Tagg was a social networking platform for college students built to provide them with a unique opportunity to express every aspect of themselves on campus. It operated like a user's personal wiki page. Allowing users to curate detailed profiles with everything in one place to meet new friends on campus, find dates, study partners, and learn even more about your current friends.
To validate Tagg’s product-market fit, I set an aggressive goal to capture 10% of Brown University’s student population within 24 hours of launch, ensuring rapid, high-density adoption for robust product testing.
I launched the “Genius of Gen Z” spotlight campaign, partnering with socially influential students (micro-influencers) to showcase how they authentically express themselves on Tagg. These interviews were simultaneously promoted across both Tagg’s and the influencers’ Instagram accounts, driving immediate visibility and credibility among the campus community.
We consistently drove rapid user acquisition and engagement by leveraging campus influencers and targeted social campaigns, validating Tagg’s growth model in high-density social environments.
Following Tagg’s initial success, we observed a decline in new user acquisition outside of campus launches. By analyzing user data, we identified that our most engaged segment consisted of college students who were also active digital creators. They leveraged Tagg as a social aggregator and valued tools that enhanced their online presence.
To capitalize on this insight, we expanded Tagg’s value proposition to digital creators by developing a web app version. This allowed users to share their Tagg profiles via “link in bio” on external platforms, accompanied by new analytics features to track engagement. We aimed to drive external distribution and unlock exponential growth by empowering users to promote Tagg across their broader social networks.
By leveraging user analytics to identify our most valuable segments and iterating on our product and distribution strategy, we drove significant user adoption, engagement, and retention.
As Tagg’s creator community grew, in-depth user interviews and behavioral analytics revealed key pain points for digital creators:
We hypothesized that integrating competition and risk-reward dynamics would enhance both engagement and creator satisfaction. With blockchain technology emerging as a solution for creator monetization and ownership, we reimagined Tagg as a crypto social app.
Introduced daily video creation contests where creators compete to earn Tagg Coin, an in-game token pegged to Solana.
Enabled creators to redeem Tagg Coin for real-world prizes or cash out via crypto exchanges, directly addressing the earning and ownership challenges faced by our users. Check out our White Paper below :))
To reach our target demographic of young content creators, I secured a presence for Tagg at VidCon, the premier creator conference. We launched with a gamified, interactive spin-the-wheel event, which both educated and excited creators about the new Tagg experience.
Onboarded 75% of the invited creator class at VidCon in a single day. Achieving substantial increase in user base and engagement following the crypto pivot ~ 250,000 users.
I am deeply proud of what we built with Tagg. The app positively impacted hundreds of thousands of digital creators. Witnessing these talented individuals use our platform to authentically express themselves and earn meaningful rewards for their creativity was truly inspiring. Seeing how Tagg had empowered many to gain the confidence and support they needed to grow into full-time content creators, transforming their passion into a sustainable career was incredibly fulfilling.
At its peak, the company demonstrated strong product-market fit and rapid user growth. However, the wider collapse in trust across the crypto and banking sectors following the FTX scandal created significant headwinds for continued adoption. Despite successfully building and launching an innovative solution, shifting market sentiment and a mismatch between our technology’s complexity and our youthful target audience ultimately limited long-term viability. The company was wound down by the end of 2023. This experience provided valuable insights into crisis management, go-to-market strategy, and user education in emerging technology markets, further strengthening my product leadership skills.
