What is SoulCat
SoulCat is a social network in which users share their lifestyle with their friends by sharing pictures of digital collectible cats. Every SoulCat is unique in attributes and is designed to make the user feel cool and proud to showcase his/her SoulCat.
The crux of the game is to get the SoulCat to mirror the user’s personality. Users can do this by “feeding” their SoulCats Instagram posts and stories. Feeding a SoulCat involves commenting on an Instagram post or Story of one of the select Influencers. Over time, as a SoulCat is fed Instagram posts of fitness, food, fashion, travel and music, the SoulCat develops a personality that mirrors the user.
For instance, a SoulCat may evolve into a crossfit SoulCat or a wanderlust SoulCat or a foodie SoulCat or a runner SoulCat.
Soul Influencers
SoulCat will have a list of “Featured Influencers”. These are influencers on Instagram who have Business/Creator accounts, have a following of 10,000 to 100,000 followers and who have agreed to become SoulCat Featured Influencers.
Typically when brands contact influencers, they want influencers to push the brands’ products to their followers. As the number of brands who want to market their products through influencers has exploded, the leverage has shifted from brands to influencers.
In our scenario, the leverage is reversed to give SoulCat the leverage over influencers. Since SoulCat users follow the featured influencers and interact with posts and stories put up by these influencers, SoulCat is able to drive a lot of new followers and user engagement to the influencers.
The MVP
KPIs for the MVP
The MVP needs to validate the following KPIs:
MAU and DAU numbers that are mutually defined by Soul Electronics and Pirates.
The technology can programmatically generate SoulCat content that is cool and engaging to users.
A critical number of Instagram influencers participate in SoulCat without a lot of coercion necessary.
SoulCat can have viral growth.
Metrics mutually defined by Soul Electronics and Pirates that demonstrate that SoulCat can be built into an economically powerful platform connecting brands, influencers and users
User Flow
The following wireframes show the user flow for the SoulCat app MVP. This flow has been designed after a thorough analysis of the Instagram Platform API.
Facebook publishes two sets of APIs for Instagram - the Instagram API and the Instagram Graph API. The first API enables registered apps to access data of regular Instagram users, while the second enables registered apps to access data only in Instagram Business and Creator accounts. Unfortunately Facebook is deprecating the first API - which means that apps won’t be able to get data using this API starting early 2020.
The user flow has 8 screens -
Login screen
Permissions screen
Screen for the user to select his/her SoulCat
Configure your SoulCat screen
Featured influencers screen
Instagram screen of a featured influencer showing users writing comments on a post with hashtags of their SoulCat names
Screen showing a new picture generated by code for a SoulCat based on the user’s recent activity on Instagram posts of featured influencers
Home screen showing all the SoulCat pictures of a user
Execution Plan
We estimate that it will take about six months to complete all the KPIs mentioned above in this section for the MVP. We think that the best way to build this MVP is in four to six week cycles with weekly/biweekly interactions with executives from Soul Electronics.
At the beginning of each cycle we will publish a list of KPIs for the next cycle and upon mutual agreement on the KPIs and the payment for each cycle, Pirates will commence working on the KPIs.
First Cycle - KPIs
| KPI 1 | Create SoulCat base illustration |
|---|---|
| KPI 2 | Create design prototype |
| KPI 3 | Get feedback on the SoulCat concept from 10 influencers |
| KPI 4 | Figure out how to programmatically draw and alter SoulCats |
First Cycle - Plan
First Cycle - Fees
| Beginning of Project | Completion of KPIs | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fees | $5,000 | $45,000 | $50,000 |
Process
Pirates will appoint one account manager who will do a weekly/biweekly call with Soul Electronics and collect their feedback regularly to make the entire process interactive
The team doing the design, illustration, dev and validation will be staffed from Pirates’ network of startups and experts. The account manager will do the project management and be available on email and chat for prompt discussions with Soul Electronics
Pirates will use tools that will enable Soul Electronics to give feedback on designs in near time as new iterations are designed and developed
Vision for SoulCats
A Lifestyle Network
SoulCats should be fun and engaging for users. For this to be consistently engaging to users on a long term basis, SoulCats must take on the personality of the users. The subliminal purpose of SoulCats must be to not just interact with fun cat pictures but actively depict and shape people’s lifestyles.
An Influencer Platform
SoulCat should evolve into an influencer platform where influencers and brands can actively help shape people’s lifestyles in all walks of life. Initially the focus can be on promoting products of Soul Electronics and affiliated companies and getting influencers excited about these companies, but in the long term SoulCat should evolve into a platform for influencers to promote different brands to users and give them the necessary campaign management tools for this.
Open API
We should open up the API for SoulCats so developers can create different SoulCat designs, interactions, access the data, create games and open a world of possibilities for SoulCats.
Influencer Management for Soul Electronics
Influencers who are selected to be featured influencers on SoulCat will get increased traffic and followers. We can use this as leverage to get them to promote Soul Electronics (and affiliated companies) products to their followers.
Over time as SoulCat user numbers grow, Soul Electronics headphones can be promoted in several ways within the network -
Custom SoulCats wearing Soul headphones
Rewards to SoulCat users who comment on influencer posts featuring Soul headphones etc.