Matt Galligan
CEO & Co-founder of Circa. Co-founded SimpleGeo & SocialThing. Musician, photographer & craft beer enthusiast.
Discussion
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
Hey everyone I'm Matt Galligan, co-founder of Circa, SimpleGeo, and Socialthing. I've seen some big ups, some big downs, and hope to share my experiences, that they might be helpful to even just one person.
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Josh Barkin
@joshbarkin · Co-founder @ Janis
Hi Matt - I heard at your LAUNCH talk that investors wanted to put Circa within the same category as Buzzfeed, WSJ, etc.. but you saw those news apps as in a different category. What key metrics mattered to you for Circa and what were the metrics that investors focused on to benchmark Circa with other big players in the News space?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@joshbarkin Thanks for the question, Josh. And thanks for watching my LAUNCH talk. It was good to get that all off my chest…
All the "traditional" news outlets relied on advertisement to sustain, and thereby needed page views to get those advertisements to pay off. So therefore page views were their #1 metric. Because Circa was a mobile app for most of its existence, and because our goal was brevity we clearly weren't going to focus on how many "pages" someone viewed. The core metrics we were paying attention to were Daily Active Users, Retention, and the average number of sessions per day and per week. We focused a whole lot on retention because we believed that very soon page views would be going away, as a metric. That would be especially true if we began to consume our news away from the "home page." You're now seeing that play out with stuff like Apple News, Facebook Instant Articles, etc. In my opinion, retention will be the #1 metric very soon.
With Circa we got to the point where we were seeing the average user logging in 5 times a week, and of those people were logging in twice a day. We'd see retention for people that followed stories north of 60% even three months later. Definitely very, very high on the spectrum vs. other news outlets. We knew that if we could just spend the next phase of the company on user growth, and could maintain those metrics, we'd see a lot of success.
Hope that answers your question!
Vincent Chang
@flyaturtle · Evangelist
@mg Wow, your active users were quite active! That's such an encouraging thing to hear about users getting more engaged over time instead of less. What was your overall engagement rate, DAU/MAU? Did you have any issues in getting new users to activate and get engaged initially and what did you do to get them addicted?
Josh Barkin
@joshbarkin · Co-founder @ Janis
@mg Thanks Matt! Circa was a fantastic mobile-first news UX and I appreciate you sharing your lessons learned. Happy New Year and all the best in 2016.
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@flyaturtle @joshbarkin They got addicted on their own! As soon as we saw people start following stories, they were HOOKED. So the goal became far more about how we get more people to follow more stories.
Our DAU/MAU ratio was about 1:4. So pretty solid!
Charlie O'Keefe
@charlieok
@mg @joshbarkin I was one of those addicted users ( https://twitter.com/mg/status/43... ). I hit a point where I was trying to find some kind of balance between staying informed on stories I considered interesting (which apparently was a lot) and not spending too much time in the app to the detriment of other things.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a diverging of interests between a user who wants something useful and media companies who want more and more of users' time as a metric they are optimizing for. The pull of the endless scroll is hard for me to resist; I really want to reach 'the end' of a list of updates before moving on. If it's pulling me in too much, I'm starting to seriously reconsider whether this app is something I should keep using.
Ten stories a day instead of 100 would have been awesome :)
I'm wrestling with this now with Pocket and their 'recommended' tab.
Zach Kahn
@zkahn94 · Brand Marketing at Vox Media
@joshbarkin Happen to have a link to this talk?
Josh Barkin
@joshbarkin · Co-founder @ Janis
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Hi, Matt! Circa was a beautifully designed app with a unique approach to news/editorial curation. In hindsight, what would you have done differently?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@rrhoover Thanks man! And ohhhh what a question. What would I have done differently?
1. Do less news. Focus on quality over quantity. What would the experience have been like if we focused on 10 stories a day rather than 100? I'm thinking a whole lot better. We could have also had a more lean newsroom that way, which may have been a big longevity benefit.
2. Focus more on user growth. We spent too much time on retention, less on user growth.
3. We should have kicked off monetization stuff earlier. Probably a solid year or two earlier. Even if it would have been experimental.
4. We should have spent more time on fundraising from larger funds, than amassing all of the angel funding that we did. It was tougher at the end of the day to keep the show going when there weren't enough VC funds with skin in the game.
ian kennedy
@iankennedy · SmartNews, Partnerships
@mg @rrhoover The quality vs. quantity question brings up a point about how you were going to scale Circa. I always imagined the Circa newsroom as a huge mailroom sorting stories into a larger and larger number of storylines followed by your readers. Ultimately you would have so many storylines that things would collapse as you spend all your time sorting new incoming stories. How were you going to keep things going? Was automation part of the future of Circa?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@iankennedy @rrhoover We had a lot of really cool things that we were working on to help our news production. While it wasn't necessarily full-blown automation, we were building slick tools for our journalists to stay on top of stuff way easier. Beyond that I do think that we'd have found our way towards "robot journalism." But we'd have likely stuck to the stories where statistically-driven news would have been the use case. Think financial news, sports, etc.
