From Impossible To Inevitable (e.g. $1m to $100m)

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is a show where we get experts who help us with our businesses - it could be app businesses, mobile businesses, whatever it is, but it's a wonderful world and we learn from the guests who we get on because they help us with our own revenue, with our own startups. I've got a great guest here; he is basically the author of Predictable Revenue, which is a book that took an outbound process from Salesforce - you know Salesforce, you would have heard of them - and this process that they helped achieve added another hundred million dollars to the revenue, so it's definitely a book worth reading. Also, there's a new book from this author, Aaron Ross, and the book is called From Impossible to Inevitable, which we're going to touch on today. So Aaron Ross, welcome to The App Guy Podcast!

Aaron: Hi Paul, happy to be here.

Paul: First of all, let's talk about your new book that's coming out, because you are going to help a lot of app entrepreneurs, people that are running their own businesses. What is From Impossible to Inevitable all about?

Aaron: Right, and I think it's out in the United States, but I heard March 9th is when it's more publicly available in the UK.

Paul: Actually, Aaron, this is probably going to go live after or around about that date, so that could be really good timing

Aaron: Perfect. Well, the new book is called From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue. It's really a book that, between myself and my co-author, Jason Lemkin - he is a guy who started a company called EchoSign, and he grew  it from zero to more than a hundred million dollars, as well as selling it to Adobe - so all these lessons learned around what does it take for companies to speed up how fast they grow, but even more importantly, what are all those mistakes that everybody makes time and time and time again, and how to avoid those.

Paul: So your co-author then actually created a company called EchoSign and sold that to Adobe for one hundred million dollars did you say?

Aaron: Yeah, well he grew it to more than a hundred million in revenue and he sold it to Adobe for more than nine figures; it's not a public amount, but it's...

Paul: So what is he doing? Why is he not on a beach?

Aaron: He is a machine. He's created something called SaaStr, it's basically the world's biggest community of SaaS (Software as a Service) companies on the planet, it's really growing fast. So now he does these huge conferences in the Bay Area called SaaStr Annuals, where thousands of the top B2B SaaS entrepreneurs come. They actually just finished, it's usually like every February. It's amazing, it's like the single biggest concentration of tech entrepreneurs that are I guess on the leading edge of [unintelligible 00:04:03] how to grow things.

Paul: You know Aaron, this is what I love about this show, is that you start to unravel what drives people, and a lot of people when coming into entrepreneurship feel it's about the money, but clearly sometimes it's not; it's about your legacy, it's about making a change in the world. Do you have any thoughts on why it is that people run businesses, try to sell them on - is it about the money or is it about something bigger?

Aaron: Well, it's both. It's partly about the money, and then if you don't need money then it's probably about status; it's also probably about having something to do. If you're a natural entrepreneur, usually sitting on a beach for more than... You can do that for a little bit, but you're just getting antsy and you want to be doing something. Part of it is giving back, and a lot of what drives Jason, for example, and probably myself, you see the same mistakes, whether it's the app world or the B2B world - people make the same mistakes, over and over and over. And we're both - I don't know exactly how old he is, let's call it 40-45, and we've been around long enough to see again the new generation of younger entrepreneurs who are in their twenties or in their thirties making the same mistakes we'd made once or twice. Part of it actually for me is that we get the same questions over and over again, and we're like "Why don't we put these into a book?" so people can just read the book, avoid these landmines. I guarantee this will be a million-dollar book for many people, because it will save them so much money, time and heartache.

Paul: What are the common mistakes? One of the things that we try to help on this show is we try to prevent entrepreneurs from losing a lot of money, in fact, losing everything. Because you know, in the app business people get very excited, they start to think of...

Aaron: Oh yeah, dreaming of what if a million people bought this and...

Paul: Exactly, yes.

Aaron: Yes, so there's seven parts to the new book. The new book is really for anyone if you already have something - you may not be making money with it, but if you've got something and you're trying to figure how to make money, or how to make more money, it's a good fit. A bit different than my prior book, Predictable Revenue, which is really more of a sales book. This book is a growth book, and there are seven parts. The first part is really going to be the most important part for almost everybody listening, and anyone who does apps. The first part - and each part - has a painful truth, and the first one is "You're not ready to grow." You might be struggling to grow [unintelligible 00:06:18] because you're not ready, and you're not going to be able to grow faster until you nail a niche. That's where you start. I think this is the most common problem we see across so many companies, especially early, but also big companies like SAP and Oracle. It's about nailing a niche, it's focusing on the specific kind of customer who most needs what you've got, avoiding the nice-to-haves, like where are your need-to-have, what do they care about and how much is it worth to them, why would they pay money to you. And that's trickier than people realize.

Paul: You see, on this show we've had a lot of entrepreneurs come on, and we've had examples of something blowing up really quickly. For example, there was a BuzzFeed article last year that suddenly got 60 million posts, we've had apps that have gone and got a hundred million downloads within the space of a few months, and clearly the whole business has blown up, but what do you mean by "You are not ready to grow"? I mean, if anyone is in that situation where they are getting rapid expansion, lots of interest in their app business for example, what sort of lessons should we be learning from that kind of thing where you're not ready for this?

Aaron: Well look, most of the people, 99.9% of the people who listen won't have that problem, of "How do we keep up with this huge growth?" So let's start there. This is part one. Part two would be for the people who get a ton of growth and they're either like "How do we keep it up?" or "How do we make money?" But again, for the 999 people out of a thousand who don't have this problem of "Oh, I have so many people banging down my servers are crashing", people struggle with like "I got this app. I've got it." They launch it and there's crickets. They get ten downloads, or a hundred downloads, or a thousand downloads, rather than the 50,000 or a million that they need to have some kind of viable model. You know, a lot of the challenge around entrepreneurs and getting a new thing off the ground - and this is true whether it's a new app, whether it's a new market, because in UK it could be different than US, or whether it's a new kind of lead generation program - we find entrepreneurs vastly underestimate the time and effort and iteration it takes to get it right, to get it to the point where the customers not only are interested in it, but they download it, they use it and they love it. In the software world, it usually takes two or three years - in B2B software - to go from starting a company, to getting it up and running, to getting customers and to get the product to the point where you're like "Yes, there's a viable business here, and we can see a path to growing in a way where it's not a flash in the pan." It takes way longer, and it's way harder than people expect.

Paul: In this show we really do try to take an onion and unravel it, so that we get to the genuine truth, because there's so much misinformation out there for people listening, entrepreneurs. We've had people on this show who have quit corporate jobs to go and follow a dream, and it's just so nice to hear you talk about a two to three-year time period at the very minimum for something to perhaps work.

Aaron: Yes, and especially if you're a first-time app person, you're selling something in the consumer space, which is a little bit more possible big hit, but also... It's like you either get a zero or something, it's more risk/reward, whereas in the business-to-business space you can follow more of a playbook or a template. You might not have the hundred million download, but you're not going to have the zero either. So there's these different things to consider. But with first-time entrepreneurs, they have the dream like "Wow, I've built this app, people are gonna love it" and a year later they quit, because "Oh my god, I didn't have enough savings." They've lost faith in themselves because they've gone through so many iterations and it's still not clicking the way they think it should, or people still aren't paying more than a dollar, or paying anything. They don't realize if they just keep going for another year or two - I'm not saying it's easy... Sometimes you just have to do the time. Actually that's a whole other chapter, how it takes years longer than you want, it's the painful truth number five.

Paul: Aaron, I just wanted to switch gears slightly and talk about you, because on this show we have so many inspirational guests, and people listening to the guests have changed their own life because of what they hear, and you're someone who's become an author, you've got a successful career. First of all, is it worth being an entrepreneur, in your mind? Is it a lifestyle that is for everyone?

Aaron: It's for sure not for everybody, just like being a parent is not for everybody. I associate these two a lot, because over the last few years I grew my business and my income by 10-11 times, but I also grew my family. I was single without kids five years ago and now we have 12 kids, but in both cases... Having a business - it's worth the work, but it's hard to deal with the uncertainty, it's hard to deal sometimes with the financial uncertainty, or it might be the self-confidence, you're putting your heart out there in a product or in a post or in an idea, and having people reject it time and time again. But if you can get through that and you can get to the other side, when it starts to click and starts to work the rewards can be way worth it. So it's not for everybody, not everyone should be an entrepreneur; some people should work for entrepreneurs. Not everyone should be a parent, some people should have friends who are parents, they can visit, but for me both having lots of kids and a growing business have been the best parts of my life, really.

Paul: Let me just make sure I understood right - you've got 12 kids, you said?

Aaron: Yes, not all... Through mixed, you know...

Paul: Alright, I was just trying to do the math, I didn't think it was... Within five years. Unless you're one of these sheiks that can marry multiple times.

Aaron: Not a bad idea. I do have one wife, and I really do believe she is... You can call it cheesy or not, but she's the kind of person you're excited to grow old with, and we've adopted eight. So eight out of twelve are adopted, and a couple from a prior marriage, a little bit of everything. We're a very diverse family.

Paul: Wonderful. We're kind of getting on the family theme, but is it important - because sometimes we do this for our families, a lot of entrepreneurs. In fact, only just recently I was speaking to someone who's quit to start a company and he's got a family, he's just had a newborn, but it does change you, doesn't it? Because you want to leave a legacy for your kids, you want to make sure they're okay and they have something, is that right?

Aaron: Not yet a legacy, that doesn't drive me personally, but I will say - and I write about this in the book - in order to create a successful business, in order to make a lot more money that you're making now, and to go through the ups and downs... In fact, the year or years of hell sometimes, to do the time, you have to find a source of motivation that will keep you going. Because when the going gets tough, and if you quit... It's okay to take a break, but at some point you just have to push through, and for me having a big family and adding to it has been sort of this irreversible motivation where I can't afford... Like I have to be successful. That has been the motivation which has driven to not just... It's like the family came first - by having a growing family, that forced me to make more money. I didn't have any other option.

Paul: Right, okay. So what I'm learning from you is like having a motivation, something that really drives you to push through those times where you feel like you want to quit.

Aaron: Yeah, and you're tired. One thing I've learned is that energy and passion and luxuries. And time. Energy, passion, and time are luxuries. Especially the first year, I've had two baby babies, and we'll have a third, and then we're adopting a baby, and my wife's not here - she's in Florida with a newborn baby and she's been there for like three weeks, I guarantee that if you have to do something, and I talk on it in the book and I share some tips on how this works, but I rarely have time for extra things like writing a book, going from zero to twelve... I've written like three books in the last few years, grew a business 10-11 times... I don't have a lot of time, I rarely have energy. Frankly, I used to have a passion for writing, but because I'm always tired - emotionally, physically, mentally - I only write by deadline. So I think that what we think of, like you have to find your passion - that's all true, but you also can't wait. Sometimes you find your passion by doing something that you know is important even when you don't want to do it.

Paul: I sort of remember the time when I quit my successful career and started a new... You do have this boundless energy and boundless passion.

Aaron: Yes, it lasts for a few weeks, or months.

