Our competitors are shutting down, but we're growing
Hey all,
When I told people I was going to create an anti-misinformation app (www.otito.io) and shared my idea, some thought it was brilliant... but most told me I was crazy. It was too hard. Too complex. People are too lazy and resisting misinformation requires effort. If I wanted a side hustle, why didn't I just go for a less fraught and more easily monetizable problem?
I have to say, the sceptics had a point—of the companies tackling the same issue when I decided to jump in (around June 2018), most have failed or pivoted away from the subject.
This included apps with massive backing (like Jimmy Wales' Wikitribune and Ceasefire, which was more focussed on polarisation but was promoted heavily by Stephen Fry and was spun out of a subreddit with over 1 million users).
It's a sobering thought.
But, my passion for this problem and sense of clarity keep me going... even when I'm feeling doubtful. I've always felt that I had a few big advantages over most people who try to tackle this problem:
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I'm willing to be patient—I see this as a long-term problem. I don't believe it's worth addressing only if it can be solved quickly (the way venture capital often forces you to do).
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I'm bootstrapped and haven't taken money from anyone, so no one can push me to rush to hypotheses for which the market isn't ready. There's a learning curve for society to go through with this problem and no one entity is in control of that process. I've kept burn rate very low, which has prevented me creating a beast that needs to be fed huge amounts of money each month, without which the company dies.
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I'm not trying to solve the problem of misinformation directly, I'm trying to address one of its key antecedents (fact curation, rather than fact checking), which is a more manageable problem (in my opinion).
So far, this mentality has enabled slow but steady growth since we launched out of beta in September 2020. We crossed over 1k organic monthly pageviews for the first time this month, have added 4 paying users in less than a year, acquired hundreds of registered contributors and have had more content contributions than ever from users.
So, I soldier on. And I've just released a major update to this little anti-misinformation app. Please, have a look and let me know if you have any feedback:
