How Peter Thiel’s Political Stance Affects Startups
Ellen Pao of Project Include took to Medium this week to explain why they were breaking off ties with prominent startup accelerator Y Combinator. The reason, in short: Peter Thiel’s increasingly unpredictable endorsements and behavior. While Thiel has drawn criticism from the tech community before thanks to his support of floating cities, morality-bending age extension […]
Apple Backpedals on Self-Driving Car Operations
According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple is scaling back their plan to manufacture smart cars top-to-bottom similar to Tesla. Instead, the market-leading tech company and mobile app platform will focus on the software business they’re more known for, potentially building out software systems to be incorporated into vehicles from other manufacturers. The main source […]
Samsung Note 7, GoPro Hero 4: The Risk of Hardware Startups
Hardware startups are in a unique position. On the one hand, hardware products are difficult for other small-to-medium competitors to imitate quickly due to the high overhead and engineering considerations, leading to big growth spurts for innovative companies like GoPro, Fitbit, and Pebble. On the other hand, as any iOS app developer will tell you, […]
Snapchat Prepares for IPO, Drawing Developer Speculation
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal (not to mention the tech rumor mill), SnapChat is starting to close in on an IPO for as early as this coming March. It’s been a great year for tech IPOs, so app developers and investors are cautiously optimistic that the messaging and social media Unicorn […]
San Francisco Startup Takes On Wi-Fi Moochers
Coffeeshops are a favorite hangout for app developers and tech workers. They also have a serious problem: Wi-Fi moochers. You know the type — buying a small coffee and then taking up two tables and three outlets for hours on end of quality Internet hangout time. Honestly, most of us have been that obnoxious customer […]
Getting Your App Idea off the Ground: Zero to Critical Mass
Getting your app idea off the ground is similar to getting a rocket into space. Both are risky. Both take an enormous amount of fuel to reach their goal. And unfortunately, both crash and burn without careful planning. When startup founders look up and see big brands like Instagram and Facebook floating effortlessly across the […]
App Store Sees 106% Growth as iPhone 7 Launches
This has been a huge week for iPhone app developers. First, thanks to an unintended (but much appreciated) social media gaffe, Apple users all over the world got a first look at promotional materials for the new iPhone 7 — and the first look doesn’t disappoint. Second, in a press event to support the iPhone […]
The “API Economy” Isn’t a Fad, But It Won’t Eat Backend Tech
“Software is eating the world,” goes the infamous quip from startup investor Marc Andreessen. If that’s true, then APIs are part of a balanced diet for mobile app developers. Sure, the “API trend” that promised developers the ability to patch together complex software with APIs alone never really came to pass, but cloud APIs have […]
MedTech and Diversity Themes at Y Combinator S16 Demo Day 1
Y Combinator is lifting the curtain on this year’s batch of disruptive mobile startups. While the products are diverse and often unexpected, a few themes shine through: MedTech and diversity. Seeing health-focussed startups in significant numbers is encouraging, as mobile app developers have been trying to break into the medical industry for years with limited […]
Founder Problems: Mobile Advertising Is Fundamentally Broken
Have you surfed the web on your iPhone or Android without an ad blocker lately? I certainly hope not — it’s a dark, cluttered place. For those not using ad blockers, driving down the Internet superhighway feels more like hitchhiking on a shady dirt road. iPhone app developers haven’t had to deal with this problem […]