1980.gg: the Linktree for Esports

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1980.gg: the Linktree for Esports
1980.gg: the Linktree for Esports

A 'link-in-bio' and landing page tool for teams and gaming influencers built in public

A 'link-in-bio' and landing page tool for teams and gaming influencers built in public

Changelog / Most Recent Updates:

July 6, 2021: publication of the first

User Research⁠

⁠

June 29, 2021: creation of the

User Research⁠

page

June 26, 2021: revamping of this overview page

June 23 & 18, 2021: visuals of

prototypes⁠

added

June 14, 2021: creation of the

Product Development page⁠

⁠

June 7, 2021: publication of the

Branding page⁠

(name & visual identity!)

May 13, 2021: publication of the

Product Strategy page⁠

with the Lean UX Canvas

⁠

Due to a new direct competitor, I stopped building in public. The project is still ongoing and has been released! You can check it at
`https://1980.gg/`⁠
⁠

Tl;dr

My side project summarized in one image:

⁠

⁠

Want to know more?

Read the complete overview below or directly create your account to try at

https://1980.gg/⁠

⁠

Introduction

Hey 👋,

My name is

Antoine Frankart⁠

eMeRika⁠

on the social networks. I’m a French esports entrepreneur and product manager, currently working as a

consultant⁠

This document is an overview of a new project idea I’m currently evaluating: a ‘link-in-bio’ tool like Linktree for esports and gaming. I will follow the "

Build In Public⁠

" philosophy to create this project:

⁠

⁠

The "Build In Public" philosophy is to publicly document every step of your product journey, from ideation to creation and launch, including the struggles along the way.

You will be able to learn more about my idea, my goals behind this project, the initial research and the validation of the concept, and my plan to design and launch it (if the idea seems promising enough). I will also share my

timesheet⁠

As a frog eater (ok I tried but really didn't like it), please excuse me for my English and correct me if necessary!

Business Problem

As the social internet gets increasingly fragmented, we have more and more personal profiles on different services. It’s harder to showcase all our digital activities, everything we do. Some platforms, like Instagram, restricts the information and links you can share in your bio. You have only one link, the famous ‘link-in-bio’, to promote all your business activities or online profiles.

We used to rely on websites to gather information about a person or an entity. Social networks are eating the web and with the prevalence of mobile, "classical websites" are not relevant anymore. Websites traffic, in particular in esports, is diving.

For a guy who has been creating esports websites for 15 years, I'm a little bit disappointed to ask young gamers "how do you follow a team or a competition?" and to have less and less the answer "on their website", but I can’t go against the flow.

⁠

New products have emerged to solve this problem: the ‘link-in-bio’ tools. Linktree, with more than 12 million users, proved the need of a tool to connect audiences to all content of one creator or brand. The goal of my side project is to replicate their good idea on a particular vertical: esports and gaming. How my product can be differentiated enough from the source to be appealing? I will have to find it!

Idea Summary

If you know

Linktree⁠

, you should already have a great idea of this project. Otherwise the Linktree description from Wikipedia says:

Linktree is a freemium social media reference landing page. Founded in 2016, it is made to provide a landing page for a person or company's entire associated links in social media, which rarely allows linking multiple sites.

Of course Linktree has several competitors like Beacons, ContactInBio or Campsite but it’s the market leader and

raised recently a huge round of money⁠

(for a ‘link-in-bio’ company) of $45M. You can check my

Competitive Analysis⁠

to know more about the market and the existing solutions.

⁠

⁠

The idea is as simple as clever: a tool to build a landing page, mobile first, where you can regroup all your social information and any other links, with some customization. On top of that, my idea is to add specific features useful for gaming like team members presentation, maybe competitions list, livestreaming events, hardware information and more.

One final important thing, I will try this idea because I’m reasonably confident to be able to bootstrap it by myself, even if going back to code will be a challenge.

You can learn more about the problem I identified and my solution by reading the

Lean UX Canvas⁠

, I filled for my Product Strategy.

