The Story
Scott
A friend introduced me to Momo, which had been on the market just two weeks. I launched the App Store, found the developer and his phone number, and made the call. Tang asked if we could meet the next day, so I flew overnight from Shanghai to Beijing.
Yan
At that time, I had a competitive team and a good product. My wife was responsible for the design. The rest of the team were with us from the beginning to work on product design and the technical aspects of the application.
Scott
It took 15 minutes to make the decision. Many years experience using social networks allowed me to realize the uniqueness of Momo: simple and easy to use. A good social tool should be like this. The Momo team also had a good sense of the product and interpersonal communication.
Yan
Did he take a risk? Yes, I think so – PurpleSky was the only angel who was with us at that stage, but they supported us all the way through to IPO.
Scott
I recently learned that more than 30 VCs had rejected Momo before we cooperated. But my instinct told me I made the right decision. Momo was well-designed and had a concise interface, while other, similar products had weak design, with obvious flaws like poor font or color choice.
Yan
The most valuable benefit of the partnership is that PurpleSky does not interfere in specific aspects of the business. They cooperated rather than tried to control us. That’s very difficult and worthy of high praise. The whole process was smooth, straightforward and super efficient.