This document provides advice for starting a startup company. It recommends focusing on solving real problems for customers to deliver measurable results. When developing an idea, it should be something that can grow and scale quickly to satisfy a need. The document also stresses the importance of assembling a strong founding team with complementary skills and recruiting experts where weaknesses exist. Overall, the advice emphasizes validating ideas with potential customers, learning key startup skills, and focusing on continuous growth.
This document provides 43 examples of splash screen designs for mobile apps. It begins with an introduction explaining what a splash screen is and its purpose. It then shows examples organized into categories like professional/clean, colorful/fun, and unique/eye-catching. Each example includes an image of the splash screen, brief description, and creator. The document concludes by encouraging the reader to learn about their target audience to design an eye-catching splash screen that sparks curiosity.
This document is a toy guide providing recommendations for the best Christmas toys for different age groups. It includes mini reviews and recommendations for toys for girls ages 5-9, tweens ages 10-12, boys ages 5-9, and babies/toddlers. Each toy section includes pictures and descriptions of multiple toy options. The guide aims to help parents choose appropriate and popular gifts to avoid disappointing their children this Christmas.
The Art of Startup Marketing. Big Results, Small Budget.AUSOMETX
Are you struggling to find ways to market your business? Limited staff and capital can make marketing a big challenge but they also set boundaries that demand exceptional, creative, and efficient techniques. Approaches startups take to scale quickly and significantly. Techniques everyone should know.
Agility is inherent to startups, hence they often miss the scale. Well-established companies know how to leverage size with a high degree of efficiency, but are worried about their speed of innovation. To be successful, you need both. Scale and agility are essential for every competitive company.
Companies are facing many challenges like reducing development costs, shortening time-to-market and searching for new ways to differentiate within their market. When your company is looking for new disruptive products, it can be very interesting to take a look around and use a technology transfer to cope with your challenges.
## CityOS Hackathon - Events
CityOS Hackathon events are combination of conference, workshop and 48 hour hackathons. These events are focused on bringing knowledge, motivating developers and other citizen and finally developing real life energy efficiency and emission reduction solutions using IOT technology, one city at the time. We have already held two of these events with very successful results.
## CityOS Conference Day
The conference portion of the event is designed to teach attendees about existing technologies and about the best solutions already implemented around the world which could be implemented in each city where the “CityOS” event is being held.
The CityOS team ensures that the world's best speakers with practical knowledge participate as presenters during this portion of the event. Presenters will discuss topics related to solutions for energy efficiency and emissions on the city level with a focus on lessons from existing implementations from other places in the world. This is done with three goals in mind:
- Demonstrating that certain problems not only can be solved but it has already be done elsewhere
- Demonstrating how exactly these problems are solved
- Getting the wider city community involved. Beside involving developers and engineers, the key to success is to also involve architects, urbanists, ecologists, government officials, students, etc
## CityOS Workshops Day
Workshops are accelerated hands-on “Zero to Hero” style workshops that last a single day and attendees learn everything from the basics all the way to building fully functional smart city apps. Topics are focused on specific modern IOT related technologies e.g. iOS, node.js, arduino, etc.
## CityOS Hackathon Weekend
The hackathon itself lasts 48 hours - it starts on Friday evening and lasts all the way until Sunday evening. Developers, engineers, architects, UI/UX designers and others join forces to solve problems in their own cities using IOT technology.
These hackathons result in multiple fully functional reusable apps. Apps are presented on Sunday and are rewarded with project funding or seed money to implement apps on a city level.
During the hackathon, the CityOS team will provide mentors, lab, Macs for development of mobile apps, as well as food, drinks, and everything else needed for the hackathon attendees to have a very valuable and productive time.
This document provides 43 examples of splash screen designs for mobile apps. It begins with an introduction explaining what a splash screen is and its purpose. It then shows examples organized into categories like professional/clean, colorful/fun, and unique/eye-catching. Each example includes an image of the splash screen, brief description, and creator. The document concludes by encouraging the reader to learn about their target audience to design an eye-catching splash screen that sparks curiosity.
