How Wapatoa built a media startup to serve young people in Cambodia
But you can’t serve an audience if you don’t first learn how to empathize with them, according to Wapatoa’s co-founder Alix Feschotte.
Takeaways
Wapatoa wants to build a safe community for young people as a friendly companion for them to be informed, get ideas and learn actionable tips while transitioning to adulthood, Feschotte says.
Wapatoa first focused on building a community of super loyal users and content creators, and now it’s trying to monetize a business supporting Generation Z.
Take a real interest in what young people care about in their 20s such as money, education, work, relationships, technology, sexuality, climate change, and health.
Be present for young people when they need help and be consistent in providing them with useful content.
Context
After going through a long period of political turmoil, Cambodia has been working to restore its identity for last 40 years. Now, a young, digital-first generation is figuring out its place in society.
On Splice Beta Online, Wapatoa co-founder Alix Feschotte highlighted her journey of launching and growing as a bilingual media startup to serve more than 500,000 young students and professionals, in what the organization calls an orphan generation.
The journey
After building apps for an ed-tech startup back in France, Alix arrived in Cambodia five years ago as a teacher trainer and teacher in a local university.
Wapatoa was started from the observations she shared with her co-founder, the Cambodian blogger Sokcheng Seang, about how young people were trying to figure out a way to accessing information and their love-hate relationship with their phones and social media.
Year 1 - 2018 Spam if you must in the first six months to get noticed, then focus on building core loyal users and nurture them as brand ambassadors to grow the audience organically.
Year 2 - 2019 Start monetizing the community while taking care of the core 20,000 users. Keeping the quality and consistency of content up, they also worked with artists and writers to acquire new users.
Year 3 - 2020 Began evolving the company organization and content for more animated videos and visual explainers. Started trying out decentralized meetups, as well as the creation of a media collective.
“Hire young people. Take them seriously.”
Alix’s tips for building a media startup for Gen Zs
Hire young people, take them seriously, and grow with them as creators and partners.
Make them love you instead of like you.
Listen to them. Talk to them often.
Be there for them consistently both online and offline, but try to find the right balance.