Taptive's 18 Month Progress Report
Our most comprehensive update sharing data, our impact, and a plan for the future
Eighteen months ago, I pivoted my previous projects into a company called Taptive. In my post, Introducing Taptive, I shared a vision to bring cohort-based writing programs to communities across the internet.
Since then, we’ve partnered with over 20 organizations, we’ve run 35 cohort-based writing programs, and we’ve helped nearly 1,000 people publish over 1,800 essays online.
This post is an effort to summarize our progress and share some thoughts on the future.
In addition to receiving support from countless others, I want to acknowledge Linda Vinod, our Community Operations Lead. Her contributions have been instrumental to our progress thus far.
What does Taptive do?
Taptive partners with organizations to teach their community members how to write online. We do this by running a cohort-based writing program.
In the process of running the cohort, the organization will increase community engagement and teach its members a valuable skill — writing online.
The numbers
The two biggest questions following Introducing Taptive were:
Would organizations want to partner with Taptive to run a white-labeled writing program?
Would members of their community be interested in joining these programs?
The past eighteen months have shown there is demand for what we’re building.
35 Cohorts
We’ve now partnered with over 20 different organizations to run 35 programs.
We’ve had the privilege of working with some amazing organizations like Ethereum.org and Rise, an initiative of Schmidt Futures.
We’ve also worked with a range of different organizations — from founder communities like Day One to web3 communities like BanklessDAO to developer tool communities like Glide.
Over 1,800 Published Posts
As a result of these partnerships, we’ve helped people publish 1,836 essays. We track this metric because a published post is evidence that the writer has:
Thought deeply about a subject area
Expressed themselves
Built an evergreen asset to showcase their knowledge
Explored a passion or interest
Connected with someone based on their writing
We’ve now helped nearly 1,000 people reach the “magic moment” of publishing an essay online.
Impact
Our #1 focus
Our primary focus is to improve the cohort experience. To do this, we ask for feedback from as many participants as possible.
Here are some examples of improvements we’ve made to the experience:
Gamification. We’ve built an interactive Leaderboard that allows participants to track their progress and compete for awards
Clarity. We understand that participants are busy. Many improvements are a process of elimination — what can we remove while maintaining the essence of the experience?
Content. We’ve now created dozens of pages of content to help participants through the writing process
Hearing from cohort participants
Testimonials from the people who participated in the experience give additional context on our impact.
Community Give-Back
Also, we launched and ran the first cohort of the Community Give-Back Program. For every 10 cohorts we run, we run a cohort for a community not in the position to purchase one.
Our first Community Give-Back Cohort was with Future Academy Africa.
Mapping out the future
Getting more focused
We’re continuing to focus on the intersection of writing, community, and cohort-based learning.
Why?
People continuously show interest in expressing themselves through writing (we average 167 sign-ups per cohort)
Online communities continue to grow in importance (76% of internet users participate in an online community)
The cohort model of learning yields results (publishing writing is not easy — the cohort model gives people the accountability, structure, and resources needed to act)
In addition, we’re getting more focused on the types of communities we partner with. We’re focusing on 2 major categories:
Web3 Communities
This is based on our past success with communities like BanklessDAO, Smart Contract Research Forum, Ethereum[dot]org, Lobby3, TalentDAO, and CityDAO
Communities of Practice (online education communities)
This is based on our past success with communities like Day One, The Commons, Rise, and Third Nature
That being said, we’re still experimenting with new community types. For example, we’re working with developer communities (based on our cohort with Glide and our upcoming cohort with Sisense).
Improving Operational Efficiency
One of our primary goals is to decrease the manual effort required to run a high-quality experience. Over time, we believe we can automate and productize more of the cohort while maintaining a transformational experience.
This will allow us to run more cohorts at a lower cost.
For example, in the past, it could take us over 10 hours to prepare the cohort for launch. Now, it can be prepared in ~90 minutes.
Challenges
Despite the progress, we’re facing some major challenges.
We’re consistently running 2 or 3 cohorts per month. We’re working to increase that number (see notes on growing the team below).
I’ve struggled with our messaging. However, I feel more confident with our most recent iteration (see the one-pager below) and our new website.
I’ve struggled to consistently find new partners through outbound outreach — many of our partners are from inbound requests.
Future Goals
Given our focus and traction, our goal for the future is simple (but not easy) — improve the cohort experience and partner with more organizations.
To get there, we’re growing the team. In addition to Linda:
We’ve brought on another team member to help with cohort operations
We’re in the early stages of building a sales team — we have 3 part-time sales representatives helping with prospecting and outreach
We’re experimenting with hiring facilitators to lead our live cohort meetings (apply here)
In tandem with these goals, we’re hoping to partner with larger organizations and experiment with different types of communities.
In the eighteen months since Taptive’s official launch, we’ve supported communities across the internet with our cohort-based writing programs. We’ve made improvements to the experience and found a few areas to focus our efforts.
While we’ve made progress, there are major challenges ahead.
Thank you for your support and for following along on the journey!
If you have feedback or want to offer suggestions, please don’t hesitate to email me at grant@taptive.xyz.
More
Subscribe to my Substack for more long-form writing.
I send a monthly newsletter with Taptive-specific updates (similar to this post). Subscribe here.
I tweet about Taptive and other thoughts on writing, community, and online education. Follow me here.
Thanks again!
You are doing excellent work - keep going. This is the kind of thing web3 needs more than anything else. Big fan.