Joe Cardillo
@joecardillo
@mg I wonder what your thoughts are on how early startups in general vs. news startups should proceed when it comes to monetization? It seems like the same sort of bind that any social platform faces, where waiting longer to monetize means more potential user growth but you are basically speculating on any real value
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@joecardillo @rrhoover It's pretty simple actually: you're either going for completely bonkers user growth or have a monetization strategy off the bat. If your monetization relies on users, then you'd better have a strategy for how something grows insanely fast. Or you go with the slow-burn and give users incredible value early on, reason enough for them to pay for it.
"Back in the early days" is such a hilarious thing for me to say, but when we started Socialthing it was considered a major milestone if you were able to get to 1mm users. Now I'd say that's table stakes, and well within the first year of a company. The internet has grown up, everyone has a powerful computer in their pocket, access is cheap…expectations are now very, very different.
Grow fast, make money on day one, or die. That's a harsh, but basic way of thinking about it.
Анна Савина
@bruno_and_magda · Senior editor at Insights.VC
Hi Matt! Thank you for the AMA!
What are the main lessons you have learnt developing Circa? Why do you think it failed? What are the most interesting media formats you see today? Newsletters, explainers, apps like Buzzfeed News or maybe something else?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@bruno_and_magda Actually you should check out last week's This Week in Startups video podcast (http://thisweekinstartups.com/ne...) as it was the talk that I gave at Launch Mobile a few months back, a post-mortem on Circa. All of the reasons I feel like we failed, etc.
The most interesting media formats I'm seeing today…well, I'll give you the pessimist's view for one: I'm really not that intrigued by anything out there right now. Nothing's pushing any real boundaries, trying bold new things. But I do think there's still opportunity. Many of the things that we did at Circa will find their way into apps and experiences again, so that I'm excited to see.
As far as media in general though, I'm absolutely loving Podcasts. I think there's just so much more to be done there, and I'm watching companies like Gimlet Media like a hawk. Fascinated by what's possible there.
Willy Simonsson
@wiillyson · Founder of Sodio
Hi @mg, interesting to hear about your fondness of podcasts.
With your hawk eyes, have you seen any particular problems/opportunities within podcasting that you'd be intrigued to jump on? Maybe podcasts is you next thing even?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@wiillyson @bruno_and_magda While I love podcasts, I doubt that's my next move. ;)
We have to move beyond just listening for it to be effective. TV now has the "second screen" where people are in real-time interacting with others about their favorite shows. I'd love to see podcasts evolve where they can be more interactive in some way. It will take an innovative company (perhaps someone like Gimlet, NPR or PRX) to do effectively, but there's something to be done here. Right now podcasts are simply time-shifted radio. There is more to be done.
Adam Kazwell
@kaz · Product manager/observer
@mg @bruno_and_magda a wedge (http://cdixon.org/2010/12/27/the...) for podcasts, or specifically a podcast app might be finding a way to reproduce the highlighting behavior when reading a book....how can I quickly signal what parts of a show are worth listening to? Overcast allows you to share to a specific point in a show, would love if it surfaced aggregated activity to highlight which parts of a show were shared most often.
Willy Simonsson
@wiillyson · Founder of Sodio
@kaz @bruno_and_magda @mg the highlighting and sharing of podcast content is something that we're experimenting with at Sodio as well. It's especially useful for podcast/episode discovery.
I agree with what Matt said, something that intrigues me is to connect podcast listeners and hosts. Not too different from these PH live convos.
Nic Miller
@millerniclas
@mg Hi Matt! Advertising is still central for most media businesses. But there are most certainly issues when it comes to advertising and news. For example: bad advertisers, bad ads, the issue of ad-blocking, user experience disruption, creation of clickbait and most importantly the loss of trust from the reader (eg: native ads).
Where do you see the ad-free subscription model going in the industry of news?
And why wasn't this an option for Circa?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@millerniclas If I were to be completely honest, I think ad-free is a total pipe dream, or at the very least will be reserved for super premium content, such as a tech publication like The Information or like Politico Pro.
I think that the example that I *always* looked towards was the structure of magazines. Magazines are a perfect blend of content, advertising, and advertorial. Think Wired Magazine. If you were to rip out 100% of the ads in it, it would be a considerably less interesting product. The same could be even more applicable to examples like Vanity Fair, GQ, etc.
All of the examples that you give describe symptoms of a larger problem. Ad-blocking, UX disruption, Clickbait, loss of trust, are all clear indicators that the content provider itself is probably doing a very poor job, sacrificing a positive user experience for money. Those kinds of outlets will very quickly get flushed out. However, I think that outlets that focus on the user first will find that none of those above issues will really happen. In Circa's case, that's what we were pushing for.
Subscription models for headline news will likely never work. We've even seen where the New York Times tried to charge for its NYTNow app (most similar to Circa) and it eventually went free. When information is freely available in many places, it's doubtful people will pay for it. That's why I think premium options will be reserved for premium, exclusive content.
