whoami? JUSTIN SCHIER @justinschier on instagram/twitter justin@scruff.com

Building Companies since 1999 Designer + Developer + Entrepreneur NYC Based Third Year with SCRUFF Gay as the day is long

ON A GIVEN DAY• Write and deploy some server code

• Design a graphical element or entire new look & feel

• Fight some spam

• Execute an engagement campaign

• Migrate some data

• Work on a new feature with the team

• Morning Coffee

OBSESSED WITH

TECHNO

WHAT IS

AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Hookup Dating

Social Appfor gay and bisexual men

worldwide

(Nah, it’s a Hookup App)

The Guys You Like Are Here*

• 12 Million Profiles since July 2010 • 70 Million Chats sent per week • Highest Rated Gay App • Active members spend 77 min/day • 150k API req per min - 24/7/365

avg 100ms response time

*Ok, not YOU in the back

Things we’ve figured out•Design is king

•It has to be better than the competition

•Know and love your community intimately

•Evolve your revenue model

•Some Killer Principles and Tech Tips …

Unique challenges• Out of 196 countries, 74 have State-Sponsored Homophobia

• Gays are a vulnerable group - bias and hate crimes are real

• Immediacy v App Store Guidelines - Brazilians are real

• Fixed community size

• FIND YOURS AND PLAN AHEAD

Real Brazilian SCRUFF Guy

Unique advantages

• The need Scruff helps fill NEVER goes away, and is constant

• New competitors don’t have street cred, but SCRUFF has built it

• Worldwide brand awareness - People want to wear our shirts and hats

• Humor is a mighty weapon

Design is KING

•Start designing by intuition, evolve todesigning based on data without bias

•Surprise and Delight

•Start collecting data and telemetry ASAP

•Have a very good reason for adding new UI

Design better

•Solve customer problems in new andclever ways

•Simpler to use and more Intuitive

•Get people what they need faster

•ABI - Always Be Innovating - get everyone involved

•Balance utility against time to market

Community = Family•“Is he/she family?” - Special meaning to us

• Many of us have been rejected by our bio families

• We choose our family and we’re in this together

•Family = Community

•Start seeing your end users as your family - treat them accordingly

Love your family

• Make conscientious decisions, always

• Respect the people you work with

• Thoughtfulness goes a long way

• Celebrate in good times / help in tough times

Protect your family and keep them safe

• One of the main reasons I wanted to work for Scruff

• Benevolads - FREE ad network for non-profits (education and services around HIV / Suicide / Homeless Teens)

• Use targeting abilities to send push notifications in a crisis

• We always want everyone to feel included

How we protect our members

• Security and Defense in Depth

• Rate Limiting

• Preventing Location Pinpointing by Trilateration

• Gay Travel Advisories

• 10X less spam than other apps (scammers too)

Security and Defense in Depth

• Know what you’re protecting

• Know why you’re protecting it

• Own your security - Use the Golden Rule

• Get Help from experts

• Security is only as good as the weakest link

Rate Limiting *Key to hacker detection and lockout

Preventing Trilateration

Eric Silverberg, CEO

http://huff.to/WKqk3c

Location Randomization *Based on Density

Freely share with your competitors any advancements that protect your community!!

Evolve Your Revenue Model• Started out free, now << 5% of income is from ads

• Find many small pain points wherecustomers will be willing to pay

• Ad-free, Unlimited Private Albums, Advanced Search + Filters, Stealth Mode, Send and Receive Video

• Be aware of competitors

• TECH TIP: Graph sources of revenue over time as % of total!

Killer Principle #1•If something’s worth doing, it’s worth

spending the time to do it right

• In the fast paced startup climate, the temptation is always there to rush

• At first, everything is a rush, but it’ll ease up

• Choose wisely what you spend your time on

• KILLER TIP: Work with a mentor on larger projects, touch base weekly

• Good developers know how to work through and around a problem…

• Great developers don’t stop until they FULLY understand aproblem, then solve the root cause - EVERY TIME

• This goes for both technical and business problems

• And everything’s a problem in your first 2 years

• TECH TIP: If you must “patch” an urgent issue, create a highest-priority ticket to do a deeper fix

Killer Principle #2

•If you’re a technology company,you better be/become AN EXPERT at itand

•Development methodologies like Agile are great and all, but it’s really about keeping people unblocked

Killer Principle #3

•ABU: Always Be Up

• So much easier said than done but it is possible

• Reachability: Be available when customers need you - over 50% of Scruff’s employees are part time customer service all over the planet who speak 9 languages

• Uptime: 10X better than your competitors

• TECH TIP: Queue All Writes!!

Killer Principle #4

•Look HARD for the right people. No, HARDER!!

•Find people that also have a love for your community, who are conscientious and thoughtful

•Make it so people are dying to work with you

•KILLER TIP: Make the time to teach, teach, teach

Killer Principle #5

•EXPERIMENT!!

• Figure out what you don’t know first

• Use the scientific method, collect BEFORE data

• Set a goal for % improvement, even if it’s a wild guess

• ANALYZE the results (get help if you need it)

• Make changes to your product and run more experiments

• Don’t be afraid to make big changes when necessary

Killer Principle #6

SCRUFF IS HIRING scruff.com/jobs

•New York City or Remote

•Free Equinox and Great Benefits

•Smart, conscientious, fun people

•iOS/Android/Ruby Developers, Data Scientists, COO, Product Manager

Questions?

JUSTIN SCHIER @justinschier on instagram/twitter

justin@scruff.com