This document is a toy guide providing recommendations for the best Christmas toys for different age groups. It includes mini reviews and recommendations for toys for girls ages 5-9, tweens ages 10-12, boys ages 5-9, and babies/toddlers. Each toy section includes pictures and descriptions of multiple toy options. The guide aims to help parents choose appropriate and popular gifts to avoid disappointing their children this Christmas.
The Art of Startup Marketing. Big Results, Small Budget.AUSOMETX
Are you struggling to find ways to market your business? Limited staff and capital can make marketing a big challenge but they also set boundaries that demand exceptional, creative, and efficient techniques. Approaches startups take to scale quickly and significantly. Techniques everyone should know.
Agility is inherent to startups, hence they often miss the scale. Well-established companies know how to leverage size with a high degree of efficiency, but are worried about their speed of innovation. To be successful, you need both. Scale and agility are essential for every competitive company.
Companies are facing many challenges like reducing development costs, shortening time-to-market and searching for new ways to differentiate within their market. When your company is looking for new disruptive products, it can be very interesting to take a look around and use a technology transfer to cope with your challenges.
## CityOS Hackathon - Events
CityOS Hackathon events are combination of conference, workshop and 48 hour hackathons. These events are focused on bringing knowledge, motivating developers and other citizen and finally developing real life energy efficiency and emission reduction solutions using IOT technology, one city at the time. We have already held two of these events with very successful results.
## CityOS Conference Day
The conference portion of the event is designed to teach attendees about existing technologies and about the best solutions already implemented around the world which could be implemented in each city where the “CityOS” event is being held.
The CityOS team ensures that the world's best speakers with practical knowledge participate as presenters during this portion of the event. Presenters will discuss topics related to solutions for energy efficiency and emissions on the city level with a focus on lessons from existing implementations from other places in the world. This is done with three goals in mind:
- Demonstrating that certain problems not only can be solved but it has already be done elsewhere
- Demonstrating how exactly these problems are solved
- Getting the wider city community involved. Beside involving developers and engineers, the key to success is to also involve architects, urbanists, ecologists, government officials, students, etc
## CityOS Workshops Day
Workshops are accelerated hands-on “Zero to Hero” style workshops that last a single day and attendees learn everything from the basics all the way to building fully functional smart city apps. Topics are focused on specific modern IOT related technologies e.g. iOS, node.js, arduino, etc.
## CityOS Hackathon Weekend
The hackathon itself lasts 48 hours - it starts on Friday evening and lasts all the way until Sunday evening. Developers, engineers, architects, UI/UX designers and others join forces to solve problems in their own cities using IOT technology.
These hackathons result in multiple fully functional reusable apps. Apps are presented on Sunday and are rewarded with project funding or seed money to implement apps on a city level.
During the hackathon, the CityOS team will provide mentors, lab, Macs for development of mobile apps, as well as food, drinks, and everything else needed for the hackathon attendees to have a very valuable and productive time.
The document discusses how consumer viewing habits are shifting from traditional TV to using second screens like mobile devices simultaneously. This is changing TV advertising strategies. Several TV-related mobile apps are described that aim to extend the viewing experience and create social interactions around shows. These include network, program-specific, sports, and check-in/social apps. Zeebox is discussed as an app that integrates program guides, extended content, social features, and e-commerce for shows. Both its strengths like cross-platform support and weaknesses like a confusing interface are noted.
This document summarizes Jeremy Legaspi's webinar on using apps to enhance speech therapy. It discusses using iPads in therapy, top reasons apps are useful, basics like settings and accessibility features, searching for apps, organizing photos for app adaptation, and examples of specific apps like Tiny Tap and Question Sleuth that can be adapted. QR codes and augmented reality are also covered as ways to engage clients and link apps to activities.
The document discusses how to successfully expand an intellectual property from the digital space into a global brand. It notes that becoming a brand requires clearly identified transferable values, ubiquity, and longevity. It warns that expanding into new categories greatly increases competition and requires execution excellence. Developing brand extensions also requires driving development across new businesses that have different skills and rules. The document provides questions to consider around a property's values, characters, storyline, design uniqueness, and long-term priority to determine if it is well-suited for brand expansion. An example of the successful Cut the Rope franchise is discussed, which saw global retail partnerships and consumer products deals after starting as a popular mobile game.
