Everyone is talking about Deepseek. I’m particularly interested in how they became a media (marketing) sensation overnight. I’ll try to share what I can find here.
- 10th Jan – launch on iOS and Android
- 13th Jan – Pandaily reported the story first.
- 27th Jan – Surpassed ChatGPT to become the most downloaded free app on the U.S. iOS App Store.
- 28th Jan – Major news outlets started reporting, especially the drop in Nvidia’s market share.
I’m interested in exploring whether mere mortals like me and Techcelerate Tech Founders can extract anything that could be repeated to achieve overnight success for our tech company businesses.
Apps rise is widely claimed due to:
- Open source model.
- Free accessibility.
- Transparency – commitment.
- Media coverage.
Media played a significant role due to the West being good and China being bad narrative. Secondly, the drop in Tech Stocks, especially Nvidia became sensational news. Shorting of stocks before release seems to have played a hand as well. These are difficult tactics to repeat.
Lessons that can be drawn from Deepseek’s launch success:
- Leverage open source and transparency – open source or make core aspects transparent to create a community-driven growth engine and establish trust with your stakeholders.
- Offer free value to attract users – offer a freemium model to get early feedback to iterate faster and build the community rapidly.
- Engage with media and influencers – engage and create a buzz.
- Target a pain point – a specific problem in a large market.
- Focus on product experience – a well designed intuitive product is key to success.
- Speed and agility – don’t wait for perfection. Launch quickly, gain feedback and iterate faster.
Resources:
- Wikipedia about the company.
- An overview of the Chinese technology startup DeepSeek and its founder Liang Wenfeng.
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