Paul: For me it was quite a long time, but then it starts to fade, because it's almost like you're getting over the honeymoon period of your switch.

Aaron: It is, it's exactly like that.

Paul: This is great, I'm learning so much.

Aaron: You're confronted with the reality of... Look, you've done almost 500 episodes here, with your podcast?

Paul: Yes, that's right.

Aaron: I would be shocked if the podcasts now are... I'm sure they can be super interesting, but I'd be shocked if there's the same level of excitement like the first 5, 10 or 20. Again, this is sort related to what a lot of - if any listeners, if they have employees, which is a whole different story; a lot of you don't, but for those that do, and you have these new, especially younger employees that come in, they're super-excited, and then after three months they're bored and they want a promotion. Something in the book I talk about - this might be you, too - a company or your job, whether it's your job or yourself, or whether you have an employee - the company is not your mom or your daddy. Half of the responsibility is for the company to provide a great environment and some opportunities for employees, but a lot of employees - and this is a lot of people - start saying "Oh, I'm getting bored and frustrated, it's all my job's fault, it's my company's fault." They don't realize that they have to take half the responsibility of figuring out what keeps them motivated, what keeps them interested. It's not the job. It's half the job, and it's half them. They're like "I'm bored, I'm not learning. It's my company's fault." No, it's not! Look at yourself!

Paul: But isn't that the case where sometimes it's hard to try to inspire entrepreneurialism in employees. I know that when I first quit my career and set up my first company I had to close it after a year, which was quite painful, but I just couldn't believe that these people that I was employing were not acting like they were owners of the company.

Aaron: Well, that's because they weren't owners. It's that simple. Part six of the new book - your employees don't act like owners because they're renting, not owning their jobs. Think about it this way: when you rent a car versus you own your own car, how do you treat it? Or you rent an apartment versus buy a house. Or if you're babysitting someone else's kids versus if they're your own kids, what's the difference? The experience for employees almost generally is that they rent their jobs, they're sort of like biding their time; they don't have that emotional ownership that an owner or an executive does. It is hard, there's ways you can work with that, but that's the reality.

Paul: It is. Now, you're famous for building this process and the sales team for Salesforce that added so much revenue, over a hundred million dollars. What could we learn from you from that episode? I mean, I guess it's a whole book we need to read to predict  revenue, but are there are any big takeaways from what you've learned from doing that?

Aaron: Yes, I can summarize it. And if you're wondering which book to start with, for sure it's From Impossible to Inevitable, because I sort of summarize updates and key things from Predictable Revenue, but some of the lessons from the hundred million (now it's way more than a hundred million) at Salesforce, it's the idea that your product and your sales people or sales process aren't what determines your growth. The growth is determined by your lead generation. Having a great product might be related to generating some leads, but it's only related. Marketing can be related, prospecting, word of mouth... And there's three types of ways to generate leads for your business: word of mouth, marketing and prospecting. Those can be either for finding customers directly or for channel partners. So it's not your product or people that generate growth, it's lead generation - that's one. Also, if you have a sales team, or people who sell - really any kind of team that interacts with customers - you need to specialize them. So in sales, it would be prospectors who prospect. Again, this is true if you have to sell apps, or it's just related to probably some kind of enterprise program. Prospectors who prospect, closers who close, other junior reps who respond to inbound leads and different kinds of post-sales roles. So anytime you have a team of people who are juggling too many things - it could be customer support, customer success, sales - look at how can you divide and conquer better to create more types of jobs, so people can do fewer thing better. That's a core, core idea. In fact, if you do have a team of people who sell, that's the number one thing that will transform everything, specializing. And the third, a lot of the book was around just the techniques of creating an outbound prospecting system and systematizing it, so it's more like a manufacturing assembly line and it doesn't need cold calls, like someone who's just sitting there and calling all day. Those are some of the highlights from Predictable Revenue. But ultimately, doing outbound prospecting, growing a business, that's just not gonna work, or work very well, unless you first nail the niche. So that's where you begin - nail the niche. Usually, you have to get to like a million or two in revenue before you feel like "Okay, we've got this. It's not just an app that people like, but we're actually making money from it. Now how do we grow?"

Paul: I love this, Aaron, because what you're doing is reminding me of actually the things I learned when I did have a career in finance, and we raised about 20 billion in under-management funds in the UK. Really the selling point for what we were doing was the specialization with the fund managers and the analysts. They were all specializing into different industries, and in fact many of them would spend 20-30 years getting to know an industry. That's kind of what I am learning from you, based on my own experience as well. That's really useful. Aaron, there's one more question here from a listener: what is the single biggest thing we could be doing as a startup? I know that's a very broad question, but what is the single biggest thing we could do to succeed as a startup?

Aaron: Probably make sure you're talking to your customers enough. Get off of e-mail, get off of chat, especially go visit them in person. If it's like a business type, or a consumer type, go to where they are and watch them and talk to them while they do whatever they do. If you have to go get on a plane, get on a plane. If you have to get in a car, or in an uber, or on a bike... Get out of the office, get out from behind your computer and go watch them. People love to sit and whiteboard, strategize on PowerPoint or some brainstorming app... Go interact in person with your targets, your customers or your prospects. Even the CEO, or the executives - get out of the damn office. Or at least bring them to your office, whatever, but in-person. Turn off Instagram, put down your Snapchat, whatever, and go look at them in the eye and talk to them, get coffee together.

[Commercial break]

Paul: Aaron, there's one more thing we need to do before we say goodbye to you. This is a show about apps; now, you're a successful author, you've done a lot of things, we'd love to know what's on your phone. If you have one or two apps, and feel free to pick up your phone now and have a look at it, are there any apps that you could recommend to us that would be good finds?

Aaron: You know, I'm probably like the least... I'm a little bit of a chromogen; when I was younger I loved technology and now I feel like all these apps are distracting from [unintelligible 00:24:27] But if I had a favorite... It's funny, I have three apps for e-mail, that I use in different ways. I have a bunch of kid apps, but I think for me, if I had to pick an app that I would recommend... Funny enough, the one... I've got one for watching my baby. There's this cool game - I actually haven't found a really good game for a long time, I'm sort of jaded that way, but it's called Letter. You have to spot a letter in a bunch of other letters. My daughter showed it to me, I was like "Wow, that's cool."

Paul: What's the one with watching your baby? That sounds interesting.

Aaron: I just got a Nest Cam. So they set up a cam and then put an app on my phone, in case she's asleep and I need to - especially with mom gone... If I can even get her to sleep. So we have a one and a half year old that I'm talking about. We actually have three babies here. We use a Nest Cam. Funny enough, I've got Gmail Inbox for one sole purpose and Gmail the app for another, and Apple Mail, I use it in different ways. Sorry, I'm not that interesting that way.

Paul: Well, you're reminding me of an app creator who was creating an app for babies, I think it was BabySleep, and I did one several years ago now called Newborn Baby Sleep, which plays the sounds of the womb on your phone.

Aaron: Actually with kids I got Circle, MyCircle might be the site, but it's a neat way to integrate with your Wi-Fi to give you a little bit more control over kids with what time their Wi-Fi can turn on and off, what they can see, and try to put some boundaries around electronics use at home. That was neat.

Paul: That is very cool. I was driving to school the other day with my kids and they're constantly like "Dad, we can't connect to the Wi-Fi, we can't connect to your phone", it was a personal hot-spot. It seems to be their big challenge and they're only six.

Aaron: Yes, now I try to rein them in. I am talking to audience, I've never focused on it, but a great app for From Impossible to Predictable Revenue, but if there's someone there who has a great idea for something they can build for predictable revenue, or from impossible, I'm totally open to ideas.

Paul: Let me mention this finally, one of the big things I've learned from this show is to actually launch an app with a great audience, and authors always have terrific audiences, but many authors don't have an app, and I was only speaking to a best-selling author last week and she wanted to sell this app, and I think she's been doing quite well. So if anyone can build an app for you, and could do some kind of deal with you, then it's much better doing it like that rather than trying to do something on their own.

Aaron: Yes, I try to leverage people with audiences, because it's hard to build your own audience.

Paul: But it's also hard to build your own app if you're an author, and you've obviously been used to...

Aaron: Yes, I'm focused on other... I'm a content person. We have a software company and I do consulting, but the idea of apps... You know, I have enough to focus on. One of the ways I've done, I've written multiple books, and lots of kids and businesses, is just do a few things really, really well at a time, and not to scatter myself over too many projects. There probably could be a great app for me at some point, with the right partner who comes along who I can really rely on and they can do that. Partnerships work really well for me.

Paul: Wow, let's wrap on that, that sounds great. Actually just on that, how can people best reach out to you and connect?

Aaron: fromimpossible.com is the best, it's about the new book with a free sample. You go there, or predictablerevenue.com. I'm easy to find, but fromimpossible.com is where I would start. I think that book is going to be life-changing for many of you, and predictablerevenue.com is for my day-to-day business stuff.

Paul: Terrific. Aaron, thanks very much. Just to remind everyone as well, you can go to theappguy.co - it's episode 434 - where there will be links to Aaron and those books. Terrific. Aaron, thanks for coming on this show and making it such a great show. We've got more energy on this one than we have the last 433, I can assure you.

Aaron: Fantastic.

Paul: You're such an inspiration personally, from like a family perspective, and an author, and all the great content you're putting out, so thanks very much for being a guest on the show.

Aaron: Well, I would say, a lot of people will [unintelligible 00:28:41] adoption, as a lot of people and I too used to be afraid of adoption. A lot of people wanted to, but they're like "You know, I talked to my spouse, I don't know..." You know, having kids, and adopting kids - and we haven't adopted many babies, but teenagers - it's been an amazing way to expand the family, it's been fantastic for the kids we already had. That's where a lot of the joy has been, all our kids and family time. And I really enjoy what I do, but joy-joy, the love-love, comes from the family. So [unintelligible 00:29:13] but there's a lot of kids out there who don't have parents, and that's just a crime.

Paul: Well, I do a hobby podcast called theentrepreneur.podcast Aaron, and it is for those reasons - what we do - because it gives us the time to have a family and spend it with our kids, so I'm all on board with what you're saying.

Aaron: Yes. Actually, one thing I struggled with is at work, the more I worked to support the family, feeling guilty about not being with the family, but I think what really helped me was accepting the fact that when I'm working to make money for the family, that is family time. It's something that's important, that has to happen to support the family.

Paul: Yes, that's a good way of thinking about it. Aaron, great, thanks for coming on!

Aaron: Thank you, Paul. Thank you, everyone.

I’ve Automated My Intro’s And Saved Hours

The App Guy Podcast is the show where we interview entrepreneurs that inspire us. On another episode of The App Guy Podcast, Paul Kemp talks with Seth Gold, the founder & CEO of Entro -someone whose company solves a genuine problem that Paul himself had with his business and network.

