Micheal_Scott AMA
Hey Folks, I thought I should do an AMA specially after yesterday’s rumours that I have been laid off from Grapevine - this isn’t true 😂. It is however true that I have been PIPed and have a much reduced role now xD To be serious: Happy to answer any Grapevine questions that you may have. Features, ideas, questions on why we do what we do welcome - I’ll answer what I can! Cheers!
It’s a very long story. But the early team of Grapevine - we were all just friends working in tech hanging out during the pandemic.
One day in 2021 we got really curious about the salary inflation and excess of jobs in 2021 and ended up creating Corporate Chat India - our first discord community. The community grew fast and became very sticky. Found thousands of awesome people there - some of whom made new friends, got jobs, got raises or went on trips together.
Somewhere around the same time last year we decided to make Grapevine as a proper app for itself as it was clear to us that communities don’t scale. But an app like Grapevine can.
The goal is to help people just like us (tech professionals) at scale and have a tonne of fun while at it
I can go on about the stories from the Discord server times. But that would take days 😝
But yeah we’ve been curious about getting professionals together within communities for a long time :)
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What are some of the metrics u look at everyday and which among them you would say concern u or the investor if there’s a significant change ?
metrics I care about (among many others):
# of daily visitors
# of comments
Ratio of Comments to Posts
# of people actually opening Posts (Level 2 page)
# of people who share posts from Grapevine
Diversity of posts (topics, post type, etc)
You forgot the 2 most important metrics:
# of meme posts
# of rich fucks posting their high salaries for validation
yesmonk
Stealth
a year ago
What's your role in grapevine?
I’m one of the founders. I have the most grapes. So yeah I’m a big deal here LOLL 🥶
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President_Trump
Stealth
a year ago
Have you had a job before this? If yes, what was your previous job? Additionally, how does Grapevine plan to generate income in the future to ensure its sustainability?
And we're fully aware you're not bidding adieu. we just love having you here, spreading humor and actively participating. That's it 😄
Hey hey, thanks so much you don’t want me gone! :)
Yes I used to work at Google. Around 4 years work ex. Enough to understand that people want to talk a bunch about work and work related topics :)
Generating income is going to be a long term game. For now Grapevine is really obsessed with creating as much user value as possible. In the future if we have enough users - making money via jobs seems like the best option since we also think connecting people with the right jobs is a productive cause 💪
Startup_Patrol
Stealth
a year ago
@Micheal_Scott We can provide you a placement plugin here! Let's talk?
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Oh thanks so much @potatomato
I’m slightly worried that you knew this data point and I didn’t 😂😂
Woah! I’ve actually thought about this before. You seem to be stealing my thoughts here. It’s an awesome idea.
I mean we can think of it in the future when we have money. But today since we are poor - likely not.
We will get flooded with LinkedIn bhaiyas & Didi's looking for clout and monnies
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Kuchacharakhlo
Stealth
a year ago
Yeh naam he kyu @Micheal_Scott 😂😂
I love The Office. And it made sense for Grapevine to have an incompetent office manager like me 😂
Kuchacharakhlo
Stealth
a year ago
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yesmonk
Stealth
a year ago
Why didn't you address the rumours at the beginning itself? It was fun though.
😂😂 I didn’t address the rumors because I was loving the memes too much
yesmonk
Stealth
a year ago
Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well
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SceneUnseen
Stealth
a year ago
Who designed the app, it has a good user experience overall. Do you have an in house designer?
One of the founders designed the app. Fun fact, he isn’t even originally a designer but learned things in the way :)
I’ll let him know you said this :)
How do you really go about moderating the content ? Tech usage or manual work ? How's grapevine supposed to evolve like ?
Moderation is super important. We don’t want people abusing/bullying each other, or using Grapevine as a platform to abuse/bully people outside. Talking about companies and cultures and teams is usually fine
Awesome grapeviners send us 20-30 comment/post reports every day.
We also use a AI based system to auto flag abusive content.
Then we take a call to remove or keep said content as per our community guidelines. They’re available to read from the hamburger menu :)
Is it too early to predict what grapevine can become or you already have a vision for it ?
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Clarky
Stealth
a year ago
is grapevine really really anonymous? considering the VC which is funding & past companies of the grapevine team & the investors, not really sure you all will not succumb to the pressure from the investors/VC's.
how long will the app keep the anonymity of the viners/users.
Absolutely anonymous and we hash and salt all user details.
Even if someone tried their best to steal info from Grapevine - they won’t be able to.
This is honestly the p0 responsibility we have
Who is the best user on the grapevine?
Who is the worst user that you had to ban?
What do you love about the platform?
The best user is whoever asks the question 😂
The worst was someone who repeatedly was spamming 12-15 posts a day while being highly abusive/spammy. Some people might remember that time :p
I love the people on the platform most tbh. The quality of the user base has far exceeded expectations :)
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UsableStab30
Stealth
a year ago
What is the tech stack? Mobile, backend, ops...
GiantScorn
Stealth
a year ago
Hey, Can you specify the database/s ? Which is handling posts, comments, likes etc.
darkvader
Stealth
a year ago
Why the name grapevine?
Sorry if this has been answered before
Great question. The original name was Corporate chat India. But that name is slightly boomer and too long to even pronounce
Then we thought to name it ‘Watercooler’. But that seemed very hard to pronounce and a bit less cool.
And finally the name Grapevine came as an idea. We thought it sufficiently captures the essence of conversations at the workplace. Also seemed like a cool name so we went for it
@Micheal_Scott Thanks for AmA.
Just curious...
Do you think Grapevine has attained PMF? If so, what are the criteria for recognizing it? If not, what is still lacking?
Hey @GP101 - i don’t know how to define PMF for a product as complex as grapevine. Maybe in some cohorts we have PMF - maybe in some we don’t, I think the platform is going well but could do way better…
Gus
Stealth
a year ago
How can you be PIPed as a founder? I am not aware of any rumour as I am not a power GV user
Gus
Stealth
a year ago
Okay, another confusing information. Keep at it. I hope it passes by the time I log again
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