Before launching her own startup, Lily Liang (MBA 2008) worked as a product manager in San Francisco’s tech industry, including a stint at the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes from 2012 to 2017. Those were especially heady years in the streaming world, with so much content being added to an ever-expanding list of platforms that it could be dizzying for a viewer to try to pick something to watch. As director of product, Liang spent her days building tools to help organize the chaos: Say you were in the mood for a horror flick, and you only had access to Hulu. Liang and her team built filters that would spit out a list of the top-rated options available. Meanwhile in the evenings, to blow off steam, Liang took to her lifelong passion, which is dance. But finding new classes meant cross-checking various studio websites and compiling suggestions from classmates. It was as hard as finding a top-rated horror flick in a sea of streaming options, Liang realized. The dance world had a discovery problem too.

She and Mike Kamowski, a software engineer at Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster, started to build out a top-of-the-funnel solution for the dance community in 2018. Bopsidy launched the following year as an online directory to help students locate the classes they love, flipping the model from one that prioritizes the studios to a teacher-first approach. In 2021 Bopsidy launched a social platform that allows the hobbyist and professional dancer alike to create a personal profile showcasing their work. Imagine an IMDb for dance—an expansive catalogue of everyone and everywhere they perform, with filters to explore genres, ensembles, studios, or professionals and the places they teach.

The site is currently focused on San Francisco and Los Angeles, thanks to early funding from friends and family, but Liang is eyeing expansion in the United States in 2022—and eventually globally. She sees a huge potential for vertical social networks in the dance community, which is inherently social in the real world but has been largely overlooked by tech. And given its position at the crossroads of music, fitness, and art, dance is rife with market opportunity. “There is such a gap here between what people could be doing if they had the tools,” Liang says.

Liang launched Bopsidy in the Bay Area because she was already well connected with its dance community. Those personal relationships fueled initial growth and have been essential to building trust, she says. “Artists have not always benefited from capitalism in the past, so there’s some healthy skepticism there.” The grassroots strategy has been effective—but obviously labor-intensive. Liang wonders about the best way to expand into other markets, while making sure artists understand that the platform is helping grow the pie for everyone. “How do I scale myself?” she asks.

I think Lily should prioritize three to five markets rather than being overwhelmed about a national expansion, and a couple of tactical next-steps come to mind: First, she could try to leverage interest groups or partnerships such as with dance studios to jump-start her user base in the new markets. Second, she may want to recruit full- or part-time individuals with relevant networks in the new markets to support the expansions. Third, she could have one of her team members (or herself) relocate to the new markets and coordinate the expansions there. Based on my own experience, nothing beats spending in-person time in the new markets.

—Matias Recchia (MBA 2007) is the founder and CEO of Unlock, a real estate technology platform with operations across the United States. Before that he led IguanaFix, a services marketplace with operations in Latin America. Recchia is also an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

The first thing that comes to my mind is that Lily could try to capitalize on the stories of her existing members and participants. They offer credibility, and people who Lily does not have a relationship with will relate to why they are choosing to be a part of this community.

—Katia Beauchamp (MBA 2010) is the cofounder and CEO of Birchbox and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.

Got a case? To take part in a future “Case Study,” send an outline of your company’s challenge to bulletin@hbs.edu

Post a Comment