The interview begins with the essentials of what Entro is and what problem it solves.
Seth, the founder and CEO of Entro, starts the interview with a backstory of how he came up with the idea of Entro. He used to be in a business development/sales role and had to do a fair bit of cold-calling, which we all know is one the hardest things on the planet. It started with a realization that he could make a pretty good introduction for his friend, Adam. But after the introduction, not only does Adam thank him he sends three introductions back. These three introductions lead Seth directly to the decision makers and give him a more trusted image.
“It was a complete 180.”
After this turning moment he decides that he needs to start getting and giving as MANY introductions as possible in order to create value for his network. A similar scenario happens again where he made a perfect introduction for a friend. The thank yous kept pouring in!
“I just had the dopamine drop.”

He vowed he would no longer be doing cold calls.
The main goal for this entrepreneur was to figure out who the best people were in his network to keep connecting and who to stop connecting. That’s when Entro was born. Entro sits right in your Gmail or Chrome browser.
“We found out that the two biggest pain points people had were the double opt-in introduction, so the time waste of going back and forth,
“Hey Jim, would you like to meet Lia?”
“Hey Lia, would you like to meet Jim?”
and then sending the introduction. It’s a three-step process, asking everyone if they’d like to meet. Someone could be on vacation, someone could just be super-busy, etc., so trying to minimize the back and forth there, and then what happens after you connect two people.”

After you connect two people it should be their responsibility to follow up and let you know what happened, but we all know that doesn’t happen. So now we send an automatic follow-up that says,
“Hey Jim, how was the introduction with Lia?”
“Hey Lia, how was the introduction with Jim?”
and we also send a reminder to let you know to follow up if you want to do it personally.
So we’re basically focused around removing the back and forth with the double opt-in, and helping people understand what happens after they connect their network.
It is at this moment that I realized that I don’t ever hear back from or even track my introductions. Our guest went on to explain the easy to use follow up option where one can be sent automatically or receive a reminder to send a personalized one.
This is when I realized that I had been followed up by Jonathan, who introduced Seth and myself via Entro’s automatic message.

He explained they found that follow ups are important to all entrepreneurs. After someone signs up, they sent them an email asking “what are your biggest frustrations from email introductions?”, and the most common response was not knowing what happened after they sent an introduction, because they wanted to know how to be better at introductions. His recommendation for all entrepreneurs still in the finding a product/market fit phase is asking consumers what their biggest frustrations are. Whatever the problem is you want to solve, it’s a great way to get the most powerful information from the earliest adopters.
What I found inspirational in this start up’s journey was that no matter how big the market players, for example LinkedIn, they still have not been able to tackle the whole process of introductions. Entro has cracked the code for introductions, showing us that we can find small gaps amongst huge companies that are out there dominating the space.
The founder stresses that entrepreneurs should be singularly focused on onething. He talks about how Entro wants to be the best solution in the world for connectors who want to introduce two people.
“If you can find that one thing, devote the time, really care and love it, it’s definitely possible.”
Our interview continued with deconstructing Entro’s success and their process on accumulating feedback, which I learned was not just physically sitting down with people, but a combination of quantitative and qualitative. In fact, the first iteration of the app was actually on LinkedIn, where they used LinkedIn’s API. It was beautiful and simple, pulling up your contacts, including their profile pictures, and simply sending the introduction. It would be sent to their LinkedIn inbox and people seemed to enjoy it. However, one morning Seth received an email stating that LinkedIn would be cutting off their API access to startups…

But that didn’t stop him. He knew that people primarily used email for introducing others. This is when they built the first version in Gmail. He’s a Yesware and Sidekick user and really enjoyed how seamlessly they fit. He knew he wanted Entro to be similar.
During the first version, the team at Entro knew they had to research to see what really bugged people about making introductions. People love complaining about things through blog posts and on Twitter, so, of course, that is where you could find the founder spending his time, listening to consumers. He connected this with the Gary Vaynerchuk approach of “just go to Twitter and listen.” By doing this qualitative feedback, they were able to collect enough data on what frustrated people and what solutions they were looking for. Cue Entro’s entrance…
In terms of quantitative, he’s using Mixpanel and Google Analytics. Mixpanel allowed him to see what was working on Entro and what was not. By knowing these two things he was able to find the core sweet spots of the product. It never gets old to have people emailing to say that the follow up really worked. When your consumers are letting you know of that magic moment and other people are complaining about that problem — that’s what you should be focused on.

My next question was about one of the challenges I face: Getting the short bio of the two people I’m introducing and their social media profiles.
Seth: At the moment we have two different ways of sending entros. One way of sending allows you to do a single, double or no opt-in. When you type someone’s name, we’ll pull it from Gmail, from your contact list, and then show you a photo including their LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. This way when you’re connecting two people, you can have as much context behind who the person is, what they like, etc.

Paul: How important is networking in adding value to your business?
Seth: There are too many quotes on this topic. “Your network is your net worth.”
The biggest thing is if you want to help, if you want people to help you out, you need to be consistently giving value to them, creating value.
You need to think about others, create value, and invoke the power of reciprocity. People want to help, and that’s how we’re talking now, it’s through networking.
In fact, this is demonstrably true. Seth and I were introduced via a mutual connection.
Everyone enters the start up world in a different way. My next question was how he became involved in this world and became a founder of his own company.
“I grew up in a business household — my dad was a CPA and my mom knew a lot about investment. We were always discussing successful businesses and why they were successful. I actually started a start up previously, but it had so many moving parts to it that it took three years to get the tech off the ground. This is where I learned that you don’t want to try for something super big — you want to focus on nailing one product and being the best in the world at that product. People will then give you more ideas and more problems that they want solved.”
There are a lot of problems out there, so just focus at being the best at one thing and take it from there.

Paul: We have a lot of listeners who have quit corporate jobs and gone on to start their own thing. What is your typical day like as an entrepreneur of your own company?
Seth: I wake up between 7 and 8 am, when my mornings usually begin with checking Mixpanel, figuring out how people are using our product. Since our launch on ProductHunt, our inbound has been very big, so right now there are a lot of emails coming in for customer support. My day continues with a meeting with our development team, where we discuss the features we want to implement next. I have been scheduling three to four calls a day. Face-to-face is still the most important thing, so if it’s someone you really want to build a relationship with and really value, it’s definitely worth doing.”
Paul: Do you have your own offices? Are you going for funding soon, or do you feel like that it’s too early?

“We’re bootstrapped, we’re a distributed team. We’re working out of my house, but we have people from all over, including San Francisco, Toronto and India.”
Through past experience, money doesn’t come to you when you go looking for it. Money comes to you when you don’t need it.
We have New York Times bestsellers using the product, local VC celebrities, a number one overall NCA college using the product. We’ve even had an escort service using the product…
It is one of those products with the tendency for viral word-of-mouth. It is definitely a cross multiply type of product, where a person might send five introductions and ten new people will see it. Malcolm Gladwell once said that the connector is someone who helps ideas spread, so we’re seeing a lot of word-of-mouth and pretty good viral growth.

Maximise The Potential Of Your Available Time And Grow Your Network

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is the show where we go and deconstruct the journeys of very successful app entrepreneurs, anyone who is building apps, promoting apps, or getting apps into the App Store; we learn from them so we cannot make their mistakes, but we can learn from their successes, and it's helped thousands of people in their app journeys. So if this is you listening to the show for the first time, do go back and listen to my archives. I've got 300 episodes and different versions of the archives in the podcasting apps. But let me get to today's episode. Today's episode is with the founder of an app called Scheduit, Dr Abdalla Kablan. Abdalla, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Abdalla: Hi, Paul. It's a great pleasure to be talking to you.

Paul: It's a great pleasure to have you on. So let's talk about Scheduit, what problem are you trying to solve?

Abdalla: With Scheduit we are trying to help people to maximize the potential of their available time by linking them with like-minded professionals, to help them grow their business network. So it's a business networking and compatibility app that helps professionals to connect with the right business contacts in the vicinity.

Paul: How did you get the idea for this?

Abdalla: The eureka moment came during actually one of my trips because of my line of work. I do a lot of consultancy, mainly in the areas of machine learning, artificial intelligence and computational finance, so I travel a lot. Once I was on one of my business trips. The way the bookings happen, I could only fly on Monday, had only one meeting on Tuesday and then I could only fly back on Wednesday. I had the meeting in the morning on Tuesday; after the meeting, I literally had nothing to do but to sit in my hotel room and do some coding, or watch some of the news, and then it hit me. I said, what if there was a platform where I could find like-minded business professionals in my vicinity to be able to network with them, discuss with them different ideas, and you never know what business opportunities may arise with that. So instead of having flown just for that one meeting, I would have had two, three or four other meetings, and the business opportunity may have come from a meeting that was not planned. So it all started with the premise that a meeting can transform one's life. A person can meet a future co-founder, an investor, a collaborator, a huge client. Business networking is usually the best way to find all of these. However, the most significant networking opportunities lie with those doors that are usually still closed. They lie with the relevant contacts that we have not met with yet. The problem with business networking is it's very time-consuming, and it's often left to chance, so Scheduit was born from the fact that this is a major problem in networking, which is time and relevance, and we try to solve that by introducing machine-learning and artificial intelligence in a very unique way, to facilitate that process.

Paul: This is wonderful, and, in fact I have to ask you: is there a meeting in particular that has changed your life?

Abdalla: Definitely, I've had many meetings that changed my life. I met with clients sometimes through random coincidences, sometimes I would be in a business meeting that nothing comes out of, but someone suddenly says "You know who you should meet? You should meet so-and-so." They are going to make one phone call, I meet with someone, and then a good opportunity comes. I found my company's investors through that type of meeting. So I truly believe that meetings do change lives. The most important thing and the reason why we're calling Scheduit a reverse social network and not a social network, is that in traditional social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn you usually add people that you already know, or you already met with, or you have already interacted with or met at a conference and you exchanged cards, in the case of LinkedIn. These social networks were not designed to meet people that you didn't even know about. Scheduit is the reverse - it links you with compatible and relevant business matches in your vicinity, that are ready and willing to meet with you, and you didn't even know that they existed. Usually, the most powerful contacts are within your second or third degree of separation. Those people that you already know, you've already exhausted that relationship, so there isn't much usually you can get out of, but it's in these new contacts that you have most of the potential.

Paul: Actually, I was thinking, with 419 episodes, not one of these founders did I know before the podcast, and yet these have become very good friends of mine, so I love the idea of reverse social networking. Let's talk about machine learning. How are you tackling that? What does machine learning mean to you?

