How did the founders of Musical.ly made $1b in 2016..

Mirza M.S. Baig
3 min readFeb 12, 2018

It’s every developer’s dream to build a multi-billion dollar app. Isn’t?

What is Musically?

Musical.ly is a Chinese video social network app for video creation, messaging, and live broadcasting. The first prototype was released in April 2014, and the official version was launched in August of that year.

The users aka ‘musers’ can upload 15-second music videos of their favorite songs, and share them in a totally new social space.

You may be asking yourself, is this mix of Vine and Dubsmash?

You’re absolutely right!

If the founders of Vine didn’t sell it early on to twitter, it could have became really really big; it could have been a better alternative to youtube, but they didn’t care about their creators and sold it early.

Dubsmash also failed to take care of their creator.

Musically on the other hand really took care of their creators. They created leaderboards, popup shops, trending tags.

Doing it consistently over a year or so, they attracted over 200 million active users. And then the sold it to Chinese media company Bytedance in November for a ballpark figure of $1 billion.

What we could learn here?

I would say build platforms for creators or influencers because there is a demand for it. And doing so you will attract them which will ultimately bring their followers to your product or service — an app. Help them, and they will help you!

I’m actually in the process of attracting influencers and content creators! I’m working on an app called Blankt.

BLANKT — Discover in the moment!

Blankt, new platform to show your talent and get discovered.

Discovery on platforms in 2018 is very difficult. Even if you put out content consistently, getting people to see your videos takes a long time. Not anymore with Blankt, give it a try.

We are providing a platform for up-and-coming talent around the world. We are essentially an early-stage video incubator for the young talent.

The app is going to be exclusive to chicagoans atm. If you live in Chicago, please give it a try! And feedback is highly appreciated, email us @“blanktapp@gmail.com”

App store► https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blanket-connect-in-the-moment/id1291509972?mt=8

😂 SHAMELESS PLUG 🔌

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App store► https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blankt/id1291509972?mt=8

I’m a tech entrepreneur, developer and I’m vlogging my life .😎 I’ll try to post a video every week.

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