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Highlighting the value of virtual goods and the business and development process that lead IMVU to success.
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Real Money from Virtual Goods
Brett G. Durrett (@bdurrett)
VP, Engineering & Operations
IMVU, Inc.
Media X, Stanford University, August 19, 2010
1
About Brett
• IMVU
– 2005 – present
– VP Engineering & Operations
• There.com
– Virtual world, RIP 2010
– Various executive roles, 1999-2004
• CEO Asylum Entertainment
– Video game developer
– 1992-1999, before gray hair
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What is IMVU?
• Not a virtual world
• Not part of the healthcare industry
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What is IMVU?
• Not a virtual world
• Not part of the healthcare industry
So why am I speaking about “Cashing In on
Virtual Worlds: Entrepreneurial Insights for
the Healthcare Industry”?
4
Why I’m Here
• IMVU is a leader in virtual goods
– Over 4 million items, worlds largest catalog
• IMVU is leveraging this to get real revenue
– Over $40 million run rate
• We have some entrepreneurial insights!
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About the Product
• Social Entertainment
– Play games
– Create, build and share clothing and items
– Chat
• Virtual Goods
• Social networking
– Friends, groups, networks
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About the Business
• “Freemium” model
• Website and Windows client download
• Majority revenue on credit sales
– Advertising revenue very small
• Profitable
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Customers
• 10 million unique visitors per month
• 50 million registered users
• 2 million active users in the last 30 days
• 1.3 million fans on Facebook
– But no Facebook application
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Who uses IMVU?
• 65% Female
• 60% United States
• 60% 18 years and older
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What Lead to Success?
Some keys to success
• “Lean” principles
– Rapid iteration
– Build, measure, learn
• User Generated Content
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Lean Principles
Thanks to Eric Ries, http://StartupLessonsLearned.com
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Build
• Variation of scrum
• 2-3 week development cycles
• Continuous Deployment
– All code live to production in 20 minutes
– 20-50 changes live per day
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Measure
• Split-test experiment system
• Real-time business metrics
– Monitoring
– Alerting
– Trending
• User tests
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Learn
• Frequent postmortems
• ROI analysis on projects
• Transparency!
– Data shared with all employees
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Why is Rapid Iteration Important?
Your business plan is wrong
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Why is Rapid Iteration Important?
Your business plan is wrong
(until you are monetizing customers)
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Why is Rapid Iteration Important?
Your business plan is wrong
(until you are monetizing customers)
As you decrease to time to learn why it is wrong
you increase your chance of success
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Why is Rapid Iteration Important?
• No blueprint for success with virtual goods
• Probably less so in health care
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Why User Generated Content?
• Scalable business
• Breadth of appeal
• Hit-driven business is tough
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Virtual Goods and UGC
• Over 4 million items, 99% user-generated
• 5000 new items every 24 hours
• 30,000 creators sold items in past 30 days
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Conclusion
• Great business opportunity
• Move fast to find it
• Leverage your customers for content
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Thank You
Brett G. Durrett
Twitter: @bdurrett
…and many thanks to Eric Ries of the Lean Startup
Great info for entrepreneurs at http://StartupLessonsLearned.com
32
Oh Yeah…
Interested in getting more experience?
We’re hiring!
http://www.imvu.com/jobs/
An online community where members use 3D avatars
to meet new people, chat, create
and have fun with their friends
