Klyk

Empowering creators to better manage and monetize their online events.

Klyk is helping lead the new creator economy by empowering creators and businesses to organize, manage and market better live, online-events. The platform is designed to pair with well-known video call tools such as Zoom and Google Hangouts to:

  • Easily monetize hosts' events, with paid attendance registration
  • Market hosts' events and selves, with customizable event and creator pages
  • Better manage hosts' events, with email based registration, updates and reminder features to ensure high attendance.
Background

In the early stages of COVID-19 when the world found itself transitioning to remote, events and meetings got cancelled, club meetups postponed and appointments deferred. Klyk founder Albert Ovidi came to us with the idea of helping individuals and businesses better connect in this new digitally remote context. As a serial entrepreneur he was open to exploring a range of ideas within the context of this being a personal passion/side project to his day job of being the Chief Operating Officer of the global commercial real estate company, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL).

Process
Recon

We first worked with Albert, his team and wider stakeholders in a 'Recon' engagement to explore and assess various opportunities. Then, with an aligned stakeholder consensus we formulated a deeper hypothesis from which to validate from – an events marketplace and management tool that catered to existing Zoom and Google Hangouts users. This included envisioning the idea with early UX/UI explorations, minimal viable brand (MVB), roadmap and scoping plan for an MVP build.

Product build and launch

With an entirely Josephmark resourced product and development team we managed to get an MVP built within 3 months. Two months later we established a marketing site, implemented feedback and launched to a broader audience.

Growth phase

Josephmark continued product ownership and development as Klyk sought a more focussed product/market fit. This included continuous product management, research and iteration. We also worked closely with Klyk's growth partners as part of performance marketing and validation experiments.

My Role

As the product manager and team lead I oversaw the initial product strategy, envisioning, build and eventual go-to-market launch of the platform. My responsibilities extended to coordinating a diverse remote team that spanned three different timezones and two other partner companies involved in growth and marketing.

After the initial strategic 'recon' phase I stepped in for product design as the agency's resources were needed elsewhere, and later in the post-launch stage managing wider growth strategy with our growth partners.

Recon (3 weeks)
  • Opportunity mapping
  • Market and customer research
  • Product strategy
  • Minimal viable brand (MVB)
  • Product envisioning (UX/UI)
  • Roadmap and MVP build scoping
Product build & launch (5 months)
  • Product management
  • Product development
  • User Interface Design
  • User Experience design & research
  • Marketing website
  • Go-To-Market strategy (with growth partners)
Key takeaways
  • Simple features proved game changing opportunities: To make sure Klyk’s features not only met the expectations of users, but excited and delighted them, we tested the event management experience with instructors, influencers, makers and other creators. The main surprise for testers was how easy it was to get set up with a paid account and start receiving funds for hosted paid events. This was thanks to Klyk’s seamless payment integration and revenue management features.
  • Test, measure and repeat: Klyk's core value proposition statements and market validation was tested with a combination of qualitative user interviews and performance marketing based work. This lead to constant iterations and optimizations of both advertising, marketing website and in-platform copy.
  • Minimal viable product: There was enthusiasm in tackling the core call experience itself however the decision to first go simple and utilize third party integrations with major video conference tools allowed us to test and validate core assumptions and features before committing too far beyond any one direction. Particularly from a business model sense where serving the core video experience would be a significant operating cost and chew up the runway.
  • Knowing when to pivot: We initially launched as a two-sided marketplace platform, which facilitated participants finding, as well as hosts creating events on the platform. As we struggled to get past the chicken and egg problem a few months in I then formulated and presented a case for a pivot strategy that would focus completely on a host-centric experience. Combined with the improved host focussed experience and an influencer host incentivisation program we increased broader platform adoption through a 3x increase in attendee-to-host conversions.
  • Always learning: Personally, this was a significant point of learning when it came to performance marketing aspects of growth. During this project I took on the Growth Program self-directed course from Demand Curve. This allowed me to better collaborate and contribute to the growth planning phase of the project.
  • Recognition: Klyk was nominated for a 2021 Webby Award in the 'Event Management Category'

Let's chat:

hello@davidwhipps.com