Howie Young, Founder of Tico – Making Your Social Life Well-Organized

Howie Young is based out of Taipei City, Taiwan and is the founder of Tico. Tico was founded in 2016 and is a messaging system aiming to empower users to always focus on people and things that really matter at any moment. The product desires to resolve distractive issues which result from mountains of wasteful messages and conversations for this generation, and furthermore to make every communication get along at the best time.

Howie also founded “Toetoe” in 2013, a web app that helps people save/exchange true words with whom they care about. It gained 50K users in one week after its launch day.

In 2014, Howie started up Workis, which is one of the five oldest co-working spaces in Taipei and has hosted over 30 teams that raised over 3M USD funding in total.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Howie says:

Don’t start a startup just because it sounds like a good idea to make money very fast. Most of the time, these ideas have already been tried by teams that think likewise. You just didn’t have the chance to know them because they already failed. I always tell my friends who want to have a startup like this: “If you got an idea that will make you feel regret because you know that you won’t be alive after today, but you didn’t have the chance to realize it. Then it’s a good fit for you to build a startup for it.”

Having a startup is just like having a marriage. That means you are going to take a nonstop responsibility in 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, until you fail or leave the company. So make sure you are really in love with the idea; otherwise, the pressure of the duty will drag you down very soon.

Read on to know more about Howie Young and his journey.

Please tell me about your background, and what are you working on currently?

Howie Young: I’m the founder of Tico, a multi-platform messaging tool that empowers users to seize the best timing to build conversations with people that matter to them. One of our main services is Tico (tico.app), a messaging app that works on both mobile and web platforms. The other one is Tico Powercall (tico.chat/powercall), a web-based video conferencing tool.

Prior to Tico, I founded “Toetoe” in 2013, a web app that helps people save/exchange true words with whom they care about. It gained 50K users in one week after its launch day. In 2014 I started up Workis, which is one of the five oldest co-working spaces in Taipei and has hosted over 30 teams that raised over 3M USD funding in total.

What motivated you to get started with your company?

Howie Young: I was always suffering from massive and messy messages from my social network every day. The distraction from unnecessary messages really makes me feel that all messaging services are not running in the right way. We are not getting more information that really matters from our network, but just getting more noises that kill our focus badly every day. That’s why I started building Tico, of which the name actually comes from “Time Communication.” What we aim to do is to create a tool that helps users seize the best timing to receive/create messages and conversations on different occasions.

How have you attracted users and grown your company from the start?

Howie Young: We just shared it with our friends on social platforms at first, and then we set a crowdfunding campaign that helps us get some eyeballs from the media. But to be honest, we always believe that a good service will speak for itself, so most of the growth came organically. We barely did any marketing campaign before, but keep enhancing our service to make it create more benefits for our users.

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue? What strategy worked best?

Howie Young: The whole product is totally free at the moment, but we’ll soon release a pricing plan with a subscription modal by the end of April this year.

How much money (funding) have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round? (Additionally, any plan for the future?)

Howie Young: So far, we’ve raised 130K USD in total. The first funding came from the crowdfunding campaign, and we raised 30K USD from around 30 supporters in 2017. Then we raised an angel investment with an amount of 100K USD in late 2018.

Currently, we are seeking a 200K USD pre-seed funding for the expansion to the European market.

What are some marketing tips to help maximize the success of a product launch?

Howie Young: First, make sure your product is really ready for the launch. That means you are sure that your target audiences will be satisfied by the trial on your product without any tutorial or guide from you. People now are having less patience, so most of the time, you only have one shot. Once users got a bad experience from the first contact with your product, you might lose them forever.

Secondly, set a clear one-liner for your product. To have a clear one-liner is not only for helping people to remember your product easily but also for helping people share your product with their friends, colleagues, and family.

Lastly, pick the target audiences as specifically as you can. As what’s been mentioned above, people have less patience and concentration seriously. Getting 1K audiences who’d like to listen to your introduction is 100 times greater than just shouting to 1M people that just don’t glance at you.

What is a good product launch checklist?

Howie Young: 

• A clear one-liner for your product
• Well-designed preview contents – It does not have to be a video. Well-designed images sometimes are more powerful (and affordable for startups).
• Positive reviews from your beta test – It makes you know that the product is really ready for some of the target users.
• Product FAQ – The answer to every kind of question for a product is just try to explain your product to your grandma and see what she would ask you, and usually, that would be exactly the same questions for people who meet your product at the first contact.

What’s the hardest thing about product launches?

Howie Young: To have the right solution for the right problem. Most of the time, when you screw up a launch, it might be just because your solution is not good enough. A good launch strategy might be able to scale your success, but it won’t create a product-market fit for you if the product is not a fit for the audiences.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? (or What should all first-time startup founders know before they start their business?)

Howie Young: Don’t start it just because it sounds like a good idea to make money very fast. Most of the time, these ideas have already been tried by teams that think likewise. You just didn’t have the chance to know them because they already failed. I always tell my friends who want to have a startup like this: “If you got an idea that will make you feel regret because you know that you won’t be alive after today, but you didn’t have the chance to realize it. Then it’s a good fit for you to build a startup for it.”

Having a startup is just like having a marriage. That means you are going to take a nonstop responsibility in 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, until you fail or leave the company. So make sure you are really in love with the idea; otherwise, the pressure of the duty will drag you down very soon.

What do most startups get wrong about marketing?

Howie Young: I believe I’ve answered this question in one of the questions above. Marketing is a kind of logic, not magic. A good marketing strategy might be able to scale a success five times, but it won’t create a product-market fit for you if the product is not a fit for the audiences.

So, make sure your solution is a fit for your TA first, then use a great marketing strategy to scale up the fit.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And What advice do you have for someone who is interested in doing similar things like yours or in a similar direction?

Howie Young: I don’t think there’s the best answer to this question. But to me, the spirit that I always keep in mind is: “Do what you love, and love what you do. It sounds pretty simple, but actually, it tells about how to make a choice and how to carry on when you face challenges or fails.”

What are the one or two things that you would do differently if you could go back to 10 years ago?

Howie Young: There’s nothing I would like to change. As I said, I always do what I love the most, and love what I do the most. But maybe it would be great if I can get the “tico.com” domain before it was taken by someone else five years ago.

You can follow Howie Young here.

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