Abdalla: Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence. I mean, artificial intelligence is an area in computing where we're trying to design machines that mimic human intelligent behavior. But then the question that comes is "What do we mean by intelligence, and what do we mean by conscious behavior in the first place?" Jean Piaget, in the early 20th century, defined intelligent as what you use when you don't know what to do, when neither innateness nor learning has prepared you for a particular situation. So in simpler terms, intelligence can be defined as 'doing the right thing, at the right time, in a flexible manner that helps you survive proactively and prove productivity in various facets in life.' Machine learning is utilizing artificial intelligence to actually learn from all that data that we are getting, and to produce a valuable output by recognizing patterns and understanding them, understanding the behavioral side of the data and being able to extract valuable insight from that data and output them in a manner that is easy to comprehend and easy to understand by humans. There are many types of intelligence: intellectual intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, but as humans we generally experience all of these as a whole. However, when it comes to machine learning and artificial intelligence, we actually have to design these different types of intelligence separately. I mean, a system that is very good at playing chess is not necessarily a system that can understand social interactions between people; it's two different types of machine intelligence or machine learning. In the case of Scheduit, we are trying to use different machine learning architectures and methodologies to actually look at the digital footprint that people are leaving behind them on their public interactions, in their different social media profiles. At the moment, we are focusing on LinkedIn because it's a professional network, but we are planning to expand into other networks. We try to learn from all that data that we are gathering. Things such as your public posts reflect a lot about what you are thinking. People that you add to your professional social networks reflect a lot about who you are: "Tell me who are your friends and I'll tell you who you are." So if you're most likely to interact with people from media and tech, then you're less likely to get along well with people from agriculture. For example, your seniority level, your employment history, all that information says a lot about you, and that's what the system needs to intelligently learn, but also provide an intelligent output, and in the case of Scheduit it's how compatible are you with that person, and how relevant is that person to you now. However, learning doesn't stop there.

Paul: Can I just pick up actually on the artificial intelligence? It's a very hot topic at the moment, because we're talking around about the time when in the UK Microsoft just bought out SwiftKey, which claim that it's artificial intelligently learning your typing and the words that you use. And also, I'm not going to mention the name, but I have been using something that would sort of give you the profiles of the network, or people in your network, and tell you how to approach those people: do they like emojis, or do they like to be professional? I was going to ask you, how important is the artificial intelligence part of Scheduit to your goals?

Abdalla: It's extremely important. They key predicament with artificial intelligence since its early stage is that scholars have always attempted to begin with problems that are hard for us humans to solve, and that require a lot of logical thinking, as I said. For example with playing chess, the assumption was always premised on the fact that problems we need to think hard about are easier to solve. We are just now realizing that it's not these problems that are difficult, because a machine has beat Garry Kasparov's chess from 1997. That did not mean that AI actually took over the world almost 20 years ago. We're realizing that it's these other problems of relevance that AI needs to solve. Like you said, how to approach someone before sending them an e-mail. In the case of Scheduit, how are you compatible with that person, and how can we understand from your preferences, in the sense that, for example, if you announce your presence on Scheduit, you got three people that requested to meet you, Scheduit has already, through its AI algorithm, told you the compatibility rates between you and every other person. So if one is a perfect match, the other one is a medium match and the other one is a mediocre match, but you as a human, you still chose to meet with the person that Scheduit thinks is a medium match - that's when machine learning kicks in and starts understanding that this is the type of profiles that you are interested in. So it will recalibrate its internal metrics to actually start giving higher preferences to that type of person. In a way, it's like hiring a personal assistant. In the first week or two, he or she may not know much about your character and your preferences and what you're interested in. The more they work for you, the more they know how to organize your schedules and how to get you to meet with them. This is exactly what we are trying to use AI and machine learning for - to add relevance to the problem of efficient business networking.

Paul: I'm getting it, I think it's a genius idea, I have to say. So let me just summarize what I've learned from you: the problem - and I experienced this, and I'm sure many people listening experienced this - is that you sometimes meet with people who are not able to add value to your business or to whatever you're trying to achieve. It's almost like a waste of time, so you have to try to wade through all the wasted cause, the wasted coffees to get to that one important meeting where you can really see massive value in what you're both doing, loads of synergies. That's what I actually try to do with the introductions I make, but you're doing this with artificial intelligence and with an app. Do you have any examples of anyone who's met within Scheduit?

Abdalla: I'll tell you what - Scheduit is becoming extremely popular at conferences, and with conference organizers, because they're realizing that there is a confined scenario of many people in a small space, that are all interested in networking. But the problem with networking during conferences usually is that people either network with those people that they already know - and this is very counter-intuitive. It's not networking, because they're not meeting anyone new. Or we have a lot of people who are introverts, and they find it difficult to say hello to someone they don't know, so they'll be in the corner, just drinking coffee and hoping that someone will come and say hello. But everyone is a warrior behind the screen, so if on the screen you can see everyone in your vicinity, your compatibility rate with them, then all you have to do is just to request a meeting. Then it becomes a completely different proposition, because only if they accept that meeting request, that's when the conversation begins. And to give you an example, I was a keynote speaker at a conference, Digital DNA, in Belfast, a couple of months ago. My speech was in the afternoon, so in the morning I was sitting and listening to some speeches, and I just look at the guy sitting next to me. By the way, Scheduit was the official networking app for that particular conference. So I look at the guy sitting next to me, and he was on his phone on Scheduit, messaging someone, so I decided to just nudge him and say, "Hey, how are you finding this app?" He said, "Oh my god, mate, I've been trying to track down this guy for the past three months, and I just found him here. We are just agreeing to have lunch together." Then he looked at me, and because my photo was on the conference program as a speaker, he was like "Wait a second, you are the guy who created this thing." And I said, "Yes, I'm just trying to get live user feedback." Anyway, after the conference, he wrote a very lovely blog post saying that he met three people during the conference, that are some fantastic matches, and he is actually following up already with them, and it all happened through Scheduit. That was a fantastic confidence boost, because we were just testing out the idea, and we had live user feedback. Since then, whenever we use Scheduit during conferences, we had overwhelming response from users, from conference organizers. They said that it has increased engagement during conference, hence we're adding new functionalities now to our app, that are geared towards conference organizers and conferences, such as taking notes, such as exchanging messages, such as posting your notes about the speeches, looking at the conference program, being able to look more information up about people that are at the conference or that are speakers. Also, for the conference organizers, the proposition has become fantastic, because whenever they used custom-made conference apps, number one - there was no compatibility matching in these conference apps; number two - the custom conference app usually dies the day the conference finished. Scheduit was not designed for conferences, which means that people that use Scheduit during the conference will still use it after the conference, because the purpose is to network. So for the conference organizer, if they had a thousand attendants attending this year, next year when they are organizing the conference again not only will they have a list of their thousand attendants from the previous years, but we will have a list of everyone else they have met with throughout the year, which is a very relevant audience to their conference by definition, because they're compatible with people that have attended that conference in the previous year. So the reach of the conference organizer goes up exponentially. If every person only meets with five people on Scheduit throughout the year, then instead of inviting a thousand, they're inviting five thousand people. So the proposition has exploded since. As I said, we are getting fantastic feedback from people who are trying to network on Scheduit, or people who are using it during conferences.

Paul: There are two things that came to my mind. One is that I'll have to remember in our post-chat to introduce you to a founder who actually has been on this show, that does a lot of conference-based apps, and has a template for conference apps. The other thing that comes to mind is that your example of when you actually meet someone using your app in the wild is one of the founder's best moments, and I've had several founders now that have told me that when they someone in the wild using their app it's just fantastic.

Abdalla: Yes, absolutely.

Paul: There's two more things we need to do before we say goodbye to you then, Abdalla. One is that we do love to try to understand your journey as an app entrepreneur. Are you able to perhaps take all your experiences - it's going to be very challenging, but can you think of one thing that a founder or a startup founder, or an entrepreneur should be doing with their app business to help them with their success? One thing they should be doing to help the startup get noticed.

Abdalla: I think what should be done is to always be dynamic and willing to revise your idea and willing to revise your model, depending on demand. The biggest challenge and the biggest problem is when someone keeps on trying to go down a path that has proven time and time again that it's not the easiest or the most straightforward path to take. One has to adapt to the different challenges and different terrains that they have to work through. In simple terms, not to be too stubborn about the idea and to be willing to accept external feedback, and whenever you walk into your office and speak with your team, the ego has to be left outside of the door, because everyone's opinion is as valuable as the founder's opinion, and the founder should be the one with the biggest ears and listen to as much feedback as possible. The biggest problem with founders is when they think that their idea is the best idea out there, and are not willing to... I'm not saying change, or discard the idea, but optimize it and to adapt it according to the feedback that they're getting. At the same time, one should also be persistent, never give up on the dream, never give up on their ability and their ideas, but be dynamic and be willing to change depending on the changes in the market, as well.

Paul: That is fantastic. Okay, so one other thing is that in your journey with Scheduit, has there been a moment where you've had like a breakout success, and you can then tell us what the result was? Maybe it's like a spike in downloads, or some kind of growth hack strategy that you followed that's been really good for you. Are you are able to give us any tips?

Abdalla: Definitely. As I said, initially we've developed Scheduit as a proof of concept. We focused mainly on the development of the app, and one of the biggest mistakes I've made is that I didn't focus on marketing from the first instances. It wasn't until suddenly we found ourselves on Yahoo! Finance and on Bloomberg, and on some big news or media outlets, and suddenly we had that huge spike in numbers of people.

Paul: Could you talk about the Bloomberg? I've been on Bloomberg before, with a project. Do you remember what that was in terms of the number of downloads?

Abdalla: It was at the time when LinkedIn, on the 12th May 2015 decided to restrict their API to third party providers, and we were using the LinkedIn API. Most of the companies out there that were making use of that API were complaining and didn't know what to do, but I personally looked at it as a blessing in disguise, because the first decision that I made was to go to my team, tell them "Guys, we have a big problem, but that big problem can become a blessing if we act quickly." So we decided to redesign our entire sign-up process. We managed to make a very nice, quick and dynamic sign-up process that doesn't take more than 60 seconds, and in that sign-up process we actually capture most of the information that we needed from the LinkedIn API anyway. So I just went out there and I blogged about it and said that this LinkedIn API restriction for us turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because now we are getting all the data that we're needing, without having to rely fully on LinkedIn's full API. That's when the external media outlets picked up on it, saying these are the first companies that have reacted to restrictions of the API, and we had a spike in the number of downloads. That's when the conference idea kicked in, because we got a lot of conference organizers asking us to use Scheduit during their conferences. That's when I realized we need to focus on our marketing, so I hired a brilliant community and PR manager, Jeffrey, and since then we have been doing proper outreach to our community, or managing the community more efficiently. Also, we have, in order to integrate a growth-hacking with our strategy, marketing has become a part of the development life cycle, so the marketing team and the developers are in continuous discussions with each other. We have implemented Agile, meaning that we do a daily scrum that happens between marketing and the developers. We do sprint, and in that sprint we have backlogged, we have predefined the tasks that have to be done, both from our marketing perspective and from a development perspective, and we have started integrating other social media sharing functionalities, such as when you announce your presence on Scheduit, it also goes to your Twitter and to your LinkedIn in order to actually get people on those other social networks that are not on Scheduit yet to see that type of announcement on their preferred social network, and then after clicking on the links, they will become Scheduit users if they sign up. So the entire model was revisited since then, and we've been having a massive success. Another massive success was during the Web Summit in November 2015, where we were featured as one of the most promising startups in 2015. We were shortlisted for the Pitch competition, where only a hundred startups from all over the world were shortlisted. We had some media outlets short listing us as one of the top 10 startups during the Web Summit 2015. So it's been fantastic, and the outlook for 2016 looks even better with our implementation of our event functionalities and continuing our growth-hacking strategies and investing more on the marketing and the community side. I genuinely believe that the real value or the true value of Scheduit is in the community, and we have to do our best in order to increase and grow that community as fast as possible.

