2023 product big swings

here’s how we’re making our members' goals come alive through upcoming (big, audacious) product updates.

15,000+ women have now joined leap.club. many love us, and some don't. but across the board, our members have consistently shared their feedback with us, and helped us get better at what we do. so we’d like to start with a big thank you to all the women who are shaping our future. 

we are on a mission to become a meaningful social-professional network for women across the world. and with that goal in mind, we are always shipping at leap.club. over the past 3 years, we have learnt that members primarily use leap.club to discover and connect with other women and companies. they build their professional network, crack partnerships, make career moves, find new friendships, form hobby groups (think workout partners or reading clubs) and so much more. our goal is to make all of this possible, as best as we can, so here’s how we’re making it happen: 

increased focus on easier discovery of other members to enable more connections and friendships

1. voice notes - linkedin introduced this feature a couple of years back to help us with correct name pronunciations and inspired us.

   

   we launched our own version of voice notes for all members, where they can record a note for other members who visit their profile. from introducing themselves better to calling out what they are looking for, to talking about their services & products - voice notes have allowed members to find and connect with like-minded women in a way that feels natural.

2. profile prompts - this one’s a popular feature already. think bumble, but leap.club edition! a mix of fun and professional prompts which you can answer. “what i order for the table” and “give me travel tips for” are crowd favourites. we love seeing members put their own spin on it :)

   

3. a comprehensive global search - yes, you read that right! you can now type anything on the search bar on top of the app, and browse through previous posts, discussions, jobs, companies, members - basically your own little pandora’s box. for eg: if you head to the search bar and type zomato, you will be able to see zomato’s company page, find posts on the feed about it, members who work there - and even open roles. our goal over the next quarter? taking this feature to the next level, and enabling searches like ‘designers open to work near me’ or ‘badminton players near me’.

   

4. fun and better profiles - profiles will now have a lot more info. whether a member is open to work/freelancing; hourly / retainer rates for consultants; links to linkedin, twitter, instagram, calendly, blogs; more pictures, andddd (taking a breath here) testimonials. members will be able to share and access all the info that they need to make new biz connections and friends. our north star goal is to make leap.club profiles the most shareable profile links on the internet for our members.

5. filter and sort - a host of sorting and filtering tools to help you land on the right members and get started.

6. members near me - (very) soon, you will be able to select your city or radius, and instantly discover leap.club members near you. our members use the platform to build their social circle through hobby groups, sports buddies, and make new friends. and we can’t wait to make all of this easier for you! 

we’re adding 1500-2000 new members every month and improving their first experience with us

we are (finally) moving away from our web form to onboard members directly on the app. now you can login, and build your profile, select your interests, goals and more, while we take you through everything the app has to offer. our idea is to customise your experience from day 1.
p.s. we are ramping up new member onboarding and soon hope to onboard 5000 new members/month. how we plan to do this - that’s probably another blog in itself. 

a bigger & better jobs section to help you make your next career move

1. high-quality jobs, more suitable roles for our member base, easier discovery - it’s all in the works. in the last 30 days we have onboarded many more partners - pepsico, epigamia, freshworks, atlan, schbang and ~30 others. we’ve launched a “jobs for you” section and are making this algo better. very soon, as part of the application process, you will be able to share your cv with the recruiters directly from the app too.

2. companies can now post about their culture, roles or anything else they want to talk about on our feed. you can follow any company and get notified every time they post a new role. we’ve also launched 50+ features for recruiters to scope better and hire fast. 

   shameless plug - if you’re keen to jump on the recruiter bandwagon - write to us on partners@leap.club 📧

clubs 

not everything is hunky dory on the app and we know that. we started clubs (earlier clubhouses) with the vision to bring like-minded women together, and despite it being one of our most-used features for the longest time, the feedback from majority members now is that there is a lot of content that fails to add value, which brings down member experience. we did our fair bit of experimentation here and tried to change things, but have not been to turn the experience around. we will now retire clubs and remove them from the app in the next 2-3 weeks. but here’s what to look forward to:
a. higher engagement on the feed and making discoverability and relevance better for posts 

b. contemplating “channels” (more deets below) 

ps. we loved watching conversations, relationships come alive in clubs, but we know there are better things waiting for us on the other side.

there’s a lot more brewing in our labs 🧪 💻

1. directories - think you’ve got a skill that fellow members might appreciate? we soon bring in ‘directories’ - a collated list of members who are open to help - for a fee (or free of cost if they choose to). think lawyers, finance folks, designers, techies, fitness instructors, coaches and more - you’ll find a curated list based on filters like cost, location, and experience. but that’s not all - we’re including social directories too, for members curious to discover new restaurants, to those interested in travelling together and more!