The document discusses how to successfully expand an intellectual property from the digital space into a global brand. It notes that becoming a brand requires clearly identified transferable values, ubiquity, and longevity. It warns that expanding into new categories greatly increases competition and requires execution excellence. Developing brand extensions also requires driving development across new businesses that have different skills and rules. The document provides questions to consider around a property's values, characters, storyline, design uniqueness, and long-term priority to determine if it is well-suited for brand expansion. An example of the successful Cut the Rope franchise is discussed, which saw global retail partnerships and consumer products deals after starting as a popular mobile game.
Susan Daffron and James Byrd: Cash in on Your ContentBlogPaws
The document summarizes how a business started in 1994 to allow the owners to live in a rural forested area with their dogs. It outlines how they built their business online since 1996 with limited resources. It then provides examples of how the owners generate multiple passive income streams by creating and monetizing various types of content on topics they are passionate about, including books, software, templates, training courses and more. The document encourages attendees to brainstorm their own ideas for passive income generation based on what they enjoy creating and what problems they can solve for others.
Insider Strategies for Creating Successful Mobile GamesStephan Smith
This document provides an overview of strategies for successfully developing mobile games. It discusses focusing on compelling gameplay through addiction loops and monetizing through free-to-play models. Social sharing is also important to achieve virality. Data-driven development is key, using analytics to optimize retention, monetization, and user acquisition. Other tips include iterating on the game design, optimizing the app store listing, soft launching to test, and utilizing user acquisition and public relations. With the right formula of gameplay, monetization, and social features, along with polish and testing, developers can create hit mobile games.
The document discusses various aspects of social media marketing such as creating Facebook fan pages, using WordPress, search engine optimization, email marketing, and advertising on social media sites. It also provides information on domain names, servers, and different social media marketing package options available from Dr. Stan at discounted prices. The packages range in price from $89 to $899 and the discounts are available for a limited time.
The document provides an overview of various digital marketing and productivity tools for non-profits. It discusses tools from Google like Google Scholar, Google Trends, Google Alerts, and Google Ad Grants. It also covers social media management tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and ShortStack. Other sections discuss tools for content creation and sharing like Animoto, Canva, and SlideShare. Customer feedback tools mentioned include Survey Monkey, Polls Everywhere, and reviewing customer feedback on sites like Yelp.
This document provides a summary of an event focused on marketing and communication apps and tools for 2018. It includes:
- An overview of various Google tools for searching, sharing, and collaborating including Google Scholar, Google Trends, Google Alerts, Google Translate, Google Forms, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Ad Grants.
- A discussion of social media management platforms like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Crowdfire that allow scheduling and organizing social media posts.
- A review of tools for creating graphics, videos, and presentations including Canva, Animoto, Tagxedo, and Prezi.
- A mention of analytics platforms like Google Analytics and Social
The document provides an overview of Benjamin Joffe's experience with startups in Asia over the past decade. It discusses three startups - Newt Games, an early location-based social game startup from 2003; Cmune, a social gaming company he was involved with from 2008 to present day; and DayDeed, a social networking startup he founded in 2011. It highlights the challenges each company faced, such as being too innovative ahead of their time, long financing periods, and pivoting business models multiple times before finding product-market fit. The document also shares lessons learned around networking, fundraising, hiring strategies, and evaluating different startup ecosystems.
Is it possible to make a living as an indie iOS developer? Recently there has been a lot of discussion on blogs and in podcasts about the feasibility of making a living from making, selling and supporting your own iOS apps. In this presentation I highlight some points made on the topic recently and gather some tips that may improve a developer's chances of making it as an indie dev.
