Today on 1st April 2018 I announce that Mark Zuckerberg is to invest in Reevoo. Just as Zuckerberg is looking for something new, Reevoo is expanding, so perfect timing.
My motto for Reevoo is “by the people, for the people”. But I see our biggest growth opportunity in adding a second line: “by the animals, for the animals”.
When I look at the essence of the service Reevoo provides to consumers, for me, it is connecting people who are about to make a decision with those who already have made a similar decision. Watching Blue Planet II it dawned on me that animals too need to make countless decisions. It was clear as water that they had insufficient information to decide wisely in essential matters such as:
- where to go – Sally Lightfoot crabs swap a safe rock for another rock with lethal consequences
- which tool to use – it takes a tusk fish an hour to open a clam with his tool of choice.
Given the death rate in the stories told by Sir David Attenborough it seems there is room for improvement.
The core ingredients that make Reevoo work for the people, by the people, are cooperation and reciprocity. Do animals cooperate? If two elephants can only get food by working together, will they do so? The answer is yes. And not just elephants. The cooperative pulling test has been successfully performed by hyenas, chimpanzees and keas as well.
Extending this cooperation over time leads to the concept of reciprocity. If one animal helps another to get food, will it be rewarded the next time? It sure looks like it. When one of the chimps in the cooperative pulling experiment was fed a lot prior to the test, therefore lacking any motivation, he still helped the other to get food.
Having established product fit, all there was left to do was market sizing. My uneducated guess is that there are a Googleplex animals alive today, all making decisions on a daily basis. We are fortunate enough to live at a time in history where monetization is a problem to be thought of only later. Get big first, own the market, think monetization later.
This has worked for Facebook. I’m confident it will work for “by the animals, for the animals”. I’m thrilled Mark Zuckerberg thinks so too.
