By now, you’ve no doubt seen the relentless DraftKings/FanDuel commercials–they seem to be everywhere. In the wake of a scandal in 2015, both companies had a record performance that following NFL Sunday. Most people see the amount of industry growth that has happened with daily fantasy sports and think the barrier for entry is too high. Well, not us. We saw something exciting that brought together two of our favorite things: sports and technology.
How did we take on the massive daily fantasy sports niche and succeed? Simply, we started with mobile. This was our shortcut to success, and it’s how we obtained over 30,000 monthly active users in a short period and why we achieved a $450,000 seed investment. Below are some lessons we learned about how to get started with your own mobile app–and how your first customers can help you improve your product.
Start With Mobile
App stores represent the second coming of the dot-com era. People don’t search Google for the recipe for “grilling chicken†anymore. They search an app store for a grilling app that will teach them the top 10 different ways to grill chicken.
App stores, not search engines, are the first solution to most problems people face these days. We used this line of thinking in developing the tools we made for Daily Fantasy Sports into the award-winning LineStar app.
Because we started with mobile, we had a strategic advantage over our competition, who were fighting for search positions among thousands of other sites, spam, and paid advertisements. Due to our strategic positioning in the app store, we got immediate visibility, fan recognition, and most importantly–candid feedback from our customers. That feedback has helped make our app the daily fantasy sports power tool it is today. If we had made our product on the web first, we certainly wouldn’t have the traction that we currently have.
Read more at www.businesscollective.com…
Erik Groset is the CEO of Fantasy Sports Co. makers of LineStar – #1 Companion App for use w/DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo DFS.
BusinessCollective, launched in partnership with Citi, is a virtual mentorship program powered by North America’s most ambitious young thought leaders, entrepreneurs, executives and small business owners.