Paul: Yeah, and just a quick shout out to Jeffrey Romano, who I think introduced us, so he's a great networker.

Abdalla: Yes, yes. Hi, Jeffrey.

Paul: Terrific.

Abdalla: That's why we brought him on board, he's a natural networker.

Paul: Yes, it's wonderful. So what I was learning from you whilst you were going through the successes, and what others could be doing as well is when there's some controversial piece of news about one of the big sites, you took a positive angle on it, rather than a negative, and you went against the stream, in a way, with your advice, and that's why the news sources picked up on it. Anyone could be doing that, as well - taking something that's naturally going to cause outrage and putting a positive spin on it, and talking through the positives. I think that could actually help get publicity and PR.

Abdalla: If we learned one thing from Monty Python, always look at the bright side of things.

Paul: Yes, well let's leave it there, on the high, with Monty Python. For everyone listening, you can get the show notes, it's episode 419. Just go to theappguy.co and search for Abdalla Kablan. Abdalla, how best can people reach out and connect with you? What's the best way of getting in touch?

Abdalla: On Twitter, my handle is @drkablan, that's the easiest way to get in touch with me, or via e-mail, ak@scheduit.com

Paul: Wonderful. Well, thanks very much for coming on our show, and all the best with the growth of Scheduit.

Abdalla: Thank you so much, Paul. It's been a great pleasure to speak to you. Thank you.

A Great Idea About Ideas From A Serial Entrepreneur

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp, and I'm here to bring you some of the best founders that we can find from around the world, and deconstruct their journeys so that we can learn in our own entrepreneurial journey. So if you're an entrepreneur, startup founder, or perhaps you're just interested in the journeys of entrepreneurs, this is the show for you. Let me introduce to you today's guest. He is a legend, I actually feel that we're going to learn a huge amount from our guest. His name is Carter Wigell and he was previously the co-founder and CEO of a company that was recently sold to Accenture, called Cloud Sherpas. He's also launched a new company called Ideator, and there is a past episode that you can go and search for on theappguy.co about launching Ideator on Product Hunt. Let's talk to Carter, so Carter - welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Carter: Thank you Paul great to be here.

Paul: Let's talk about your transition then. I guess you moved after selling Cloud Sherpas, and you are now fully involved in Ideator. How is that transition going?

Carter: It's been great. Just for quick clarification, I was actually the CEO of a company called Cloud Trigger, and we sold Cloud Trigger to Cloud Sherpas; that was then acquired by Accenture. But it's been an amazing journey, and I couldn't be more excited. The transition actually has been somewhat easy for me since I had a team that was actually working on Ideator for about the last year, so I've been advising Ideator and officially stepped over on January 1st of this year.

Paul: I want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to learn about Ideator. I think anybody listening to this should pause and perhaps go back and listen to the full episode on Ideator. But if you were to do an elevator pitch to us for, can you do an elevator pitch for Ideator?

Carter: Sure, absolutely. We are basically trying to help entrepreneurs of all different races, genders and ages with their ideas. So we are helping them by providing the tools, resources, and connections that they need to be successful.

Paul: Now, Carter, I would love to know, now you're fully involved in this, what your plans are, how you're actually going to help grow Ideator from I guess a starting point to become a massive success. What are your plans to get involved now with the team?

Carter: Yes, great question. So we have some big plans for 2016. Really for us in 2015 it was about making sure that we really understood the needs of the entrepreneur, so we really built Ideator with that in mind, and that was really the first phase. As we move into 2016, there's a lot of focus on how do we connect the advisors and investors, and really create some of those algorithms for people to get access to the tools and resources that they need. So a little bit more on the frontend, really think about that [unintelligible 00:06:10] capability to connect you to the right skill sets, and then from the resource perspective, we're working on partnerships with companies like GoDaddy, LegalZoom, SalesForce.com, and Google. So my focus is not only around the product and making sure that the product can scale and provide value, but also developing strategic partnerships in the market, so we've got a great opportunity to help student entrepreneurs. We're working with a number of different schools and universities, and I'm working with some big corporations and organizations, as we both have a similar ambition to help these student entrepreneurs.

Paul: So Carter, for all those entrepreneurs listening now, what do you find are the most common problems facing entrepreneurs when trying to run a successful startup?

Carter: Yes, it's a great question, and it can really be different based on the entrepreneur. A lot of the people on our platform, I thought we would have just the ideation stage. So I have an idea, and what do I do next? But the reality is we have a lot of startups and entrepreneurs that already have a product or a service in the market. Typically on the ideation side, where I see people really struggling as they don't actually have a plan, and as fundamental as that sounds, it really helps to understand from a prioritization standpoint what needs to happen, who are the team members you need, what are the resources you need, funding, etc. So I'm not necessarily a big advocate that you need a 40-50-page business plan, but you need a plan, and then ongoing, a lot of the challenges that we see with entrepreneurs and startups is execution and finding the right team members. Funding is definitely one, but it's not typically one of the main early reasons that we see people fail.

Paul: Yes. In fact, I was actually wondering about the points of transparency, and with Ideator, you are encouraged to be quite transparent with your idea. How important do you feel it is in success by being very open about your idea, and very transparent?

Carter: Yes, it's a good question. I mean, there's definitely a philosophy out there to fail fast, fail early, so people aren't spending a lot of time, money and energy on something that actually might not have a good market opportunity. But really, we actually allow people on Ideator to have a private space, or a public space, and the vision behind that was we wanted to encourage serial entrepreneurs to have a space that they could collaborate on, but certainly the more that you can share publicly it means that you can get better connected to the right advisors and mentors, which certainly is not a new concept. So we understand that there are certain parts and certain information of your data, or a plan, or otherwise that you want to keep private, and you can.

Paul: I was actually thinking, with Ideator you're almost taking the role of what 10-20 years ago would have been the bank because you're helping entrepreneurs connect with investors and get a business plan. Do you feel like this is becoming the role of what the bank used to be 10 years ago?

Carter: We definitely want Ideator to be a place that people can start foundationally with their ideas, and I guess the analogy you're making around the bank is we grow over time, we will be providing more capabilities for people to fundraise, either on the platform or create integrations to other platforms or institutions that people can actually raise money, because certainly that is the key aspect of every startup - they need money. So if I'm following you right, Paul, I think in general today what we do well is we help incubate these ideas and these startups, and I think there's an analogy there to the bank, that you're making.

Paul: You know, when we first started talking you were in some exotic location, I think. I would like to know what a typical day is for you, to inspire anybody listening to this, who may be quite amazed at how much travel perhaps you have and how much you get involved in meeting lots of different people around the world. So what's a typical day like for you, Carter?

Carter: Yes, I appreciate it. It's been an adjustment because I also have a new baby. My wife and I have a six-month-old daughter, and I think that in itself is... Those people who have children or babies out there understand. A lot of it does come down to... You know, I believe the early bird gets the worm. I wake up at 5 A.M., so it's actually 6:45 here in San Francisco this morning, and I think it's really important that you have a scheduled day, you have certain things that you need to accomplish. Without time management, it's really, really hard in a position like mine because prioritization is everything. It's hard to balance that because you want to be out networking with a lot of different people, organizations, but if you don't have a real focus on the KPIs and metrics that you're trying to achieve for a given month, given quarter. For a startup, time is really gold, so I think it's really having that focus, having a plan, so my team, we actually on January 1st hit the ground running with a great 2016 vision and executional plan that everybody understands on my team where their focus is. We'll certainly pivot and change as we move forward, but again, for me personally, success is really making sure that I'm up early and that I can accomplish the things that I want to in a given day, because there's so much to do from my seat, from fundraising, to PR, to day-to-day product sales, marketing, strategic relationships... And again, I think it's having that focus and prioritization.

Paul: So Carter, I'm someone who previously had a corporate job and left to pursue the life as an entrepreneur, and I'm sure there's lots of people listening to this now who are in corporate jobs. You've been very successful, and you had, I guess, an opportunity to stay in corporate, but you really wanted to carry on and start something new, and go in a different direction as a startup founder. What would you advise to anyone sitting in a corporate job - is it worth becoming a startup founder, in your experience?

Carter: Yes, a great question. I think I've been called crazy twice, at this point. I was at SalesForce.com for 10 years, and anybody who's followed SalesForce.com, I mean, what an incredible company, and I feel so fortunate to have worked there. When I started, there were about 100 employees, and it was great. This was the early days when Mark Benioff would come by my desk and ask what's in the pipeline. I just had a tremendous opportunity to grow at that company up with a lot of amazing mentors, and when I got this entrepreneurial spirit, it was a hard decision to leave SalesForce, and I probably had about eight or ten different managers and executives at SalesForce tell me crazy, and how great my W2 was, and all that was very real, but I was so determined and excited to have the opportunity to start Cloud Trigger. And certainly I knew that there was high risk, but I was mentally prepared for that. So I think one of the most important lessons that I took from leaving the corporate world is certainly there's more security in a larger corporation for employees, but the best advice I got was from a leadership coach... I was ready to go put in my two weeks notice at SalesForce.com and she said, "There's no way you can do that. You've been there for 9-10 years and no matter all the great things that you did at that company, everyone's going to remember how you left that company." And it was probably one of the best pieces of advice that I got leaving the corporate world, because it took me a month and a half to get out of the company, and I had just about everybody in the company kind of turn around and say "Thank you for everything that you've done here." Mark Benioff actually ended up investing in my first company, the CEO of SalesForce.com. So again, I think there's just great value in making sure that if and when you make that jump, to understand that those relationships that you've made in the corporate world are important or critical. So for me, I've done it twice. After we sold to Accenture I also had an amazing job opportunity, but I think entrepreneurs, they have the DNA within them, and a desire to go start something new. I'm personally really passionate about entrepreneurs that want to go start a great company that might get to a couple million in revenue, certainly to entrepreneurs that want to highly disrupt. I don't think that there's one personally that's better than the other.

Paul: So there's two more things we need to do then, Carter, before we say goodbye to you. The first one is that we love to try and identify what's happening in technology and the market, and you have such a rich source of information, in a way, from ideas coming on, and you're seeing what's happening. Would you be able to pick up on one trend that is going to help us in what we're doing? So a trend in the market, from technology.

Carter: Oh, that's a good question. With regard to Ideator, I think what's most exciting to me is a lot of ideas that we're getting on the platform are different education ideas and social good ideas, and I think at the end of the day right now those are the ones that I'm most passionate about, and it's really people that are trying to solve different ideas, or problems around the water problem in California, ideas around poverty, or human trafficking. So I definitely think above and beyond some of the social challenges that we're having just in California, certainly globally issues that we're having. So for me, technology in these areas of education and social good, social causes I think are the most impactful. We had a team of students from MIT on our platforms that are trying to solve lung cancer, so there's just kind of a widespread number of different technology ideas that are happening on our platform, but the ones that I'm most excited about, that I feel will make the greatest impact are around education and social good.

