official marketing slogan. One thing it is for sure: it is very sticky and addictive.

With the name change, the tagline also changed and reads today like that: Social polling made simple.

One year ago, I listened to his pitch, we started discussing it and in less than 10 minutes I was hooked into it.

I wasn't convinced that he had a killer product, yet still, I was intrigued enough to become involved. The tagline one year ago was: Opinions on the go. This didn't sound like something that matters to me. So why did I like it?

Looking back, I believe there were two main reasons: The first was the entrepreneur himself, second was his execution of the 1st version of the product. I believe that both are essential to the story of winning LeWeb's Silver award, and maybe also exemplary for other start-ups.

The entrepreneur

Emmanuel was working for a very well known investment bank in Paris when he decided to quit and start his own project. He self-funded the development of his v1 spending a chunk of his savings and had to continue doing consulting work on the side to make his living. His consulting clients were American, thus he often worked at night. And like many passionate entrepreneurs do, he spent every free minute thinking about HeyCrowd, his real project. Which means that he was often working all night.

The first thing that stroke me when meeting with Emmanuel is that he is always very respectful. This might sound trivial, but just ask yourself: how often do you think somebody doesn't really pay attention to your opinion. Even during periods when he was under time pressure or stressed otherwise, I never thought that he wasn't carefully listening. He seams to value your time, goes beyond just a superficial discussion and cares about your opinion. 

That doesn't mean that he doesn't have his proper opinion. He operates with a lot of common sense, strong analytical skills and pays attention to details.

Emmanuel is generously sharing his passion and eager to receive feedback and learn from others. I would describe him as smart and humble at the same time, somebody who is open-minded, but remains focused.

Since we have met, his project idea has matured a lot. Every day he is getting closer and closer to articulate a clear vision for HeyCrowd. That wasn't always the case when we met one year ago.

In fact, I would say that the initial pitch that we discussed and presented to external people did not work very well. We got a lot of push-back and criticism, especially as the market for mobile polling is already pretty crowded: few examples are Opinionaided or Thumbspeak; or Qriously with a slightly different approach. The differentiation was not very clear and the danger that advanced companies like SurveyMonkey could also create a mobile solution was imminent.

While the first version of HeyCrowd (= Opismart) was already available in the AppStore and used by thousands of people, Emmanuel had to care about support and ongoing queries, and he also needed to work on differentiating his product. The v1 wasn't good enough to succeed.

He knows his competitors' products very well. It became a matter of making the right choices, taking some risk and ultimately better explain what the difference is.

Probably the most important element HeyCrowd introduced during this year was this notion of Crowds. The latest version, the name change and new tagline illustrate how HeyCrowd's concept is now shaping up.

Again, this might look trivial to most people, but making those choices and being able to align simple words to describe your project idea isn't easy. This simplification required a lot of work and careful evaluation of the feedback he received. I am convinced that it was the key to many things that came into place right after that: more attention, more users, new business model and much more.

Another proof how determined he is: he started learning Ruby on Rails, just to be able to develop code himself. Add to this a good sense of humor (take the joke about Cocaine addiction during LeWeb's presentation on main stage -> here <- jump to 17"04) and you can figure out why I think that he is the first of the two main reasons for the success at LeWeb: he is not only a very nice guy with a passion for his project and a great ambition to succeed, but he has great social competence and remains nevertheless humble and respectful.

The product execution

The second element that was important in my view for winning the Silver trophy is the product execution. A lot has been said during LeWeb about the right timing for shipping products. In the world of web and mobile products, where updates and new versions don't cost much and happen almost instantly, it is not necessary to have the perfect product to start gather users' feedback.

It's important to remember that you're not building a product for your own use, but for your target audience. When I started using HeyCrowd (back when it was called Opismart), I really had the impression that it was thought through and designed for me.

From the moment I saw this product, I really enjoyed playing with it. It is simple and fun, it doesn't do too many things, but what it does works. The principle is very simple: Questions about various topics show up one after the other, and with one tab on the screen you express your opinion and the next question appears. It's smooth, fast and not too much to think about. You can also ask your own questions and see what other people answer.

My point here isn't whether I needed this app or if was useful for me at this time, but rather what's my first impression. The App is really sticky and provides an instant positive experience. The entertainment factor was quite amusing. HeyCrowd got it right.

I doesn't matter to me, at first, if the Business Model is right, nor if the App is solving a stringent problem. I know from my past and current experience that there is a market for gathering consumers' opinions and that getting consumers involved is a growing pain-point for marketeers.

I have witnessed how new players emerged over the past decades with every change of market research technology: from paper to phone, from phone to  online. And now we'll see what will happen with mobile Apps. New technologies have rarely replaced old methods. Sometimes they partially substitute old ways, but more generally they open new ways to interact with the target audience and create new usage areas.

What matters most to me is if the App will be able to attract users and keep them active (which means keep your marketing costs low). I believe that HeyCrowd can do both because the team is paying a lot of attention to product design, the user experience and listens carefully. After all, they can use their own tool to collect feedback.

If you get the core product right you will more efficiently generate a significant enough user-base, and once you have the users the rest can fall into place more easily. Even if you need multiple iterations for your Business Model, Marketing, Distribution etc. These are all easier to fix, if your core product is strong. I think that HeyCrowd has a great foundation and that the team operates with the right attitude.

The latest version that is currently shipping is already bringing many improvements, that make the App much more mature than the previous version, that I got addicted to. And despite many new features, this new version remains intuitive, simple and fun. I guess that this all played an important role for their success at LeWeb's Startup competition.

What's next

The journey just started for HeyCrowd.

As much as I wish Emmanuel and the team to celebrate this reward, which probably came unexpected (but they fully deserve it), I expect the pressure to grow. HeyCrowd has nice press and blog exposure right now and the expectations are now bigger then before. But isn't that what every entrepreneur wants?

HeyCrowd needs to show that they are able to attract different crowds and grow quickly, before some German copy-cat emerges (see my earlier post about German strengths).

Their play might well be a winner-takes-it-all-model. If they succeed in this, the business will fall into place.

I hope they will continue use their strengths and take HeyCrowd to the next level.