Honestly, we've been very surprised with our user growth so far. Only after we accumulated 10k+ users did we realize that v1 had major bugs that we quickly fixed! How have you attracted users and grown Banana? The largest risk/commitment was time, which we minimized by literally just shipping as fast as we could. We spent only a hundred bucks (if that) to get the project up and running. However, we scoped it down to the bare minimum of just random video matches with a Facebook signup.Ī month after we launched, we realized how much momentum we had and then added email signup, which doubled our daily signups instantly. We wanted to include texting, Snapchat-like face filters, demographic filtering, etc. We had so many ideas when we were brainstorming. Luckily for us, we knew a really good designer who quickly helped us design an MVP. After we settled on the technology, we decided on an idea and just started building it with little direction in mind. We honestly just wanted an excuse to play around with interesting technologies like WebRTC, websockets using Elixir/ Phoenix, and React Native. Being self-funded from our savings, we wanted to validate the idea as quickly as possible.īanana was initially built purely on curiosity. It was hideous, but allowed us to launch ASAP.
#Gay video chat code#
The first version took a month to ship, and all the code was stuffed into a single 2000+ line file and a backend with 200+ lines stuffed into one main file. What went into building the initial product? By the time we started Banana, I was more than confident that we could create it from beginning to end because I had already accumulated a lot of technical knowledge through work experience. At work I would always be eager to create new projects because I wanted to go through the motion of going from zero to completion. On top of that, we ended up building a product in a demographic I knew nothing about.Īs a developer I've always liked creating things from scratch, because I knew that at some point in my life I would want to take control of my own future and start my own company.
#Gay video chat full#
I, on the other hand, was tired of working full time for someone else's company, so I decided to take the leap of faith and quit my job - all before even knowing what I was going to build. Normally, people come up with an idea they think has potential, then they work on it nights and weekends and validate the idea before they quit their jobs. I broke all the rules and did everything in the wrong order. We decided to simplify the equation: Well, what if everyone was looking for the same thing? We knew we were on to something.īy the way, this all happened after I quit my job. How could we solve this product issue? Maintaining a balance while trying to acquire new users would be a headache. It's a two-sided marketplace that is hard to balance. We bounced around some ideas and settled upon a Chat Roulette/ Omegle type video chat app on mobile.Īs users of those successful web apps, we realized early on that all of them had one fundamental problem - the guy-to-girl ratio was always terrible. What motivated you to get started with Banana?Īt first we just wanted to explore WebRTC, a technology for peer-to-peer communication. We shipped in late January/early February 2017, and it has already acquired almost 200,000 users with zero marketing in less than a year.
#Gay video chat android#
I would work as a web developer for the four following years before finally embarking on my entrepreneurial adventure.īanana is a random video chat app for gay men on Android and iOS. I sent out my resume to all the Ruby shops in NYC, and all but one web agency rejected me. After four months of part-time web development (this was before coding bootcamps existed) and after asking hundreds of questions on StackOverflow, I mustered up the courage to apply for jobs as a developer. At the time I had no idea what I was going to do, and it was Aaron who convinced me to learn programming at General Assembly.Įveryone around me thought I was nuts for going to school again right after I'd graduated. I originally studied economics at Syracuse University and was eventually laid off from an administrative job that I hated (and honestly sucked at) at a real estate company. My partner Aaron Vasquez and I have several internet businesses, with Banana being one of our first and most interesting. Hi! My name is Edmund Mai, and I'm the co-founder of Potato Labs, a hybrid incubator/software consulting company. Hello! What's your background, and what are you working on?