OneAvenue Inc,
Co-founder & Head of Product
OneAvenue Tv was way for creators to connect, monetize and grow their fans. I grew OneAvenue to 6 Million users/month and was the fastest growing app than SnapChat in the first 3 months. FEATURED AT SXSW MUSICTECH'17, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, TECHDAY LA'17 & XLIVE CONFERENCE'16.
Our founding mission
Become one place for creators to monetize and engage their fans.
Problem statement
In 2016, creators faced challenges in engaging their fans effectively in a singular, cohesive platform that facilitated deeper connections and the development of a highly engaged fanbase. Available alternatives each had their specific limitation:
Patreon: This platform was primarily perceived as a means for creators to solicit financial support from their fans, which may not appeal to all creators or fans seeking different forms of engagement.
Streamlabs: While useful, it was predominantly tailored to Twitch live streamers, thereby limiting its applicability to creators in other domains or platforms.
Various Tip-Jar Product Feature Companies: These offered a way for fans to financially support creators, but they lacked comprehensive features for deeper engagement and community building.
Bckstage: Funded by Justin Bieber, this platform catered exclusively to A-list celebrities, making it inaccessible to the broader range of creators seeking to establish and grow their fanbase.
Need for creator-first platform
After conducting interviews with over 20 creators varying from large to mid-sized followings on platforms like YouTube and Instagram, a common need emerged. These creators expressed a desire for a unified platform where they could consolidate all their offerings – music, videos, tickets, and other content spread across social media channels. The primary goal was to have a single, centralized location to both engage with their fans more effectively and to monetize their fanbase more efficiently. This feedback highlighted a significant gap in the current market offerings, underscoring the demand for a more integrated solution for creators to manage their digital presence and interactions with fans
Validating our hypothesis
We employed a diverse set of research methods to gain comprehensive insights into the market and audience behaviors. This included conducting online surveys targeted at tweens to young adults, carrying out in-depth in-person interviews, performing competitor analysis, and participating in industry events like VidCon to gauge market size and audience dynamics.
Adopting the lean startup approach, our initial focus was to validate the core issue among fans and assess its significance to them. This led to the discovery that fans were juggling multiple apps to follow their favorite celebrities, often missing out on content. This realization not only confirmed our hypothesis but also guided our subsequent strategy to understand current solutions used by these fans.
This research was instrumental in shaping our understanding of the target user personas. It provided insights into their spending capacity, the amount of time they were likely to spend on an app like ours, and their expectations in terms of user experience. This knowledge was crucial in tailoring our product to meet the specific needs and habits of our intended audience.
Personas of Creator's Fanbase
We segmented the Creator's fanbase into distinct personas, each with unique characteristics and behaviors:
Tastemakers: These are fans who are constantly seeking new creators and content. They have a keen eye for emerging trends and are often the first to discover and share new material. Tastemakers are not only willing but also likely to pay a premium for early or exclusive access to content.
SuperFans: This group is characterized by their deep loyalty and enthusiasm for their favorite creators. SuperFans are willing to go the extra mile to support creators, whether it's by purchasing or unlocking premium content, being the first to engage with new posts, or following creators across various social networks. They are highly engaged and are often the ones who have alerts set up to ensure they never miss an update from their favorite Creator. Their dedication is a key driving force in the creator-fan ecosystem
Developing the information architecture and user flow
Moving forward, it's crucial to construct a high-level user flow to visualize the primary actions and interactions within the product. This process, which involves continuous iteration, is vital for refining and defining the product's flow, ensuring a seamless and intuitive user experience.
The screenshot provided here serves as a sample approach, illustrating a segment of this process. It's important to note that this is not the complete work but a representation of the iterative process crucial for refining and enhancing the product's flow.
Wireframes
Post our deep dive into user goals and behaviors, our focus shifted to ensuring the app experience was user-friendly and intuitive right from the start. To achieve this, we emphasized several key aspects in our wireframes:
Ease of Finding Favorite Celebrities: We prioritized a design that allows users to effortlessly locate and follow their favorite celebrities within the app.
Simplified Engagement with Posts: The interface was crafted to make interacting with posts — liking, commenting, sharing — as straightforward as possible.
CoDiscovery: A feature was integrated to help users easily learn about events happening nearby, enhancing their connection with live events organized by Creators.
Comprehensive Access to Creator Profiles: We designed the creator profiles to offer a 360º view, amalgamating all of a creator's content — from social media posts to music, videos, and ticketing information — in one centralized location. This holistic approach ensures users have complete and easy access to everything related to their beloved creators
High-fidelity wireframes
When creating high-fidelity wireframes (HFW), it's crucial to design with the objective of garnering high-quality feedback from user testing. These detailed wireframes serve as a powerful tool in effectively communicating with users during the testing phase. Incorporating a deeper level of detail and functionality into the HFW not only aids in gathering insightful feedback but also plays a pivotal role in clearly defining and sharing the vision of the app. This approach ensures that the final product is not only visually appealing but also aligns closely with user needs and expectations
Please note that the work shown here is a sample view, illustrating the approach and level of detail we aim for, rather than the final, comprehensive product design
100K users in 3 months
Our initial launch was a significant success, attracting 100K users within the first three months. Beyond these early achievements, we secured $500K in funding, which was pivotal in scaling our platform. This investment and dedicated effort led to a remarkable growth trajectory, culminating in a user base of 6 million users across our mobile and web applications. This growth is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team, and the strong market resonance of our product.
While the case study provides an overview, it cannot fully encompass the extensive research, ideation, validation, design, and development efforts behind the product.