Corona Update for Wefunder

At the beginning of March, the growing concern of Coronavirus sent the world into a massive state of uncertainty. As the month progressed, we saw increased closures and stay-at-home orders across the country and around the world. Though many of us are lucky enough to have trails within walking distance of our home, for most of the country and for our users, the idea of traveling into the outdoors with friends was not top of mind.

Pre-Covid

Just one week prior to these events, Tribe Pilot saw record numbers of users opting into our monthly subscriptions. Our target has always been to match industry averages for paid membership: one to two paid users per 100 downloads. In our case, we were seeing five to eight upgrades per 100 downloads. More exciting were the consecutive weeks when our advertising dollars provided positive return. All of our lights were green to rapidly scale up to100k users, a target that would have covered our monthly payroll.

The Panic Period

Immediately following the country-wide cancellation of all non-household social interactions and the closure of all national and state parks, we saw our user-growth pause, and our advertising dollars had little impact on a nation that was consumed with more immediate topics. This complete pause lasted two weeks.

Coming to Terms

In response, we decided to support dreaming of better days by giving free trip upgrades during the crisis. Paid memberships can still be purchased, but all trips planned through the end of April were equipped with premium planning features at no charge, letting our users plan that big reunion trip for when the distancing requirements are lifted. This worked;we saw our first upgrades in over two weeks start to trickle in. And they continue to trickle in. However the cost to get new installs into the app was extremely high, continuing to postpone the rapid scale we had hoped for by mid April.

Uncoiling the Spring

All of this isolation is creating a social longing that builds with each week that we are away from our tribe. The outdoors itself is a life-giving force for many of us, and being locked away from the places we love is a special form of torture.

As restrictions lift, we are preparing for the rush of people desperate to get back into the outdoors with the people they love. We intent to ride this wave through summer and into next year. Summer has always been our strongest season; We just have to prolong our scale a little longer.