(Tokyo iOS Meetup, 9th August 2014)
Ryan Junee has experience starting and investing in startups. He co-founded Omnisio in 2007 which was funded by Y Combinator, and later founded Inporia in 2011 which raised $1.3M from investors. Some of his advice for startups includes focusing your idea using surveys, minimizing cycle time between iterations, talking to customers early, and pitching with a compelling problem/solution narrative and demonstration of your product. Acqui-hires, where larger companies acquire startups primarily for their engineering talent, are also discussed as a potential exit.
In this talk we provide an overview of the market for social applications on social networks of both OpenSocial e.g. MySpace and Facebook, cover revenue and business models, and share some best practices. We provide examples of successful apps, how they effectively monetize, and show how much revenue can be generated for applications of various sizes.
Make mistakes and innovate: How entrepreneurs can change the worldSebastien de Halleux
The world needs more entrepreneurs! This presentation aims to encourage, inspire and assist young entrepreneurs in transforming their passions into businesses and changing the world in the process. It includes 6 tips to launch your own startup, illustrated by lessons learned from launching Playfish and other ventures. These slides accompanied a talk given at the Founder Institute and later at the Betagroup.
Developer's Guide to Marketing and Monetization of Windows Phone AppsAlan Mendelevich
This document provides advice and case studies for developers looking to market and monetize Windows Phone apps. It discusses strategies like starting apps as free to build an audience, using various monetization methods like ads and in-app purchases, and emphasizing marketing through blog promotion, social media, videos and other online channels. Several developers are quoted who found success using these promotional techniques to earn thousands of dollars per month from their apps.
Patrick Curry has been developing mobile games since 2001. While mobile game development tools and distribution have improved dramatically, the industry has also become much more competitive. Developing mobile games is easier than ever before due to advanced game engines and tools, but it is also harder to succeed financially due to vast choice and short fad cycles. Curry focuses on rapid iterative development with small teams, outsourcing non-core work, and automating processes to stay efficient. He aims to help other developers by open-sourcing the tools and knowledge his company has gained.
1. The document discusses building and buying revenue generating websites and teaches others how to do the same through seminars and online courses.
2. It promotes a 3-day seminar that teaches case studies and provides networking opportunities to help attendees replicate successful models.
3. The goal is to show attendees a path to financial freedom by establishing authority on the internet through building websites that earn passive income.
Startups, Volcanoes, and Texting RefrigeratorsOne Mighty Roar
This document provides an overview of Sam Dunn and Zach Dunn's digital product company. Some key details include:
- The company has been in business for 4 years, has 15 employees plus 1 apprentice, and has experienced 2x growth every year with $0 in investment.
- Previous projects include buildinginternet.com, a top web development blog from 2008-2010, and yourather.com, a polling website with over 1/3 billion responses and 1 million daily views.
- Their current project is Robin, a web platform for connecting physical devices to the digital world through identity and sensors/manipulators. It aims to help software better understand the real world.
- The document emphasizes investing in
Agile design thinking and you... ux australia2011Jason Furnell
Agile is changing the way we create software. Design, and Design Thinking, is becoming pivotal to business success. The UX game is changing, and you need to step up!
Daniel Oertli (CIO, REA Group) and Jason Furnell (Experience Design consultant, ThoughtWorks) will discuss the changing role of UX in fast moving, Agile development environments, presenting case studies demonstrating the impact that a design-led approach has had at Australia’s No.1 real estate site (www.realestate.com.au).
This talk will present concepts that will challenge your thinking and introduce you to new methods that will increase your impact as a designer working on software and business strategy projects.
The Agile development methodology dramatically changes the role of designers: the build is the design. Agile concepts like ‘working software over comprehensive documentation’ and the disciplines of ‘just enough’ and ‘just in time’, mean that traditional, heavy weight specification documentation is no longer effective – or even possible.
Practitioners need to find ways to ‘power up’ their design impact. Jason and Daniel will discuss how to use collaborative design as a ‘force multiplier’, share the experience of designing in real-time, and show you how to let go, be fearless and take your team with you on a journey that builds trust, buy-in and design momentum.
They will challenge you to shift your focus; to make the transition to design thinking, and focus on design facilitation in order to increase the scale and complexity of the things you design.
