How to Market Your Startup for Maximum Discoverability
If you figured acquiring loyal users for your app would be cheap, brace yourself for a reality check. As of December 2016, user acquisition costs for iPhone app developers have soared to over four dollars — twice as much as the previous year. The situation isn’t much rosier for San Francisco Android app developers, with […]
Eat, Sleep, Code, Recharge: Downtime Matters for Developers
The iPhone app development community, more so than other industries, places an extremely high value on efficiency and commitment to the craft. The ideal coder spends virtually every waking moment working through difficult engineering challenges and building digital products. The ideal mobile app coder doesn’t waste time cooking — instead, they drink soylent. They don’t waste […]
The next Unicorn Sharing Economy App Will Sell By-Products
By-products are a huge problem in the global economy, on both the large and small scale. Six hot dogs in a package and eight buns in a bag? Chances are the leftovers get wasted. A plane crosses the Atlantic with ten empty seats? You can practically smell the money burning. Basecamp co-founder Jason Fried wrote […]
Don’t Start with the Sales Funnel: Start with the Value
“Value-added marketing” is a big buzzword in the mobile app development community these days. The concept of placing end-user value above all else is buzz-worthy for good reason: in the post-advertising mobile ecosystem, generating sales has less to do with exposure and more to do with gaining trust than ever before. …And the best way […]
The Importance of Scalability in Minimum Viable Products
Validating a business model is more important than ever for startups in today’s mobile app marketplace. Over a thousand apps are added to the Apple App Store alone every day, meaning stiff competition for even the most cutting-edge concepts. iPhone app developers have to remain flexible and nimble as they build out a minimum viable […]
4 Lessons Startups Can Learn from Small Businesses
According to CB Insights, only 1.28% of startups become unicorns. Does that make the other 98.72% failures? Hardly. In startup culture — and even more so in venture capital culture — there’s a tendency to overlook the value of thinking small. While it’s true that a business model that can’t scale to a billion dollar business […]
Bootstrapping vs Crowdfunding vs Venture Capital Firms
Virtually all businesses require some form of investment to get off the ground. It’s certainly true for iPhone app developers — although depending on the type of startup, the financial figure required can be anywhere from a few thousand to a few million. In this post we’ll walk through the three most common types of […]
What If Someone Steals My Great App Idea?
Startup founders are protective of their ideas, and for good reason. While it’s true that “execution is everything” in the mobile app development industry, execution can’t happen without a good idea to base it on. With that in mind, pitching and team building can become an exercise in paranoia for founders with particularly innovative ideas. […]
How Much Equity Should Early Startup Team Members Get?
In a particularly emotional segment of the popular podcast Startup by Alex Blumberg, two co-founders discuss how much equity each party “deserves” based on their skills and contribution to the company — and the huge disparity in what each considers fair almost tears the team apart. The scene is particularly powerful because, rather than discussing […]
Design Vs. Time to Market for Mobile App Developers
If startup culture had a mantra, it would probably be “always be shipping.” Market validation is key to fast-moving industries like iPhone app development, and startups that enter the market early with a cutting-edge idea often gain critical user traction — even if the initial launch is less than polished. On the flip side, the […]