About the Business
Customer Segments
Swish is a professional platform that serves users with similar needs as LinkedIn, including interest groups, communication tools, and networking opportunities. However, Swish stands out as a more private and trusted space for these activities. Its dedicated platform fosters a secure and reliable environment for professionals to connect, learn, and grow. The Golden Equator Group, a trusted organization, is leveraging Swish to serve as an internal communication tool.
Value proposition
Swish’s value proposition is focused on enabling organizations, individuals, and groups to grow and thrive in a curated environment. Some key points that highlight Swish’s value proposition are:
For Organizations:
- Swish helps organizations build a professional business network and create opportunities for their teams to grow and develop.
- The platform provides a community for sharing interests, communication, events, and activities that can help grow the wider professional community.
- Swish offers a range of online and in-person events that provide exceptional learning opportunities for teams.
For Individuals:
- Swish enables individuals to learn from the best in their field, building their network and improving their work/life balance.
- It offers a private chat feature where colleagues can communicate without the need of mixing up their work life with personal life, reducing emails.
- The platform provides a trusted environment for engaging with interest groups, events, and Swishcast, which offers valuable news and insights.
Key partners/stakeholders
Swish’s partnership network includes two key players: Chat service provider and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). Chat service provider enables Swish to offer reliable, real-time communications to its users, while KOLs provide valuable insights into the target market and help to boost brand awareness.
In terms of stakeholders, Swish is supported by a number of key departments within the company. The Marketing department plays a critical role in promoting Swish’s products and services, while the internal UAT (User Acceptance Testing) team ensures that new features and updates meet the needs of end users.
Ultimately, the success of Swish depends on the satisfaction of its users, making the entire company a stakeholder in its ongoing development and growth.
Revenue streams
While Swish is still exploring the market as of December 2022, there are a number of potential revenue streams that could be pursued in the future.
- One option is to promote events hosted by Spectrum, another company in the Golden Equator group, and leverage Swish’s user base to generate indirect revenue.
- Swish could also make use of its internal “Crystals” tokens and the growing Web3 trend to create a monetization strategy.
- Additionally, there is potential to market Swish as a combined communication and social network tool for both internal and external use, perhaps filling a niche between LinkedIn and Slack. However, this would require significant changes to sales strategy and product development in order to be successful.
My role as a Product Owner
During my time at Swish, I took the following responsibilities:
- Leading the development of Swish, an invite-only professional social network that was accessible through WebApp, iOS, and Android devices.
- Working collaboratively with a diverse team of eight developers, one tester, two designers to ensure that the project was delivered with high quality and to specification.
- Conducting extensive competitor research and gathered input from developers and stakeholders to create user stories, use cases, and feature descriptions that accurately reflected the needs of Swish’s target audience.
- Working closely with designers, I also researched ways to improve existing features and explored new feature ideas to enhance the overall user experience.
- Conducting thorough User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with up to 10 internal users prior to each Production release.
Through my efforts and those of my team, Swish experienced a significant boost in Monthly Active Users (MAU). Between May and August 2022, the platform saw an MAU increase of over 20%, a testament to the effectiveness of the strategies we implemented to improve the platform and attract new users.
Key takeaways
During my time in this position, I gained invaluable insights and skills that have helped me to become a more effective PO. Here are some of the most notable lessons I learned:
- I learned the importance of collaborative development across multiple platforms. When working on Swish, we had to ensure that new features and updates were carefully synchronized across iOS, Android, and WebApp versions. This taught me the importance of considering all possible scenarios and dependencies between platforms to avoid breaking anything during the rollout process. For example, if we have the feature to set the user’s status on iOS but the Android version is not released yet, the app Android app might crash.
- I discovered that each platform has its own unique rules and policies that must be taken into account when developing social apps. For example, the Google Play Store has a User-generated content (UGC) policy that requires social apps to provide users with the ability to delete or hide information they have provided. Knowing these policies and regulations effectively is crucial for releasing the app smoothly and without any compliance issues.
- I gained a deeper understanding of the app release process on the Google Play Store and Apple Store, which includes reviews by store employees and the use of TestFlight for beta testing. This taught me the value of thoroughly testing and verifying each release before launching it officially to ensure that the app is as error-free and user-friendly as possible.
