Voro

Voro grew to several million users organically, then COVID erased most of them. Voro was a health social network that surfaced doctors recommended by friends alongside objective quality data, and it reached several million users without paid acquisition. When COVID hit in March 2020, monthly active users fell about 90% in two weeks.

The quality data included risk-adjusted readmission, mortality and complication rates for surgeons. Investor Mike Maples of Floodgate answered the pivot question with stories of Odeo becoming Twitter and a head-camera show becoming Twitch.

Subversive

When the core business breaks, ship one small experiment every week. After the collapse, the team split into small groups and launched a new product each week until something worked. One, a Zoom live-event tool for creators built in 48 hours, did $100,000 in gross sales in its first week and grew to a few million in volume.

It faded as the world reopened, so the team sold assets and returned capital to investors. An angel investor in that company, James, later became Tomas Hoyos's cofounder at Apt. Quote: "we're just going to launch one thing every single week, uh, until something happens here."

Subversive▶ 11:28

Settle the business model up front, even for a social network. Voro never settled how it would make money because it was a social network, which Tomas Hoyos calls his biggest regret. At his next company, Apt, he set the model up front and charged from day one.

He argues charging also forces a user acquisition channel aligned with paying customers, and the model can still evolve later. Quote: "you want to have uh clarity on your business model upfront."

Subversive▶ 1:01:31