This project is called

1980.gg⁠

. I explain the process to select this name and its visual identity in the

Branding section⁠

of this document.

Personal Goals

I’m lucky enough to be able to start this side project, invest some time and “pocket money” only for personal goals:

Learning new skills: before working on this idea, I was thinking to learn code again (after a long break). I will have more motivation to do it with a concrete project. I’m also part of the

Product Psychology Mastery Course⁠

by the awesome team at

Growth.Design⁠

, I will use this project as an example for their course.

Bootstrapping: I always enjoyed covering a wide range of knowledge and tasks, finding pragmatic solutions. Of course, it’s more quick and dirty rather than having a full experimented team working on each subject, but it’s the startup “garage” cliché, starting small and building up.

Following my passions for esports and digital: well, maybe one day I will do something in another area but for now I’m still loving this space.

Sharing: I really like the idea to do this project publicly and I hope to attract some interest and gather feedback. Maybe, I will also help some young entrepreneurs to understand how to explore their ideas.

Blogging again: I’m nostalgic 👴 to the blog and web 2.0 period, happy to take the time to share some thoughts again (Do you remember one of the famous blogger / entrepreneur back in the days, Loic le Meur? You will may be surprised by

his current adventure⁠

Writing in English: going out of my comfort zone, because I still have progress to make in English.

Procrastinating less: I spent too much time scrolling social networks and media. I can invest better my time.

Having fun: last but not least, my engine to be motivated at work - enjoying what I’m doing.

(and testing Coda, another promising tool...)

Business Goals

My first obvious business goal is to find some users, and happy ones! Then if the project has some traction, my business goal is to find an acceptable business model (yes no popup ads or big banner) to at least cover the costs, and if I’m more optimistic, earning a revenue from it. The ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is hard to predict right now. Can it be a bigger project for me rather than a side project? Time and research will tell me.

Time & Budget

I'm willing to invest two to three days per week on this project. After the first month spent working on this project, I increased my estimated time, from two days per week to three (thanks to the time I spend during week-end). I’m really motivated to push and test this idea.

I would like to conduct the evaluation of the market and the opportunity this spring 2021. (Edit: I’m a bit late...) Then if I think my goals can be reached with this project and I’m still motivated about it, I will proceed on the execution this summer until the end of the year. So a first commitment of 3 months and then another 6 months to release a MVP.

You can check

my project timesheet⁠

The main budget I will invest is my time ⏲️. If I work on this project, of course I would not sell my consulting services. I will also cover the technical and operational costs even if I don’t have a precise idea of the amount right now. Lastly, I will try to do everything by myself but I remain open to work with freelancers for specific subjects.

Steps done

I started the Product Discovery phase with a

Market Analysis⁠

in order to learn and understand: who are my potential users, what is their digital presence: checking websites and social media profiles. Then I found direct and indirect competitors in the Competitor Analysis to have a look at the market situation.

After that I worked on the

Product Strategy⁠

: the high-level plan describing what my project hopes to accomplish, and how it plans to do so. I also brainstormed around the branding and visual identity of my project.

Then, I was ready to create prototypes of the pages for teams and players that my project might generate. You can have a look at them in the

Product Development⁠

section.

I conducted User Research (UXR), interviewing potential users of my tool to gather feedback. I tried to have more certainty regarding the problem I identified, the solution I offer and the business model I have in mind.

Then I relearned to develop and I created the MVP of the project. You can check it at

https://1980.gg/⁠

⁠

⁠

Current

Due to a new direct competitor, I stopped building in public. The project is still ongoing and has been released! You can check it at

https://1980.gg/⁠

Congrats 👏 you arrived at the end of this project overview! Thanks for the time spent. If you have any thoughts, ideas, feedback about this project feel free to contact me on

Twitter⁠

Discord⁠

Changelog / Most Recent Updates:

Due to a new direct competitor, I stopped building in public. The project is still ongoing and has been released! You can check it at https://1980.gg/