Business & technology

700,000 international users. And still, a decision to focus.

Valon Asani · · 2 min read

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Original video. The written article below is available in English, Albanian and German.

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Someone asked me whether dua had grown outside the Albanian community.

Yes. We had users from Turkish, Moroccan, German, Italian and French communities too. In my reply, I shared that we had reached more than 700,000 international users.

A big number.

And still, we decided that dua should be for Albanians, with Spotted as the international brand and app.

That is the part I want to stay with.

When you build something, growth gives you a reason to keep going. More people. More markets. More possibilities. It can become very easy to answer every question with another number.

But a number cannot answer this for you: Who are we building for?

A product has to make sense to the person opening it. The name, the people they expect to meet, the reason they came. Those things belong together.

For us, the decision was to give the two brands different roles: dua for the Albanian community. Spotted for an international audience.

That was the direction I described in the video. The 700,000 figure belongs to that account, rather than being a live user count.

You can be proud of how far something has grown and still decide it needs a clearer direction.

If you are building a product, try answering the question without showing me your growth chart.

Who is it for?

That question had appeared earlier when we listened to why people came to dua and chose dating as the focus.

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