The document discusses how consumer viewing habits are shifting from traditional TV to using second screens like mobile devices simultaneously. This is changing TV advertising strategies. Several TV-related mobile apps are described that aim to extend the viewing experience and create social interactions around shows. These include network, program-specific, sports, and check-in/social apps. Zeebox is discussed as an app that integrates program guides, extended content, social features, and e-commerce for shows. Both its strengths like cross-platform support and weaknesses like a confusing interface are noted.
This document summarizes Jeremy Legaspi's webinar on using apps to enhance speech therapy. It discusses using iPads in therapy, top reasons apps are useful, basics like settings and accessibility features, searching for apps, organizing photos for app adaptation, and examples of specific apps like Tiny Tap and Question Sleuth that can be adapted. QR codes and augmented reality are also covered as ways to engage clients and link apps to activities.
The document discusses how to successfully expand an intellectual property from the digital space into a global brand. It notes that becoming a brand requires clearly identified transferable values, ubiquity, and longevity. It warns that expanding into new categories greatly increases competition and requires execution excellence. Developing brand extensions also requires driving development across new businesses that have different skills and rules. The document provides questions to consider around a property's values, characters, storyline, design uniqueness, and long-term priority to determine if it is well-suited for brand expansion. An example of the successful Cut the Rope franchise is discussed, which saw global retail partnerships and consumer products deals after starting as a popular mobile game.
The document discusses how to successfully expand an intellectual property from the digital space into a global brand. It notes that becoming a brand requires clearly identified transferable values, ubiquity, and longevity. It warns that expanding into new categories greatly increases competition and requires execution excellence. Developing brand extensions also requires driving development across new businesses that have different skills and rules. The document provides questions to consider around a property's values, characters, storyline, design uniqueness, and long-term priority to determine if it is well-suited for brand expansion. An example of the successful Cut the Rope franchise is discussed, which saw global retail partnerships and consumer products deals after starting as a popular mobile game.
Susan Daffron and James Byrd: Cash in on Your ContentBlogPaws
The document summarizes how a business started in 1994 to allow the owners to live in a rural forested area with their dogs. It outlines how they built their business online since 1996 with limited resources. It then provides examples of how the owners generate multiple passive income streams by creating and monetizing various types of content on topics they are passionate about, including books, software, templates, training courses and more. The document encourages attendees to brainstorm their own ideas for passive income generation based on what they enjoy creating and what problems they can solve for others.
Insider Strategies for Creating Successful Mobile GamesStephan Smith
This document provides an overview of strategies for successfully developing mobile games. It discusses focusing on compelling gameplay through addiction loops and monetizing through free-to-play models. Social sharing is also important to achieve virality. Data-driven development is key, using analytics to optimize retention, monetization, and user acquisition. Other tips include iterating on the game design, optimizing the app store listing, soft launching to test, and utilizing user acquisition and public relations. With the right formula of gameplay, monetization, and social features, along with polish and testing, developers can create hit mobile games.
The document discusses various aspects of social media marketing such as creating Facebook fan pages, using WordPress, search engine optimization, email marketing, and advertising on social media sites. It also provides information on domain names, servers, and different social media marketing package options available from Dr. Stan at discounted prices. The packages range in price from $89 to $899 and the discounts are available for a limited time.
The document provides an overview of various digital marketing and productivity tools for non-profits. It discusses tools from Google like Google Scholar, Google Trends, Google Alerts, and Google Ad Grants. It also covers social media management tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, and ShortStack. Other sections discuss tools for content creation and sharing like Animoto, Canva, and SlideShare. Customer feedback tools mentioned include Survey Monkey, Polls Everywhere, and reviewing customer feedback on sites like Yelp.
This document provides a summary of an event focused on marketing and communication apps and tools for 2018. It includes:
- An overview of various Google tools for searching, sharing, and collaborating including Google Scholar, Google Trends, Google Alerts, Google Translate, Google Forms, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Ad Grants.
- A discussion of social media management platforms like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Crowdfire that allow scheduling and organizing social media posts.
