[mkalygin]

This is very interesting strategy. Thanks for the good article.

Could you elaborate on the content-growth strategy? I'm really curious since in some business ideas I'm usually stuck with "chicken and egg" kind of problem. I believe there is no universal strategy here, but what worked for you except this special onboarding flow for users in new markets?

[annekate]

It's in the article. Provide the supply yourself (content) while you build demand (users). Do things that don't scale.

One specific example is that we saw a lot of demand for information on child care, so we researched over 5000 local daycares & preschools and created very comprehensive pages for all of them. This sounds like a lot of work but it actually wasn't that bad. Once we had done that we were instantly the best place in the SF Bay Area to research daycares and find open spaces. Word spread like wildfire and we climbed the Google rankings quickly as well. Now, we no longer have to collect data manually, because the daycare providers come to us to reach their audience of customers. So it delivered growth on both sides of the network in a sustainable, ongoing fashion, and only required a one-time upfront investment in content creation.

[mherdeg]

Cool, when do you expect to gather daycare data outside the Bay Area? I see one total daycare listed in my ZIP code (in the Boston area) and the search results page doesn't say anything like "we know this is a tiny number of listings, sign up here to be notified when we reach your area" (at https://winnie.com/search?category=childcare&near=[zip] ).

[annekate]

Childcare data in 50 states is coming early in 2018.

[mherdeg]

Very cool, thanks!

[mkalygin]

Got it. So it was mostly manual investigation and content generation at first, and then users started to add their own content. Great, thanks for the answer.