2. I’m honored to be considered to join
Boston Startup School’s second class
3. BeCouply is more expensive than planning a
date yourself so why would anyone spend $ on
BC?
// the way it makes a couple feel
// covers the majority of the decision-making
and lack of expertise that some people feel
when planning great dates.
BC is banking on the fact that people are will-
ing to pay extra for that feeling or for the con-
venience and as such their success will depend
on amazing user experience that leads to great
word of mouth virility.
4. As a subscription service BC’s target market
is long term couples or spouses. Probably the
ones who have date nights. Not people casual-
ly dating. But the question should be validated.
5. Since it has several value propo-
sitions BC can market in several
ways.
/ To the people who are too busy and can’t be
/
bothered to plan awesome dates but want to go
on them
/ To the couples that want to feel like a “power”
/
couple
/ To the people who for the life of themselves
/
can’t plan a good date and want help
6. Using Googles Keyword tool you can see that “date
night” as a search term is seached over 200K times
monthly when you sum both desktops and mobile
searches.
Two peaks during the year for the search
term “date night”:
/ Beginning of February
/
/ Middle of September
/
7. BC wants to “understand both the acquisition and
retention around how our users are coming and
leaving,” co-founder Pius Uzamere said. “If you
want to build a product that millions of people
are using, then you have to make your first 1,000
users really happy.” Emphasizing the need for a
great user experience that leads to great word of
mouth virility.
8. According to the co-founder of BC Pius Uzamere
“We’ve got a huge market: more than 60 million
couples live together in the U.S. alone. We’re solv-
ing a universal human problem: couples aspire
to have epic social lives just like when they were
single. And we’re tapping into existing spending
habits: U.S. married couples without kids spend
$9.25 billion/month going out.”
So how does BC get a slice of the pie?
9. For BC to be an idea worth spreading I don’t think they
should follow traditional marketing and go for the majority
but instead they should go after the early adopters. They
are the people who listen and are obsessed with some-
thing and will spread BC to their couple friends.
10. To do this BC needs to look at decision science in order to understand why or why
not a couple would use their service. Once they have an understanding of their
user; informative marketing can drive customer acquistion
/ Perceived advantages and disadvantages: These are the perceived pluses and
/
minus of BC (e.g. power couple feeling.)
/ Social norms: Who would approve or disapprove of the person performing the
/
behavior, i.e., buying and using the product? How would my friends, partners,
and significant others evaluate the product? (Would my SO think I was “cheating”
and not being romantic on my own?)
/ Self Efficacy: These are perceptions about one’s ability to acquire and use the
/
product. As a consumer, I ask “do I have the skills necessary to use this product?”
What are the skills consumers think they need to use your product and how can
you convince them in your marketing that they have those skills and that using it
is easy. (Do they have to have a long term SO?)
/ Emotions: Does the behavior elicit positive or negative emotional reactions that
/
might encourage or discourage the behavior? How can BC bring forth the posi-
tive emotions and push back the negative emotions? Although your first reac-
tion might be that BC only elicits positive reactions, it might turn out that having
this subscription ends up being a source of financial grief. Consider seeing a $200
monthly bill vs. seeing random payments to an assortment of restaurants.
/ Image implications: How does acquiring and using this product fit with my im-
/
age of myself and the image that I want to project to other people? (Am I not ca-
pable of giving my SO a great time out?)
11. That said here are a couple of campaigns I might
look into testing in order to make data driven de-
cisions:
/ Giving free dates to influential couples.
/
i.e. Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez
/ integration with certain companies
/
i.e. Uber, travel companies, specific hotels and
restaurants.
/ promotions around certain dates and specific
/
packages
i.e. valentines day, NYE, Birthday specials,
wedding gifts
/ testing the difference in customer acquistion
/
on a subscription plan vs. a buy 3 dates at a
time vs. buying individual dates