- A review of tools for creating graphics, videos, and presentations including Canva, Animoto, Tagxedo, and Prezi.
- A mention of analytics platforms like Google Analytics and Social
The document provides an overview of Benjamin Joffe's experience with startups in Asia over the past decade. It discusses three startups - Newt Games, an early location-based social game startup from 2003; Cmune, a social gaming company he was involved with from 2008 to present day; and DayDeed, a social networking startup he founded in 2011. It highlights the challenges each company faced, such as being too innovative ahead of their time, long financing periods, and pivoting business models multiple times before finding product-market fit. The document also shares lessons learned around networking, fundraising, hiring strategies, and evaluating different startup ecosystems.
Is it possible to make a living as an indie iOS developer? Recently there has been a lot of discussion on blogs and in podcasts about the feasibility of making a living from making, selling and supporting your own iOS apps. In this presentation I highlight some points made on the topic recently and gather some tips that may improve a developer's chances of making it as an indie dev.
(Tokyo iOS Meetup, 9th August 2014)
Ryan Junee has experience starting and investing in startups. He co-founded Omnisio in 2007 which was funded by Y Combinator, and later founded Inporia in 2011 which raised $1.3M from investors. Some of his advice for startups includes focusing your idea using surveys, minimizing cycle time between iterations, talking to customers early, and pitching with a compelling problem/solution narrative and demonstration of your product. Acqui-hires, where larger companies acquire startups primarily for their engineering talent, are also discussed as a potential exit.
In this talk we provide an overview of the market for social applications on social networks of both OpenSocial e.g. MySpace and Facebook, cover revenue and business models, and share some best practices. We provide examples of successful apps, how they effectively monetize, and show how much revenue can be generated for applications of various sizes.
Make mistakes and innovate: How entrepreneurs can change the worldSebastien de Halleux
The world needs more entrepreneurs! This presentation aims to encourage, inspire and assist young entrepreneurs in transforming their passions into businesses and changing the world in the process. It includes 6 tips to launch your own startup, illustrated by lessons learned from launching Playfish and other ventures. These slides accompanied a talk given at the Founder Institute and later at the Betagroup.
Developer's Guide to Marketing and Monetization of Windows Phone AppsAlan Mendelevich
This document provides advice and case studies for developers looking to market and monetize Windows Phone apps. It discusses strategies like starting apps as free to build an audience, using various monetization methods like ads and in-app purchases, and emphasizing marketing through blog promotion, social media, videos and other online channels. Several developers are quoted who found success using these promotional techniques to earn thousands of dollars per month from their apps.
Patrick Curry has been developing mobile games since 2001. While mobile game development tools and distribution have improved dramatically, the industry has also become much more competitive. Developing mobile games is easier than ever before due to advanced game engines and tools, but it is also harder to succeed financially due to vast choice and short fad cycles. Curry focuses on rapid iterative development with small teams, outsourcing non-core work, and automating processes to stay efficient. He aims to help other developers by open-sourcing the tools and knowledge his company has gained.
1. The document discusses building and buying revenue generating websites and teaches others how to do the same through seminars and online courses.
2. It promotes a 3-day seminar that teaches case studies and provides networking opportunities to help attendees replicate successful models.
3. The goal is to show attendees a path to financial freedom by establishing authority on the internet through building websites that earn passive income.
Startups, Volcanoes, and Texting RefrigeratorsOne Mighty Roar
This document provides an overview of Sam Dunn and Zach Dunn's digital product company. Some key details include:
- The company has been in business for 4 years, has 15 employees plus 1 apprentice, and has experienced 2x growth every year with $0 in investment.
- Previous projects include buildinginternet.com, a top web development blog from 2008-2010, and yourather.com, a polling website with over 1/3 billion responses and 1 million daily views.
- Their current project is Robin, a web platform for connecting physical devices to the digital world through identity and sensors/manipulators. It aims to help software better understand the real world.
- The document emphasizes investing in
Agile design thinking and you... ux australia2011Jason Furnell
Agile is changing the way we create software. Design, and Design Thinking, is becoming pivotal to business success. The UX game is changing, and you need to step up!