Paul: So finally, here's a new one, Carter. I'd love to ask you this, because as entrepreneurs, what we've learned in this show is that it's sometimes very hard to focus, and as someone who has a platform of new ideas hitting them everyday, how hard is it for you to focus? You must be very tempted to invest in many of the ideas coming on the platform because they just sound so compelling. Give us some advice on your ability to focus on one thing.

Carter: Yes, it's a great question. I am not in a place right now that I can certainly see every single idea come through the platform; one, again, because there's a lot of private ideas on our platform, but number two, really for us it's about growing the community that can help these entrepreneurs and startups, so it was important to me early that we were able to get engaged with all the entrepreneurs and startups, as they're coming through the platforms. So we have an amazing community manager on the platform - if you signed up, you'll see Jessica on there. So she's been able to engage with a lot of entrepreneurs and startups. We also do have an advisory program where people are submitting to be accepted into the advisory program and some of those startups I'm actually helping to consult. But we are getting hundreds of signups a day, we have users in a hundred different countries, and so I certainly can't keep up with all ideas, but we've got a great community and we have a lot of people that are engaged, and when people are creating public goals we're looking for certain skill sets for getting involved in our discussions forum. They're getting help quickly, so I feel like the platform is providing a lot of value.

Paul: Just to pick up on that last thing you said about being an advisor... I mean, that sounds really interesting. How important is it to have some kind of external advisor on either your board or as part of the decision-making executive team? Because it sounds to me like that would actually be very powerful and helping the success for a company. Do you think it's important?

Carter: I think it's really important, almost critical, because most entrepreneurs, it's their first time, they're not serial entrepreneurs, and there's plenty of great stories out there in the market, but the reality is that a lot of successful people have the right connections, whether it's through investment channels or distribution. Everybody has seen the show The Shark Tank, so while people are going on The Shark Tank because they need money, they're also hoping that Mark Cuban or Mr. Wonderful has the right connections to actually scale their business. So a lot of early companies are able to bring on a seasoned executive or individual who's scaled an organization at the level that they're hoping for, so I think it's really important. I also think it's critical that the advisors really understand when they're being approached by the entrepreneur, what are the key areas that you need help with, and I think there's a challenge there, in a lot of entrepreneurs not knowing what to ask for. So as we grow over time, we're providing different tools and assets to, again, create those connections, but also be able to provide things like advisor agreements and give them some better education on how to interact with those advisors.

Paul: So to everyone listening, I do remember having quite a few chats of different candidates that have gone through Shark Tank, and those were fascinating past episodes, so they can go and listen to that by going to theappguy.co. This has been just a terrific, inspired chat, Carter, and I know that you're such a great speaker and also have a huge amount of patience, because we've had some technical issues with the first recording, so thanks so much for trying again. What I would like to do is just ask how people reach out to connect with you or the community at Ideator.

Carter: Sure, I'm definitely very open. You can reach me at Carter@Ideator.com, and certainly if you sign up for Ideator, the platform is free, so if you have an idea, or you just want to collaborate you can find me on the platform. You can also find Jessica on there. Many, many people from Ideator are accessible and lots of people from the community. So we're very excited, and thank you, Paul, you've been a big help to Ideator and you got us out there on Product Hunt, which was really successful for Ideator, so I really thank you, you've been great.

Blockchain Will Change Our World As Much As HTML Changed The Web

Paul: Welcome to another episode of the App Guy Podcast. I'm your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is the show that helps you as an app entrepreneur. If you're a startup fanatic, if you are even doing side gigs but you want to know what this world is about, then I go around and interview some of the best people that we can find to help us with these journeys of app entrepreneurship. I've got literally the most amazing guest for you today. His name is Jon Bradford, and until recently he was the MD at TechStars, he's going to tell us a little bit about that, but he really does go around helping companies, helping startups. I really recommend going to the show notes and clicking on all the links to tell you about Jon. His portfolio is too long to mention here, so we're going to find out more. Jon, welcome to the App Guy Podcast.

Jon: Good morning, thank you for having me.

Paul: So let's talk about your background, because it is so impressive. You've been involved in TechStars, you're recently having a reflective stage, but tell us a little about yourself, Jon.

Jon: I see. The reason why I was missing so long is because I'm just really old.

Paul: Like me then...

Jon: Exactly. This could probably be the third part of my life, if that makes sense, not including my teenage years. So I started many, many years ago as a boring accountant; I wasn't good at it, but seemed to hang on and do it for a long time. I jumped ship in 2000 and I've been working around early stage startup type businesses since then. It didn't seem such a long time ago, but somebody pointed out it was 15 years ago. I spent ten years of that effectively working in and around startups, and about five years ago I've had the good fortune of bumping into a guy called David Cohen, who ran TechStars. At that point, nobody knew what TechStars was, and he helped me set up what was the first accelerator outside of the U.S., called the Difference Engine, that nobody has ever heard of and is completely insignificant, but essentially in the last five years I've worked on nine or ten programs personally, I think I've helped twelve other programs start up across Europe and beyond, I've been fortunate enough to bump into some really smart people and started a few businesses, and every so often I get some sleep as well.

Paul: Jon, we've had a lot of entrepreneurs in this show that are from the TechStars accelerator, and they are so inspirational. What's it like working around these entrepreneurs? It must be just really amazing and motivating to actually be part of it.

Jon: Yes, there's a sliding skill on any given day; it can be the most inspiring job in the world and on other occasions it can be a pain in the ass. [Unintelligible 00:04:09] I think entrepreneurs are very like five-year-olds. They're very addicted to work with, they screw up on a regular basis, and they always are coming back going, 'Do you know that thing you said I shouldn't have done? Well I did do it, and I screwed up. Can I have forgiveness and can you give me some more money please?' So yes, they are amazing, and I wouldn't have done what I've done for the last five years unless I'd felt that there was... It was fun and interesting, and one could make a little bit of money along the way.

Paul: Jon, I'm in danger of taking too many quotes from this show, I like to take quotes, and "entrepreneurs are like five-year-olds" is already standing out as a potential quote. So one of the big questions I often get is how do you approach investors? What's the best way of positioning yourself as an entrepreneur, someone who's leading maybe a small team? How would you respond to that? How would you suggest the best way is to get your attention?

Jon: I'm going to tell you a whole bunch of clichés that you all probably heard from other places, but there's a well-known line, which is "If you want money, ask for advice, and if you want advice, ask for money." So ordinarily, most entrepreneurs approach investors too late, so they need the money at the point they're asking for it. The problem with that is an entrepreneur doesn't know you if you met him at that point in time, and so therefore he wants to build some sort of relationship to understand you better. I strongly believe that probably the most interesting thing to really screw up an investor's brain is to actually approach them and say, "I've just started something, I'd love to get some feedback on it. Come and see it and grab me a coffee." [Inaudible 00:06:17] talk to the investor, but never ask for money because that really screws with their head. But what it does do, and I then say to them is take good notes, listen to the advice, think about what the feedback was and then either e-mail them or ask for a coffee 90 days later and go back to them in 90 days time and say, "Do you know all that stuff you told me? Well I did this with this stuff, because it was really valuable. I thought about what you said here, I wasn't sure that was correct, so I did something else." So what you're trying to do is essentially build a relationship between yourself and a potential investor way before. But also don't forget, investors - and some are better than others, but at the end of the day they listen to a lot of pitches and they get a lot of advice from a lot of different people. They can be inherently valuable as a resource for you to understand your business better and to basically... It's a bit like getting a job. The first interview you go to is not necessarily the one you want, so do a few mock interviews, or work with a whole bunch of people before you actually get to the point where you actually really need the money. So kiss the frogs a little bit earlier than you would do, and talk to as many smart people as you can, and that includes investors.

Paul: It sounds to me like it's worth actually applying for accelerator programs almost just to go through the process of seeing what the questions are and what they're trying to understand. Is that what you're saying?

Jon: The statement was more about investors than accelerators, but you're absolutely right, with accelerators it's exactly the same thing. I say to people apply early, way before you would expect to, get on my radar, so when you apply six months later I can see the progress that you've made from the original application. There's a great article written by a guy called Mark Schuster called "Lines, not dots" and it's about how investors make investment decisions. The idea behind it is understanding people and seeing how progress is made between the two points that you see them, or the three points or the four points. Investors just can't make decisions on the spot, based upon a given point in time.

Paul: You've mentioned at the start you've had a few career changes in a way, and you started off as an accountant, and I'm sure there's people listening to this right now who are tempted to quit their job, or start a startup, or go for it. What would you say to those who are thinking about that? Can you actually do it without a track record, or are you just likely to fail the first several times and you need to kind of just accept that and really build up your experience and relationships? So what would you say to anyone who's thinking about quitting their job to do a startup?

Jon: Well I tend to take the view which is slightly contrary to most other people, which is there are seven days in a week; you typically work for five of them, so you've got two spare, which is almost half a week. There's a lot you can do in your spare time, and it's also a good way of you really understanding whether you want to do it or not. And there will be an actual point where you get to a certain critical mass, or you have enough data, or there's something inherently interesting in what you're doing that actually says, 'Well maybe I should step out and I should do this on a full time basis.' So I think of it more as an analogue or shades of gray, rather than a black and white statement of 'One day I want to stop my job and the next day I'm going to start a startup. I think there's a lot more that can be done in the intervening period. I was fortunate enough that I've never felt that I've actually ever done that in my career. I've managed to transition from one role to the next, and it really is playing around with this idea that there are seven days in a week, and if you can... In my instance I was fortunate enough to be able to have a job which was only four days instead of five days a week. So I had a day job that paid me four days a week and I had three days to spare, to actually plan what I was going to do next.

Paul: So you're actually going through a transitionary period as well yourself, so it's probably timely to talk about how you approach that, and what you go through in terms of a decision-making process to figure out what you actually want to do next.

Jon: Yes, I describe to people I'm going through a decelerator at the moment, so I'm learning to do everything a little bit slower than I would have ordinarily. No, I think I'm the wrong side authority, so the way I make decisions will be slightly different from somebody slightly earlier in their career. I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of different opportunities in front of me, and I can do many different things, but what I've come back with is I've got a set of criteria to think about why and what I would do next, and if I can remember well there's four of them. They are essentially have fun, make money, work with smart people, and make an impact. And none of those are functional; so that could be as an investor, that could be as an entrepreneur, that could be as something totally different. But if they don't have those four criteria, this is something I'm just not interested in. So I'm making my decisions in a slightly different approach.

Paul: I love that, I love the fact that you're reminding us it's best to have a belief system and then follow that, because it makes it easier to have decisions.

Jon: I would say that's something which is very true to where TechStars is; we have some very strong underlying beliefs. So on one side I have TechStars, which has a very strong mantra which is "Entrepreneur first" or "Give first" and on the other side I've started a business for a good friend of mine, called F Success, and basically we have a similar cornerstone, which is we wil always put the entrepreneur first, ahead of everybody else, and all of our decisions are made around that. And I find those things to be the easiest and simplest ways to make decisions.

