Sell a paid 'super like' that stands out from a normal like

Ravi Mehta… time it was basically just Tinder plus Tinder Gold, and then Tinder Platinum came after looking and saying, actually, there are people that are spending a lot, how can we better meet their needs? And actually there was one of the interesting things behind Platinum was people would spend more if they could get more utility, we weren't hitting the limit of what they wanted to spend, they were hitting the limit of what Tinder could do for them.

Ravi MehtaAnd so coming up with a product that met their needs was important. And then for the Microtransactions it was largely about how can we create things that enable people to match more effectively? Boost is similar to the Boost on LinkedIn where your profile gets seen more by people in the ecosystem. Super like is the ability to send someone alike that's differentiated? And so when you send someone a super versus a regular, they're three times more likely to match with you. And then there were a bunch of other Microtransaction products that Tinder has tried along the way, some of which have stuck, some of which haven't. So it's a really organic, very experimental process. I think one of the interesting things about Tinder, I don't know if this is still the case, but it used to be that Tinder had more skews in the Apple app store than any other app because Tinder would test out 7 99, 8 0.9 9, 9 9 for Tinder, Tinder Plus, and then other price points for Tinder Gold and then other price points for boosts and then bundles of boosts and super likes.

Ravi MehtaAnd so there were literally hundreds and hundreds of different skews available because of all the testing and then all that testing would get multiplied by different locations. And so if you're in, the pricing is going to be different in the UK versus South America versus in the us. So it's all pretty experimental and organic. I think a really key thing that the company did well though is understanding the underlying user behavior of what are …

Ravi Mehta… to actually for them to get in and then get that habit loop built that works. If on the other hand, you need someone to be financially committed in order to really adopt your product. I think an interesting example here are gyms, right? You would never want to do a seven day free trial at a gym. Instead you want to charge people up front and now they have both a financial commitment and as well as a personal commitment to go and to use the gym.

Ravi Mehta… the first question to answer. And then once you've answered that, then you could figure out, okay, where do we start in terms of a subscription? What's the right price point for the first tier? And then for Microtransaction products, I think it's important to understand how does the value that someone get scale with their usage when they get a lot of value from their product, what are they doing more of in order to get that value? And then you can create Microtransaction products that really meet that need. And so the best a la carte or market transaction products do have that scaling effect of 10 is going to be 10 times better than one a hundred is going to be 10 times better than 10. As long as they're scaling linearly or about that, then people want to buy more of it as they're getting more value.

David BarnardBut then you also got to figure out what those users would actually be willing to pay those 10 times or more for. And that doesn't kind of break the game. If you're a scanner app and you limit it to 10 scans a month and then you pay a dollar per additional scan, I mean that's just not going to probably fly. So for certain kind of utility apps and other things, there's maybe not that kind of similar game theory approach where people would be …