Daniel Oertli (CIO, REA Group) and Jason Furnell (Experience Design consultant, ThoughtWorks) will discuss the changing role of UX in fast moving, Agile development environments, presenting case studies demonstrating the impact that a design-led approach has had at Australia’s No.1 real estate site (www.realestate.com.au).
This talk will present concepts that will challenge your thinking and introduce you to new methods that will increase your impact as a designer working on software and business strategy projects.
The Agile development methodology dramatically changes the role of designers: the build is the design. Agile concepts like ‘working software over comprehensive documentation’ and the disciplines of ‘just enough’ and ‘just in time’, mean that traditional, heavy weight specification documentation is no longer effective – or even possible.
Practitioners need to find ways to ‘power up’ their design impact. Jason and Daniel will discuss how to use collaborative design as a ‘force multiplier’, share the experience of designing in real-time, and show you how to let go, be fearless and take your team with you on a journey that builds trust, buy-in and design momentum.
They will challenge you to shift your focus; to make the transition to design thinking, and focus on design facilitation in order to increase the scale and complexity of the things you design.
1. STARTUP
THINGS I WISH I KNEW
THINGS I WISH I KNEW
FROM ZERO TO HERO IN 15 MINUTES
Saturday, November 17, 12
2. ACTION BEATS THEORY
EVERY TIME
“solve a real problem”
“satisfy real people’s needs”
“deliver measurable results”
“know your target market”
“differentiate from competition”
What do all these phrases REALLY mean
and what can I SPECIFICALLY do?
Saturday, November 17, 12
3. IDEA
SHARPENING EXERCISE (1 TO 10) A.K.A. EXTREME PIVOTING
How well does your idea turn... Does your idea:
• hard into easy or slow into fast (twitter.com) • have the ability to grow quickly
• doubt into trust (yelp.com) • match your skills and passion
• boring into fun (facebook.com) • make you proud
• impossible into possible (ebay.com) • make you want to use it yourself
• dispensable into indispensable (toilet paper • have so much potential it scares you
story) (amazon.com)
Saturday, November 17, 12
4. A-TEAM
ONLY THE BEST
Cover the basics first
• Skills that a startup team must have: technology, designer and business
Recruit your weaknesses
• find absolutely the BEST people for the job that are amazing in things you don’t know
anything about
Start right
• A teams will attract A players
• B team will attract C and D quality
Saturday, November 17, 12
5. SAY HI TO JANE
#1 INSIGHT TOOL TO HELP YOUR MARKETING, MESSAGING, PRODUCT
Create your customer avatar story
Their name, age, gender, relationship status, family. Where do they live, work, socialize. Secrets, dreams and desires...
• “Step into her shoes” and define pains and
JANE
problems related to your specific solution
Jane is a single 28-year-old
lawyer who lives in downtown • Now you can ask any question you need
Sarajevo. She earns 1500 KM the answer to:
per month and lives with the
Price:
help of a credit card and,
occasionally, her parents. She
How much is that worth to Jane?
enjoys going out to clubs and Market size:
concerts. She cooks for her
How many Janes are out there and will use my
friends and hosts mini-parties whenever she can. She product?
is fashion-conscious and easily spends a quarter of
her paycheck on clothing and beauty products. She is Product design:
obsessed with Facebook and Pinterest. She dreams of How would Jane react to this feature? What
a trip to ..... you get the picture. can I add or remove to keep her engaged....
