The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
If someone installed your app on their phone, it’s only half the battle. As long as it only hangs somewhere on the smartphone’s ninth screen, you aren’t earning anything yet. It’s important that the user launch it. And push notifications are just about the only easy way to increase the number of launches. Let’s send them a ‘you haven’t been exercising lately’ or ‘have a promo code’ or ‘we have new content’ – perhaps they’ll get hooked on something.
Companies like OneSignal have already made convenient SDKs for that. The programmer inserts them into the app once, and then the marketer adjusts in their admin whom, when, and what should be sent. nGrow, the American startup with Russian roots promises to be even better.
Its technical innovation is in the absence of SDK. There is no need for an app programmer at all. The event information comes from Amplitude or another analytics, the sending goes through Firebase or the mentioned OneSignal if it’s already integrated. Adding nGrow into the project takes no longer than one working day and doesn’t require updating the stores.
Qualitative innovation is the AI. Smart algorithms follow the metrics in the integrated analytics and send push notifications at the right time in the right sequence to achieve the growth of the desired rates. The startup founders claim that it has an increase of dozens of times compared to a fixed timetable that a living person puts together in the existing systems.
nGrow went through Y Combinator this winter, the company brought in USD 2M throughout its history.
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
