Elevator Pitch: Moji Edit

Elevator Pitch is a regular feature on Lifehacker where we profile startups and new companies and pick their brains for entrepreneurial advice. This week, we’re talking with Colina and Hripsime Demirdjian, founders of Moji Edit.

In 128 words or less, explain your business idea.

Just shy from graduating law school, we wanted to chase our dream of becoming young entrepreneurs, creating an app that would give users an opportunity to make ultra-personalised emojis and allow them to express their personality in a creative way. This saw the birth of Moji Edit. We noticed a growing trend in emojis and looked for new ways to enter this space. Emojis have widely come to embody a core aspect of our social and digital worlds. With Moji Edit, the idea was to make the emoji experience personal and to allow users to form their very own emoji identity. We launched Moji Edit 8 weeks ago and now have over 600,000 users worldwide.

What strategies are you using to grow and finance your idea?

We believe our rapid growth has been driven by our commitment to our users and us taking the steps to ensure that user feedback is heard and plays an important role in every decision we make. Right now, we are open to working alongside creative individuals and innovative companies who are mindful about the impact their technology is going to have on the world. By collaborating and creating partnerships, we believe we can target new audiences ad bring enriched personal experiences to new social spheres.

While Moji Edit adopts a freemium business model, there are certain features and accessories that are locked that the user must purchase. We decided to take this approach to help user acquisition and give users a rich preview of what they can do so they see an immediate value to upgrade. Right now, we are injecting everything we make from the app to increase user engagement and user satisfaction to increase conversion.

How do you differentiate your business from your competitors?

While we have seen many celebrities launching their own emoji apps, Moji Edit offers users the ability to create their very own emoji and share it with their friends. The high level of customisation and our focus on bringing the latest fashion and trends to the creation process has helped differentiate Moji Edit from other apps. The idea is make every user feel that their emoji is unique. What is also great about Moji Edit, is that you do not need to sign up to create your emoji and that the app offer loads of free accessories to choose from.

What’s the biggest challenge facing your business?

As with starting any business, there are many challenges we had to overcome to get to where we are now. One of the greatest challenges was understanding the technical aspect of developing an app and finding the right developers to actualise our vision. We focused on our strengths, sought expert advice to continue learning and are confident we have produced something of value. Another challenge was to maintain our high distinction average in our law studies and at the same time launch our first start-up. With our daring attitude and dedication, we overcame these challenges and are proud of ourselves. It was not easy but hard things have never stopped us.

What one phone, tablet or PC application could you not live without?

It would have to be close one between Instagram and Twitter. Connecting with our users over these platforms has helped us better understand our users and what features they like most about our app. We love seeing the emojis our users create and share over social media. Seeing our emoji designs being used by so many is extremely rewarding.

What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever received?

The most important advice we received and we would like to pass on is to make sure you validate your idea before moving into development. We think it is important to establish that your idea either fills a gap in the market or builds on current trends. We believe that understanding this from the start is really important in defining the long-term success of any business.

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