Saturday, November 17, 12
6. EVERY $1000
HOW TO MAKE MONEY
WEB Mobile Apps
Ads (adsense, admeld, etc) App sales
• $ .50 eCPM = 2 million impressions • @ $.99 = 1000 sales
Selling digital goods (ebooks, access to tutorial videos) In-app purchases - similar to Facebook
• @ $5 = 200 sales Magazine subscriptions - hard to penetrate
Monthly Subscriptions (quality content = video) • @ $2.99 = 300 sales
• $25 = 40 subscribers In-app ads (a growing trend)
• e.g. https://teamtreehouse.com • $1.64 eCPM iOS
SaaS (software as a service) • $.88 eCPM Android
• $100+ = <10
• e.g. http://seomoz.org Make your ads meaningful
Lifetime access • internal mobile facebook $9.86 eCPM
• http://rouxbe.com/ (pronounced ruby) • Sponsorships (requires sales people or self-serving)
• @ $399 = 2.5 customers $1000+ - for one sale
Facebook Web Apps
Facebook game tokens
• @$5 to save 1 hour of game play - 200 players =
200,000 players (one in 1000 will pay)
Ads - similar to web
Saturday, November 17, 12
7. BRAVE NEW WORLD
TO UNDERSTAND
Kick-start site with external data - APIs Motivate using gamification
for social graph, login, geo data, etc.
use game principals on non-game
e.g. foursquare.com - launched on top of software
citysearch.com data (citysearch who?)
Crowd-source curation of content
Mix mobile and user location (GPS data) to stay up to date & unique
to give a whole new life to existing data
e.g. yelp.com, twitter, wikipedia, etc
e.g. yelp.com’s “what’s nearby” search
Deeply understand live social streams
stream is sharing, not log (Facebook vs
LinkedIn)
Saturday, November 17, 12
8. MONEY TO START
PRODUCT BEFORE COMPANY, NOT OTHER WAY AROUND
Web and Facebook Apps
• Servers AWS free tier http://aws.amazon.com/free/
• Use open source http://github.com
iPhone and iPad
• XCode: https://developer.apple.com/xcode/
• iOS Developer program: $99 https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/
Android
• One time $25 fee:
• Android SDK free: http://developer.android.com/sdk/
Saturday, November 17, 12
9. MEASURING SUCCESS
NUMBERS ARE YOUR FRIENDS
Web and Facebook Apps
• daily users on weekly basis
• Google Analytics & Facebook Insights
Mobile
• Daily downloads and in-app purchases
Cash-flow
• weekly estimates, monthly deep-check
• Paypal with Mint or Xero
Saturday, November 17, 12
10. STARTUP = GROWTH
A STARTUP IS A COMPANY DESIGNED TO GROW FAST
Three phases of growth
• Slow initial period - figuring things out
• Rapid growth - made something lots of people want and know
how to reach those people
• Big company slow growth - bumping against the limits of the
market
Example of a company making $1000/month Weekly Yearly
• 1% a week will 4 years later be making $7900 1% 1.7 x
2% 2.8 x
• 5% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a
month 5% 12.6 x
7% 33.7 x
• Do you dare to do the math for 10% weekly growth???
10% 142 x
Saturday, November 17, 12
11. INVESTMENT
BE THE ONE THAT MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN AWAY
Take investment as late as possible
• You will optimize your cash-flow early and know exactly
how to smartly invest money once you do have it
• You will have easier time finding investor and have upper
hand in negotiation
Look for mentors and advisors that can help
beyond money
Validation of your business model
• Users’ growth or Cash-flow projections
• Executive team (success track means less risk)
• Expecting 10x return on investment
When it comes to choosing between higher
valuation and keeping control always, always, always
keep as much of control of the company as possible
Don’t blow the money - it is not yours
Saturday, November 17, 12
12. SET UP A CLOUD
COMPANY
Google apps (free tier) for mail
http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/
Paypal for bank
http://paypal.com/
Mailing services for virtual address
http://www.earthclassmail.com/
Support: Zendesk and Twitter
http://www.zendesk.com/
http://twitter.com/
Saturday, November 17, 12
13. LEARNING
THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE STILL FREE
Stanford Ecorner: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/
Startup school: http://startupschool.org/2012/
Google Tech talks: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks
• Gamification: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1gNVeaE4g
iTunes U: http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/
• iPhone Stanford Classes: http://itunes.stanford.edu/
Rework: http://37signals.com/rework
Virtual goods: http://www.dubitplatform.com/blog/2010/12/31/design-a-social-game-economy-how-
much-should-a-virtual-t-shi.html/
Google everything else yourself
Saturday, November 17, 12