Merrick
@mayorrock · Music Impacts Me | CEO
@mg yo, buddy. We've talked a lot about this stuff, but I don't think I ever asked: If you could go back and kill -- or not invested as much time in -- something that would have given you 3-6mo more, what would it be?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@mayorrock Hey buddy, thanks for joining in. Here it is:
Less news. That's it. We could have focused more intently on just a few stories and likely not sacrificed the user experience. Towards the end we had maybe 3-4 people at any given time working on the news, as opposed to the 15 or so we had at our peak, yet readers didn't even notice. Focusing on less news, with a smaller, tighter staff, would have given us more runway and likely given us an opportunity to survive. But again, hindsight is 20/20.
Merrick
@mayorrock · Music Impacts Me | CEO
@mg Great insight though. Live/learn, right? Either way, I'm still very sad the product is gone. You did a great job and should be proud regardless of the outcome.
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@mayorrock Still very, very proud. Thanks so much.
Kingsong Chen
@kingsongchen · Founder at Lace, Marketplace for GovTech
Hi Matt. What were some interesting ways that you grew the number of users of Circa?
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@kingsongchen All of the user growth at Circa was organic. For 90% of the life of Circa we focused on what we felt like was the most difficult problem facing news: user retention. That too was one of our downfalls. We probably should have been happy when we got to a solid retention, and when we started seeing diminishing returns, turn our attention to user growth. There were a lot of things we were working on before Circa closed doors to get to positive user growth:
One of those things was being able to allow any reader, no matter if they'd ever seen Circa before, to follow a story—our core feature. Because the app itself could even be a barrier for new users, the premise was that when you made it to the end of a story and saw something like "Want to know how this story plays out? Follow it with Circa and get notified." you might be more inclined to try it. We'd invite you to give us an email address or phone number to be able to notify when a new update dropped.
The basis for this was to shift the goal to being less about blatantly asking for a download, and more about helping the reader identify the core value of the product first. Then when there was an opportunity to show them that value, such as with a news story update, we might then ask for the update.
But alas, we'll never know how that would have played out. I do think though that there are ways that other apps could use this method…show the value first, then draw in.
Laura Gluhanich
@lauraglu · founder, signal camp
@mg Hey Matt! Happy 2016!
Lots of people here asking about Circa. I'd love to hear your biggest takeaways from creating then selling Socialthing and/or SimpleGeo.
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@lauraglu Building Socialthing and SimpleGeo was so much fun. I had the pleasure of working with incredibly talented people, on ideas that I was passionate about. Obviously when you're approaching a potential sale there's always going to be trepidation and big questions, but I always tried to keep the perspective that if we were able to find a larger audience for our product it would be a net benefit. We'd say "if we're doing this for the customers, ourselves, and our investors then it's a win."
When Socialthing was acquired by AOL, it wasn't crazy in terms of the prices we see for acquisitions nowadays, but it was life-changing for me, my family, and for my teammates. But more importantly, that acquisition gave me some credibility that I was able to use to further my career in technology. I think plenty of people take that for granted and may not pursue a sale simply because it's not enough money. Getting credibility early on in a career is worth its weight in gold in the long-term. This whole "game" is a marathon, not a sprint.
Laura Gluhanich
@lauraglu · founder, signal camp
@mg Great insights. I think we broadly tend to use the same metrics of success as VCs, which isn't necessary. A "smaller" win can still be life changing!
Sydney Liu
@sydney_liu_sl · Co-Founder of Commaful
@mg
Hey Matt! Thanks for doing the AMA :)
Circa was such an elegant product. Was so sad to see it go and delighted to see that it will be returning to the world!
What was the most surprising thing you learned about the product or from users as you developed it?
Thanks!
Sydney
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@sydney_liu_sl Hey Sydney, thanks for the kind words and the question!
One thing that was always surprising to us was the sheer, vast differences in the reader behavior, or why they wanted to use Circa in the first place. We'd see everything from high school teachers using Circa in their curriculum to teach current affairs. They'd even assign stories to individual students to follow and learn more about. That was cool.
We saw one parent who read a story about a potentially deadly infection that was happening in the Mountain States and after seeing bits about the symptoms, actually rushed their child to the hospital and confirmed they had said disease. Man, what an emotional thing to read about for us.
We heard from people time and time again that they didn't read news before Circa—that we made it just so easy to understand and keep up with, that they actually found time to learn about their world because of it. That was always a powerful thing to hear.
Junius
@juniusfree
Hi @mg
My question is related to product development. How will you spend your time if you've got one hour to solve a user problem/need?
Thanks!
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Matt Galligan
@mg · co-founder Circa, SimpleGeo, Socialthing
@juniusfree Well first that's a pretty major constraint! Let's hope that doesn't happen often for you!
If I only had an hour to try and solve a particular problem I would focus on the user story the most. What is it that is happening, and why. I'd spend 30 minutes on identifying the problem, getting to its root cause as much as possible, and then 15 minutes on reframing the problem such that a solution could be found, then 15 minutes on the solution itself.
In all of the time that I've built product, or worked with other companies to help them, most people have an inclination to spend the most amount of time on the solution. But that's the inverse of what should be happening—spend the time on the problem and the solution might just find you.