Paul: Well Jon, we've got two more things to do before we say goodbye to you. One is that we love to try and figure out new ideas ourselves, and it's always helpful to find out from the entrepreneurs what you're seeing, what trends you're seeing in the marketplace, because you do have a wonderful bird's-eye view of the startup scene. What do you think is really an interesting area for the listeners to focus on?

Jon: I would argue that there's a lot of noise in the market, and so therefore the quantum of the noise is not necessarily indicative of the interest level. I spend my life thinking about stuff before it gets trendy, so I'm not into dating apps and I'm not into bill-sharing apps, even though there are other people smart at doing that. The thing I'm super fascinated by is Blockchain and its potential implementation, either inside the financial services or beyond. I think people need to spend more time looking at the potential of Blockchain, because I think it has the potential of doing what http did in web, for a lot of different services in a lot of different areas.

Paul: Okay, you're going to have to expand on that... You're saying Blockchain?

Jon: Yes.

Paul: Okay. Maybe for the benefit of actually me and a few people listening, what is Blockchain?

Jon: So Blockchain is a really interesting piece of technology that makes Bitcoin work. Interestingly, everybody runs around and talks about Bitcoin but the reality is, it's the underlying protocol that makes Bitcoin work, which is called Blockchain. Essentially what it does is it allows you to have a completely decentralized system which has trust built into it, and it's almost impossible to describe in two minutes... What I would probably say is if you do a quick Google search, and typically a really good source of information I think is Fred Wilson, who's website is avc.com. He talks about Blockchain as a protocol - definitely worth looking up and having it checked out.

Paul: And also you're reminding me of my chat episode 338 with Justin Drake, who talked about that very thing as well, so that's definitely another resource. Obviously it had an impact on finance, but it could be everywhere, not just money.

Jon: Yes, money is a statement of "I have money, I'm passing it to you. You understand and trust me that the money is mine." You don't have a clearing house that basically says "Did Jon have the money or not?" It completely shift the balance of power away from very centralized democracies, which is why it's really scary, and it can be used in a lot of different places. I think it's used in healthcare, it could be really interesting around records, so people personally hold the records, rather than it being held in a central point. It could be used for CV's, so I can imagine a version of LinkedIn which basically says, "I did go to Brescia University" and there's a trust statement around that. Basically it explodes this myth of "stuff has to be held in a central database." Actually it can be held by individuals.

Paul: Wonderful stuff, sounds like an episode in itself. Okay Jon, the last thing is this is a show about apps, so we couldn't let you go without getting you to grab your phone and tell us one or two apps that you could recommend to us; not the usual ones, but ones that you think we may not have crossed before.

Jon: Oh, I'm really boring. All the apps on my phone are really dull. The one I could not live without in my life is something called TripIt, I'm sure you're very familiar with. Are you?

Paul: I've heard of TripIt, but how are you actually using it?

Jon: TripIt is quite an old app, I actually discovered quite recently one of the early ambassadors, and I almost leaned across the table and kissed him, which is quite embarrassing. But essentially what it allows you to do is as you get travel itineraries, or invoices or things like hotels, airlines, you effectively can e-mail TripIt and it figures out who you are, and then effectively parses the e-mail and actually puts it into a format which is really valuable and useful. I traveled around the world 12 times over the last two years on air transportation - my 9 year-old son pointed out I'm about halfway to the moon. I spend my life traveling, so it's the most insanely sensational. If you do any level of traveling it's amazing. It's just a good way of aggregating information in a very usable way.

Paul: That is wonderful. Well of course that, and other things that you've mentioned will be on the show notes. This is episode 372, just go to theappguy.co, search for Jon Bradford and you'll see links to the articles that he's mentioned and the app. Jon, what a wonderful episode. I feel like it could've gone on for a long time, but we're going to have to end there. Thank you so much for coming on this show. How best can people connect or reach out to you?

Jon: Dead easy. My e-mail address is jd (at) jd.me and  anybody who wants to, they can reach out directly to me there.

Paul: Great. Jon, thank you so much for coming on this show, all the best and we'd love to get you back on anytime, you're welcome to come on the show.

Jon: Thanks Paul.

What I learned From The Editor-At-Large For The Next Web

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. I love this show, because we go around the world and really chat with the most interesting founders. We've recorded 375 episodes almost, and I am yet to speak with an editor or journalist, and that's who we've got on. This is going to be a great a episode, do stay tuned for it. I want to introduce straight away, it's Martin Bryant. He is the editor-at-large at The Next Web, and everyone listening to this show must have heard of The Next Web. You can obviously go there as well and check it out. We're going to talk about The Next Web, tech and journalism, and just how to help us with approaching journalists. So Martin, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Martin: Hello Paul, good to be here.

Paul: It's great to have you on. You are actually I think our first journalist on this show, which is wonderful. What is it actually you do at The Next Web, just start there. I've noticed you are editor-at-large, what does that mean?

Martin: Yes, well this is a brand new role for me. At the time of recording I've been doing it for less than a week. I was previously editor-in-chief, which is a lot easier to explain. I was managing the team, making sure we were covering everything that we were supposed to, looking at how to grow traffic, hiring new people, all that kind of thing. Another think I did in that role was going to accelerators, to meet startups, talk about pitching to the press, things like that. I was on TV and radio a lot, that kind of thing, talking about tech news and things. What we want to do now... We had a good growth spurt over the last few months, and in July it was our best traffic month ever, in September it was our second best traffic month ever, so traffic is going nicely; we wanted to really push forward even faster into 2016, and so we had to do a reshuffle in the team, and Matthew Hussey, who was previously our commissioning editor, he's become our new editor-in-chief, he's got a lot of ideas for growing the site and pushing things forward. I am focusing on really getting out there and being a voice for The Next Web in all sorts of different ways, including appearing on this podcast.

Paul: Martin, it's really refreshing to hear someone like yourself who actually does provide really good exposure for some of the startups, the apps that we have on this show as well, and yet you're also thinking of growing and trying to promote The Next Web.

Martin: Really at the moment it's social, that's where we can really make an impact with our growth, and I think that's the same for most publishers. Over the last few years publishers have seen Facebook become a really key traffic source. For some people it's more than Google; I don't think we're quite at that stage, but it's certainly an important source of traffic for us. Of course, the problem with relying on Facebook for your traffic is that you are reliant on Facebook's algorithm and it deciding whether each post you put on Facebook is of interest to your audience. Sometimes you might post something and a very small number of people will see it. So the rules for what will be successful on Facebook are changing constantly. So we have a number of staff who is focused on that and the strategies around social growth, the way we use Twitter... For example, we find posting on Twitter with an image pretty much always does better than without an image, and again, you see that with a lot of publishers now - almost every time they tweet they have an image, because it just gets more engagement.

Paul: Yes, I would actually agree with you on that one Martin, because I've been following a strategy of posting images, and I've seen my sort of small audience grow to something like 3 million one month for the number of people that see a tweet, and that's obviously better with images. So it's good to reinforce the requirement of posting with images.

Martin: Absolutely, yes. If you look beyond that, there are all these social platforms, Instagram, Snapchat etc. where they can't really drive traffic to your site, but it's good to build a community around them. I think BuzzFeed is a great example of a site that's being very smart in the way they use these platforms. What they're basically saying is you don't necessarily need to go to BuzzFeed, you can go to Snapchat, Instagram or whatever and see BuzzFeed content; you might not necessarily have to click through from that, because actually getting a link into those services is hard to sometimes impossible, but you'll experience the content in a distributed form around the web, and figuring out ways to monetize that through maybe sponsored content etc. is an interesting challenge. Yes, so social media is definitely our big traffic growth area.

Paul: Martin, I have a lot of app entrepreneurs listening to this show, and I've gone out to a community of them and some of them have actually come back and suggested that we focus on some of these questions here. So how do app entrepreneurs and startup founders catch your eye as a potential journalist who has the ability to give good exposure to maybe a new idea or a new app? Because I can imagine your e-mail is completely over bloated. How's the best way of catching your eye and getting through to people like yourself?

Martin: Yes, it can be difficult to get attention through e-mail, but at the same time it is the best way. I say this and some people may disagree, but certainly a lot of tech journalists I speak to feel the same way. Although they have trouble keeping up with their e-mail, they much prefer pitches by e-mail than any other way. I get people who pitch me by a Twitter direct message, via Facebook messages, all these different ways. I had one via Instagram message once as well, and the problem is, it's impossible to keep up with all these pitches in different places. LinkedIn is another one; I'll get messages there and it's hard for me to reply, because I'll be going through my e-mail and I'll get the "You've got a new LinkedIn message. Here it is." But then I have to click through and go to LinkedIn and reply there, and then the person will probably reply to me on LinkedIn even if I say e-mail me back, and so it just becomes really hard to deal with. If all our messages are in one place it's a lot easier.

In terms of ways to get attention, keep your e-mails short, especially for first contact; it's best to be really plain, straightforward English, really just get to the point about what's new and different about what you're doing and why we should be interested. Don't tell us everything; I get some people who will paste in a 500 word press release that explains everything about them and has loads of buzz words and things in. That's not a good way, because when you think someone's working through their e-mail, and if they don't already know you through an introduction or whatever, then if they just see a wall of text, they're not necessarily going to be that inclined to read through it. I personally know I've missed some great apps through pitches that just didn't catch my eye. That's partly my fault through not paying enough attention, but I only have a certain amount of time to check my e-mail. So yes, brief e-mail, which tells me enough to interest me, and then I'll get back to you and then we can take it from there.

Paul: Martin, you can't leave us teased like that, what if you missed?

Martin: To be honest, it's hard to remember. I just know that for example I've seen things coming on to the site and I've immediately got in touch with the people who launched the apps and said, "Why didn't you contact The Next Web?" and they went, "We did, we contacted you about two weeks ago." And I'll look back and I'll have archived an e-mail or whatever and I'll be like, "Oh, no..." So yes, it has happened.

Paul: It's like all those investors that said no to Google and Twitter.

Martin: Absolutely.

Paul: Also, the other thing is this is a show about apps, and the Apple have just released the Apple News default app, and I noticed that was on your site as well. Do you have a view about that and how that may impact the way we consume our news?

Martin: This is part of a broader trend that encapsulates everything from ad blockers at the user's end, through to things like Facebook instant articles and Google's AMP project - Accelerated Mobile Pages, which is all about stripped down, fast-loading mobile pages. Apple News is similar in that it's a way to browse news in one place. It loads really quickly, because a lot of people complain about slow loading pages on the web, especially on mobile where you might have a slow connection. So in that way it's good, and it's good that people are looking to solve that problem.

Facebook instant articles is another really interesting way of doing that, although it's really slow to roll out. We would like to get in on that, so hopefully Facebook will get us in on that at some point. We're certainly looking at developing accelerated mobile pages as well, as another really fast way of making sure that people can load our pages nicely on their phones. But in terms of Apple News, I think the speed is great; I think the product isn't quite there yet. If I look at it - I've got it on my home screen on my phone - I don't open it that much. The first time I opened it I thought, "Hm, this is..."

