Yes, this is a record third blog post in a day (in a couple of hours really), but we just read an amazing piece on user retention and felt the need to share. We at Ignighter religiously read and re-read every piece written by Andrew Chen, and his last piece on user retention is really a doozy. We highly recommend that anyone building a community oriented site, and especially our fellow TechStars brethren who are working in the space, check it out.
Every once in a while on this blog we talk about activities that make for fun group date settings (BYO dinners, Rock Band, etc). A big part of Ignighter is our desire to break the routine that we all fall into in our social lives. So we decided it would be important to share interesting group date ideas with our users. Here’s one for today:
Play Miniature Golf. Who doesn’t love miniature golf? You can split into teams and competitive games make for great dates when anybody can be good at them.
Also us Ignighter guys love feedback. If you have any group date ideas please post them as comments on our blog or email them to us at adam@ignighter.com. We’re always looking for new group date activities to try.
Last night was our first real opportunity to socialize with the other TechStars teams (from both this year and last) and it was a great time. Even though we’re all “NerdStars”, we were able to pull ourselves from our emails and code-writing for a few hours and really enjoy each other’s company.
The night started out with beer, pizza, and mingling. It was a great chance for the ‘08 TechStars to meet the ‘07 teams and get the insider dirt on all of our mentors.
The party really ascended to the next level when David Cohen broke out the Rock Band. Us Ignighter guys had never played before, but we quickly learned that the game acts as a party ignighter (shameless plug). Within a matter of 10 minutes (and approximately the same amount of beers) the party went from:
to
Somehow Rock Band even makes women materialize.
We rocked out to Nirvana, Blink 182, Bon Jovi, Blue Oyster Cult, and my personal favorite, Boston.
We like to keep a running list of good Group Dating ideas, Rock Band is definitely getting added to the list.
As expected, the party inevitably degenerated out to Pearl Street where we hit up Tahona Tequila Bistro. Our experience at Tahona, like experiences we have just about every weekend, reinforced our belief that the world needs a service that helps young people arrange group dates. The scene was something that we have all come to expect when we go out to bars. A group of guy friends talking amongst themselves, a group of girl friends across the bar talking amongst themselves. Without the structure of a service that facilitates their meeting (talking about Ignighter here) it’s pretty difficult to cross the chasm of the dance floor and get those groups to meet. Even if they both want to meet. Without the nudge of Ignighter, it usually doesn’t happen.
Now of course every group has an exception, the brave soul who isn’t afraid to get out onto the dance floor. Last night one of our fellow TechStars did just that. Leaving the rest of his envious friends to do what envious friends normally do, take pictures. While I have yet to recover any of the photos from last night, I did stumble upon a dramatization video:
Like I said though, this guy with the smooth moves is the exception. The rest of us stood off to the side waiting for something serendipitous to happen. And it didn’t.
Young people across America need Ignighter, it’s more than a feeling.
