In case you missed it, the dumpster fire that is Elongated Muskrat’s Twitter continues to rage amidst reading limits and other terrible ideas. According to reports, Musk didn’t want to pay his cloud storage bill, hence the rate limits. In response to this, over July 4th holiday, Black Twitter’s exodus from Musk’s app made Black-owned SPILL the most downloaded social app in the App Store. The influx of new users actually crashed the app, but they were back up relatively quickly.
This historic moment inspires bigger thinking on the possible futures for Black-owned technology. Note that SPILL’s key differentiator is their intent to compensate users for viral posts. Ultimately, these (white tech) bros ain’t loyal and the social space is up for grabs. Especially for those who have the best interest of their users in mind. We intuit that many more Black-owned apps will fill the space. Inpathy is another one to watch. Portal X got next.
What we found extra special about the SPILL explosion were these words from the CEO, Alphonzo Terrell:
“Eight months ago I was laid off. Last week, SPILL became the #1 social app in Apple App Store. A few of my takeaways and a bit more about what’s next for SPILL 👇🏽
First, I want to credit our small but mighty team. You can’t ever “plan” for moments like what happened last week, but you can be prepared and ready to seize the day. Our engineering team, especially, laid the foundation for our platform to withstand a 30x increase in membership within three days without any major outages. Our support and moderation teams worked 24 hours a day for 8 straight days to ensure all our new members were safe and supported. Our comms and community teams helped shape our story as hundreds of thousands began to discover SPILL in real time. I’m so proud of us.
Second, I want to credit our community. Our company thesis rests on superserving the underserved – specifically Black folks, Queer folks and other historically marginalized communities. This theory was validated, as tens of thousands of people began sharing invite codes and discussing the app with their networks. To have an “invite-only” app outpace multi-billion dollar platforms – even for a short while – is truly remarkable and proof that community eats strategy for breakfast.
Lastly, I want to, in the words of Snoop Dogg, thank me. I want to thank myself for not giving up, for not letting inner negativity overtake me, nor external negativity to overwhelm me. I want to thank myself for asking for help when I needed it, for taking space when I needed it and for being ok not being perfect. I want to thank me for not running from any challenge and remembering to ground myself in faith before everything else to keep things in perspective.”
SPILL is still a startup in its testing phase with many more opportunities to seize and challenges to navigate. Our mission remains the same and our focus for the rest of the year will continue to be building out the remaining core elements of our vision – chiefly, our creator tools, our custom trained LLM for moderation, and, yes, our Android build.
We appreciate everyone’s patience (we know many of you are still on the waitlist) as we continue to execute this vision and welcome all support + feedback along the way ☕️
Source: Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell’s LinkedIn