2. feed → home - the landing page on the app will become a proper home screen - browse member posts, easier search tools, events near you, open roles that match your profile, and active members near you. a one-stop-place for you to do what you are looking to do. yes, long time in the making :)

3. activities (working name) - did you know that in the last 6 months, our members have hosted 200+ online and offline events? we didn’t make it easy for them, but now we’re throwing the doors open. soon, you will be able to upload an online or offline event, workshop, activity and invite other members to participate; and engage with them with 0 interference from us. from bigger events like 50-100 women coming together to network, to smaller, intimate gatherings like a walk in lodhi garden or a book reading session at cubbon park for 5 people - members can now take their leap.club relationships to a different level. while many apps have tried solving the problem of matching people based on interests + location, we realised that leap.club members have been successfully doing this for a while. we are excited to bring this alive, and witness how big this can become.

4. expert-led offline events specially curated for leap.club members - our events are a hit - there, we said it! and while the team will continue to host you for many offline events, whether it’s leap (af)fair, leap day, or run-like-a-woman, we are now also curating offline events led by experts exclusively for our members. from old delhi food trails, to fitcations in the hills, to yoga workshops in goa - it’s all in the works. keen to organise one for members? events@leap.club 📧

5. channels for creators and premium members - we’d like to preface this by calling out that this is an “idea-in-progress” but we did still want to talk about it and know what you think. at leap.club, we have many women who want to share their experiences, build an audience, and talk about what they’re building. as part of that, we recently launched leap.club creators and invited 75+ women to share their insights with the community. but we also realised that our algorithms are still young, and often, high-quality content tends to get lost. this in turn discourages members to post/share. this led us to thinking of building custom channels for our creators, where they can post and interact with members who choose to follow them. thus, only they (or members selected by them) will be able to post, and channel owners can switch on/off comments and replies. this will enable channel owners to build an audience and allow members to not miss content by their favourite members. what do you think? should we do it?
   disclaimer - instagram beat us to this feature and launched something similar a couple of weeks back. but that’s ok, we’ll live with it.

6. recommendations, stores and perks - another feature that we have been debating for a while. the one thing that makes leap.club unique is the trust that members have on other members. they often lean on each other for tips on products, brands, travel, food and many other things. our members are looking to discover and try new brands + experiences. brands want to reach out to our users as it is a high quality audience. in fact hundreds of companies + founders have written to us wanting to talk about their product or service and use the power of our network to reach out to more women. but at the same time, we do not want to become just another marketplace.
   so we had our carrie bradshaw moment, and couldn’t help but wonder - is there is a world where we marry all of the above and lead with the trust that we spoke about? imagine a section where you can discover new women-led brands and businesses. members can recommend it to other members, based on their experiences. maybe you get a special discount to try the products too.

we feel recommendations can be a game-changer, but what really matters is what you think. please let us know? 

and on that note, we wrap (for now, of course)

we hope you are excited about what’s ahead for you and us. we’re sure the meme below will be a fair description of our product and tech team, but we still promise to ship fast, learn fast and come out stronger (yes, emphasis on the fast 🚀)

last note – until recently we thought of ourselves as a linkedin for women. but it didn’t take us long to realise that women do so much more (and build real relationships) than just build a professional network on our platform. we then started reimagining ourselves as a bumble bff + biz for women in india. member love tells us that the opportunity in front of us is infinite, and we truly have the potential to carve out a place where women can come together and more importantly - win together - socially, professionally and in life.

here’s to creating many more success stories, together! 💛

– anand, ragini and all your friends at leap.club