On Thursday, I attended a dinner conversation which featured the Rose House guest, Michael Belkin, a Cornell alumnus who eventually pursued a career in entrepreneurship and created his own startup, a social media app for LGBT youth Distinc.tt. Many of us asked about his personal experiences, the progression of the app from a simple idea to what it is today, and advice for us if we chose to pursue entrepreneurship. Everyone is obsessed with the concept of having a singular million dollar idea that becomes a huge success. However, we were surprised to hear that a lot of success that Michael had was due to fortunate accidents, and the final product ended up being completely different than the original idea. His initial idea was to create a social media app for the LGBT community that can be used to identify others in the community and that wasn’t made for the purpose of necessarily dating or hooking up. After the app was completed and approved by the Apple Store, Michael was surprised to see that the app had a 17+ rating just because it was LGBT related even though there was nothing explicit with the content. He fought to get the rating changed to 12+ and then there was a flurry of media sensationalism in which Distinc.tt was the first app with a rating approved for teenagers. Thus, Michael and his team discovered that there was a hidden demographic that the app could be marketed to, which was the LGBT youth, who don’t have the means to meet and connect with other LGBT youth. He didn’t start off with the intention of making a social media app for LGBT youth, but they took advantage of the situation and the app evolved over time. This was something Michael really emphasized, as we can’t predict how something will end up as hard as we try, we can only hope the product evolves as we grow. 

Michael also gave other valuable pieces of advice when thinking about creating a startup. For example, I didn’t know about the potential of smoke tests, in which you could build and test certain features of an app and see if those features would be successful rather than build the entire app and waste time backtracking if certain parts fail. For the first few years, focus on consumer growth rather than monetization, or else the app quality would suffer. Other entrepreneurs are often the most valuable resources. Most importantly, since app development is becoming more commonplace and competitive, apps need to become a part of your larger vision. How do you see the world differently and how do you think your perspective can help the world? 

I absolutely adored this dinner conversation. Although I am not currently interested in going to create a startup, it was great to hear all these facets of experience that could be applicable to every problem solving situation. I was also just really interested in his app idea, and I hope that usage of his app would be more widespread in the near future!