Hi Product Hunters-
3.5 years ago we quit our jobs and sent an email from our couch. For a year and a half, day in and day out it was the two of us at home or in coffee shops, stopping people in the street to sign up, wearing the same Skimm T shirt every day (we washed it), and emailing anyone and everyone asking them to sign up. We were steadily growing our userbase and accidentally creating a community.
That was a happy accident. That community is now well over 3.5 million active subscribers engaged at unprecedented rates and an army of over 12,000 Skimmbassadors.
And now we are so excited to share this next part of our Skimm journey with you.
We are launching Skimm Ahead, the first subscription service on the all new theSkimm for iPhone. Skimm Ahead puts the future into the palm of your hand. Literally.
The best part -- Skimm Ahead puts everything you need to know about the future directly into your iPhone calendar. Never again will you wonder when Beyonce tickets go on sale, what time the State of the Union is on, or when your favorite show is coming back on Netflix. It’s like your calendar ate a smart cookie.
Skimm Ahead is a subscription service for $2.99/month, less than what you pay at Starbucks a day. Plus, you can download it and get the first month free, because we’re nice like that.
Thanks for all of your support, we’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions!
-Carly & Danielle, theSkimm co-founders
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@dmweisberg AH... I just read your comment. It's pretty much mirrors mine. Great job!
theSkimm is a fantastic example of an email-first startup (as @tomfme linked to). I've been eager to see if they build a mobile app and how it differs from the email that millions of women receive daily.
@dmweisberg -- very interesting to see that you're charging for the app. Makes a lot of sense and diversifies your revenue channels. How did you come to this decision ultimately?
@rrhoover@tomfme Thanks Ryan! We felt strongly that our users would be willing to pay for a meaningful utility that fits within their current routines and helps them be smarter about the future. That said, we knew we would need to test different price points before moving forward and did that during a few month beta period prior to launch. The good news was that our users were in fact willing to pay...allowing us to move forward confidently knowing that they truly valued the service and were willing to pay for it on a regular basis.
@dmweisberg I read theSkimm every morning (ever consider weekends?) and am already subscribed to Skimm Ahead. I'm 100% onboard and a self-proclaimed evangelist, but I have friends that aren't as enthusiastic... yet. Do you mind sharing why you didn't use a freemium model for Skimm Ahead (and launched with a trial strategy)?
@dkwendt@dmweisberg isn't the newsletter the free part? if you like the newsletter, you should have a higher chance to convert on the calendar app. it's a lifestyle calendar. Freemium apps aren't necessary if you have a way to market the app to highly qualified users, like an opt-in email list.
@dmweisberg as a big fan of theSkimm, congrats on the launch! It certainly feels powerful to feel like I'm not "missing" anything worth knowing about in the future. I think one of the things that stands our clearly as we collectively try to summarize the incredible amount of news on a daily basis is having a distinct voice. In addition to the app have you considered creating different verticals or even region-specific editions that use the voice of theSkimm daily?
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I'm a daily The Skimm addict so I'm looking forward to at least trying this out.
Impressive... //what I like: embedding content into a calendar app in a useful manner in order to increase daily active usage...it's a similar tactic to the "newsletter inside inbox" and "bot inside chat apps" concepts. //what I'm unclear about: how this integration affects my calendar organization...will I now miss meetings and appointments?
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I saw some screenshots of what the app looks like and it looks amazing. I can't wait for it to come out in Android. Please let us non-iPhone users in on the fun soon!
It's not clear to me how is decided what I'll get to see. Preferably I'd like to enter my preferences before being charged money, so I have an idea of what to expect from the app. It sounds very abstract to me now.
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