What entrepreneurs should learn from success of Sarahah(.com)

Until and unless you have been living under a rock – you would have surely come across this app named Sarahah in some way or the other. Created to take share constructive feedback anonymously, this app had brought out multiple sides of human emotions for us as users. From “constructive feedback” to “being a creep” you would have seen it all in past couple of hours. Plus, the sharing of ‘feedbacks’ on social media & the user engagement clearly shows the virality of this app.

Although the app has been a trend in past 72 hours and has been able to engage users universally, I believe that as an entrepreneur the biggest quality we have is to think beyond an ‘end user’ and ‘read between the line’. I am sharing some of my learning through this app, and I believe that these learnings will be useful to all the entrepreneur out there – who are trying to build their startups. Good or Bad – a real entrepreneur will always analyse, learn and use the situation to his advantage.

What we can learn from success of Saraha.com:

1. Leverage Human Emotion to go Viral

It’s always good to build a product which in some way or the other utilizes human emotions. If the user is able to connect with you product/service at an emotional level he will surely use it – atleast for once. Sarahah became viral because people want to take & hear positive feedback / positive things / good things about themselves as it would make them feel more “valuable”.

2. Word of Mouth is the Best Marketing Strategy

If you see the trend, it started with a few people (technically called Early Adopters / Early User) who wanted to take feedback about themselves. Once they started getting feedbacks, an interesting thing happened, these people started sharing the ‘good feedbacks’ on the Facebook wall, which encouraged the second group of people (technically called Late Majority) to use this app and try their hands on it. This is the time it became viral and the app was used by almost majority of the people online.

The lesson to be learnt here is that you need to create “a product so good” that after using it, people would share it in their social circles. Best of the companies in this world like – Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox have used this strategy in past. There can be one or multiple reasons to share, but sharing is what makes it go Viral. Even today in 2017 – “WORD OF MOUTH” is the best marketing your product can get.

3. Keep it Super Simple to use

If you want your product or service to go Viral, as an entrepreneur or a product manager / product developer, you need to understand the product has to be so simple and intuitive that the laziest person on this earth can use it without putting his or her brain. But jokes apart, the product has to be so simple that it can be used by a child or an adult or an end-user with an equal proficiency a tech-savvy person is going to use it with.

I meet a lot of guys who want to build a startup but neither have clarity on problem side nor on the solution side. They want to build a product with multiple features so heavily loaded that it would ultimately confuse the user. They believe that building a feature-rich product would enable more user to use it. We need to understand the difference between the “Core Product Feature” and “A Fancy Product Feature” before adding it to the product.

If you look at the UI and usage of Sarahah it’s extremely simple. For feedback seeker, all he/she has to do it create an account and share the URL – that’s it. For a feedback giver – he simply has to write the feedback in plain simple text. Job Done – no fancy features like adding colours, pics, etc. Your product will only or Viral when it can be used by people who are beyond the “Early Adopters” and are not Tech Savy.