4 ms·
Founder of Streak here, we aren't too worried that Rapportive only had 326K users. First that number is a pretty low estimate. Thats their current active weekly
by alooPotato 12y ago
Founder of Streak here, we aren't too worried that Rapportive only had 326K users. First that number is a pretty low estimate. Thats their current active weekly users. This is after they let their product die slowly after a few years. This also doesn't count all the installs that didn't use to be from the chrome webstore nor does it count safari and IE.
Even if those numbers were accurate, I don't think products like Rapportive/Streak/Yesware are limited at all by Gmail. If anything being in Gmail helps a ton with engagement. The reason the install numbers seem low is the same reason any startup may have low install numbers - their small, they need to perfect their product/distribution/sales/etc. I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that they are in gmail.
- onion2k 12y agoThe fact a user might have installed from somewhere other than the webstore, or if they're on Safari or IE, is entirely irrelevant - the 326k is active users, eg people who have accessed the Rapportive API in the last week. That's everyone using Rapportive regardless of where they installed from or which browser they're in. Whether or not Rapportive is limited by GMail is a good question. Getting 0.065% market penetration after 4 years would worry me, but doesn't mean they weren't making giant piles of cash. You could easily run a profitable business with 326k users even if only a tiny proportion are paying something. The important thing to take away from Rapportive's numbers is that a huge market doesn't automatically translate in to a huge market of available customers for your product. There might only be a tiny proportion who want what you're offering. Fortunately that doesn't actually matter if you can run your business profitably anyway.