Paul: ... Where did this come from?

Martin: Well no, I thought, "This is cool." I knew it was coming on iOS 9, but when I opened it I was like, "Hm, this is actually quite a good idea, but I don't feel like I should go there." I still find my news through social media mainly, or through an RSS reader, old school, because I'm a journalist so I like to keep up with what people are writing, so I'll go through a list of everything they've written. So the Apple way of you going through and suggesting, "I'm interested in these topics or these publications" and then learning what you read and giving you a feed of the news and things you want is interesting, but there's something about it - I'm not exactly sure what it is - something about the way it's presented, or the algorithm, that just doesn't draw me back to it.

Paul: Yes, and actually when you compare it with Google AMP, that is pretty impressive when you have a first go at that. I'll make sure as we're talking that, we do have people listening who are potentially or doing something dangerous, to write this stuff down, so everything will be in your show notes Martin, episode 375, which you can get from the TheAppGuy.co.

We are app entrepreneurs, a lot of us, small startups, and we're often competing against the big companies, with big budgets and also large venture capital funded startups, and someone asked about how do the tech press take more responsibility for maybe promoting diverse role models, and sustainable business models, rather than jumping on the bandwagon and the hype around big venture capital startups. Do you have any view about that?

Martin: You mean in terms of not necessarily just going down the route of rating a load of money, rather bootstrapping and rating money through revenue and growing slower but in a way that means you're in control?

Paul: Yes, it's more about getting attention even though you are maybe a bootstrap startup and you don't have a big VC firm behind you with some large investor who could maybe have the relationships that the tech press did to get their attention during the launch.

Martin: Yes, well in terms of that, we make no distinction between a VC-backed firm or a bootstrapped firm at all. It's all about the product and the pitch. So yes, a startup that has millions in the bank from well-known VC firms might be able to afford an on-staff PR person who knows how to pitch the press, but really the skills you need to contact the press are not that great. It's about relationship building, it's about - like I said earlier - being prompt and being brief in your e-mails, and just getting what we need to know into those e-mails so that we're not overloaded with information and so we're actually interested. So we really make no distinction; a great product is a great product, wherever it's from, and we want to tell our readers about it. So yes, do get in touch.

Paul: Someone else asks, "Have you noticed anything unexpected from your readers?" So you've got some amazing readers who are obviously really into tech, and I wondered if you'd noticed any interesting themes from any kinds of products or services that you're talking about at the moment? Anything interesting that you're noticing as trends, from what your readers are reading?

Martin: So what our readers are reading, as in what's popular on the site?

Paul: Yes, what's popular... I think this is coming from the point of anything we can glean from you that you're seeing as an upcoming trend, based on the amount of interest from readers.

Martin: I think that the most interesting trend this year that we're seeing from readers is - and this feeds into what we've been saying already - is a lack of tolerance around slow-loading pages, around overloaded ads, that kind of thing. And this is something that publishers are seeing across the  web. When iOS 9 launched and included support for ad blockers, people were very worried saying this would be an adblockalipse, and overnight people will install ad blockers and nobody would get any revenue, and traffic would drop on all sites, and all that kind of thing. It hasn't happened, certainly we've noticed no notable drop in traffic at all that we can really attribute to ad blockers and get worried about. So I don't think that's going to happen overnight, but there's definitely room for improvements amongst publishers, and definitely an increasing awareness in the readers that there is more that publishers could be doing. So that's certainly something that we're looking at, from a technical point of view.

Paul: Martin, did you feel like the makers of today, the startup founders, are they making stuff that your users, readers or people that follow you are actually wanting? Do you feel like there's a good connection between what is being made and pushed, via what is actually required? Do you have any views on that?

Martin: It's hard to say, because I don't think there's anything that our readers are asking for that isn't being made, or anything like that. For example our readers - certainly an overlapping audience with this podcast, in terms of we have a lot of people who are developers and designers, and people in the app building business in some way, shape or form, and if they've got a problem, they'll probably work to solve it with a product that they'll build themselves. So yes, I don't think there's anything that I can really highlight that isn't being made and that could be made. But that's what's great about apps - you don't know what you want, until suddenly it appears in front of you and you're like, "Wow, this is just perfect for me."

Paul: Yes, and I'm actually thinking Instagram's latest one with the one second video.

Martin: Yes, absolutely. Boomerang is a great example of an app that when it came out last week I was like, "That's a bit of a silly idea for an app." Because everyone's saying, "Oh, it's like Vine, but rather than seven seconds it's one second loops." But it's not that at all; it's more like a Boomerang of one second videos. It comes forward and goes back again. So you have these very fun individual-looking, very unique-looking videos that you can make with it. I made one the other day of one of my dogs rolling his eyes; it was just waking up and it was rolling its eyes, and because it then plays backwards, it then looks like it's rolling its eyes back the other way and then also forward again. I did one of a tram here in Manchester, where I'm based, with a tram pulling into a stop, and then as it pulls in, it reverses back out again. It's just fun. I saw a really good one of dancing at a wedding. So yes, I don't know whether it's going to stick. I think the problem with Instagram - and Facebook in general, actually - is that they come up with these experimental apps that may be lost about five minutes in terms of how much people are actually interested in them. They might learn a bit about user interaction and what works and what doesn't work, but you end up with all these apps on your phone that never get used. All the other Instagram ones... Layout, for example, another Instagram one. I think I opened that once to try it, and I have no interest in that at all.

Paul: Yes, that's right. I think the same, it's a one-hit wonder. I want to switch gears slightly, because you are a guest who has a background of writing and you got into journalism, and I wondered about your story, Martin. Have you got any suggestions for anyone who wants to sort of follow a similar path in terms of how you did it, how you actually became the editor at The Next Web and then what you're doing now. Any advice for anyone who wants to follow a similar type of career path?

Martin: Yes, I mean for me, I was working in a school and I had a job where I was helping kids make TV and radio programs in the school. It was a fun job but I didn't exactly know where I'd go next, because it wasn't really something you could turn into a career. So at lunch times and after work I'd head over in my office room and I'd write technology blog posts. I'd just write them on my own site. That site, sadly I've left it neglected, without updating Wordpress for a while, and then it got hacked and then the ISP closed it down. So I've basically lost it now, although I'm sure it will be somewhere online if someone wants to dig out and find it. So I was just doing that for fun, and then back on FriendFeed, which was a great service that Facebook ended up buying, but it was a very innovative service back in 2008-2009; it was the first place that had real-time feeds.

I remember the day they launched real-time feeds, and it was like you couldn't keep up, basically. Just a rain of content flying down your screen, as people were like, "Wow, this is amazing! Real-time!" On there, Zee, who was a former editor-in-chief at The Next Web before me, he had just started in that role and he was looking for part-time people to write maybe one post a day, something like that. So I said, "How about me?" and I ended up joining the team and writing one, two, three posts a day, while I was doing other things, while I was doing my main day job. My first ever post was about Google Wave; people were learning about Google Wave, it launched at Google I/O 2009; it launched a day after Bing was launched by Microsoft. My headline was "Google's Wave drowns out Microsoft's Bing hype." I remember that to this day. So yes, in terms of how I did it, I just got out there and wrote stuff. Then I joined the site... Most people will maybe join a site that's quite small, and then maybe join another site that's bigger. I basically did that while staying at the same site, because The Next Web was tiny when I joined them. We're a lot bigger now, and we want to grow even bigger, but [unintelligible 00:23:06] and the best way to become a writer is to just start writing.

Paul: Yes, it's actually so ironic that I'm talking to you on a day following a launch of something I've been involved with which helps writers, actually. It helps writers avoid all the distractions, it's called ilys. What I was going to ask you is about your discipline of writing as well, because I can imagine that producing one to three posts a day whilst you've actually got some other kind of role and job must be quite challenging. How do you keep the discipline of actually writing and getting the content and articles actually written and published?

Martin: Well I think if it was for just my own personal blog, I wouldn't have the discipline. I would probably just go, "Well, I've had a busy day, I just want to sit and watch TV." So yes, on my personal blog I used to sometimes go a few days without writing a post, and if I look at my personal blog now, I wrote a very short post last week, that was my first post in about four or five months. So yes, that would probably be the same, but because I was writing for The Next Web, we were small at the time and there was only one full-time editorial team member - Zee, who was editor-in-chief - that's how small it was; I think there were like two or three part-time people writing with him. So the pressure was on to grow the site, and I was really passionate about writing about technology and I really wanted to grow the site, so I would just make the time. Back in those days, in 2009, I had one of those little Asus netbooks that ran Windows XP; you used to be able to get them for 150 or 200 quid. So sometimes I'd be sitting on the bus, writing a post and tethering to my phone to get it published. I did that many times, on a rush hour bus, through the Manchester traffic. Or I'd be doing it at lunch breaks, staying late after work to write something, writing something really late at night to go out the next morning. The real drive was that we were a small team, we were ambitious, we wanted to grow, and the way to do that was just to make sure that we wrote stuff and put it out there.

Commercial break [00:25:34] to [00:27:55]

Paul: So Martin, there's two things we need to do before we say goodbye to you. One is that we'd love to learn about the challenges that our guests face in their day-to-day work and what they're doing. It helps us come up with ideas for potential apps, for example. So what are, over the last month or two, or in fact as you're doing your new role probably, what are the big obstacles and frustrations that you're seeing, that you feel like you wish there was a solution for?

Martin: A big frustration I've always had and continue to have is e-mail. I think this would be what a lot of people would say: just having too much e-mail. In my old role... It's funny, when I said I turned chief I got so much e-mail, I very often couldn't keep up and I'd have to spend maybe two or three hours of the weekend catching up with my e-mail, because I don't like having... I'm not one of those people who can have an inbox of loads of unread e-mails for weeks and months at a time. I like to keep an empty inbox as much as possible. So I'd be using Inbox by Gmail, or Mailbox, or whatever I was using at the time, to schedule e-mails to come back to me at a time when I could deal with them, and I'd sit in a coffee shop on Saturdays and write them. I've noticed that just in the few days since I announced I was moving to a new role where I won't be maybe writing as much news, or at least I won't be assigning news for the people quite as much as I used to, I got a lot less e-mail; which is nice. But it's still something I need to keep an eye on, it's still something I need to spend a lot of time thinking about and replying to people.

I'm not one of those journalists who likes to ignore people. There are a lot of e-mails that I won't reply to, that I think are completely irrelevant to The Next Web, or sometimes I literally don't have time to reply. But I do like to reply where I can, and that eats up a lot of time, and people appreciate it. So just a way to manage pitches in a way that's really nice, and maybe centralize, so everyone can pick it up. I know ReadWrite, the tech blog, they actually use Zendesk for their e-mail, they were saying that recently on Twitter. That's obviously a customer service platform, and the people who send e-mails to them don't necessarily notice that the e-mails are going to Zendesk, but that means that anyone can handle them as they come in. But there's got to be a smarter way of dealing with massive amounts of e-mail, that maybe doesn't use e-mail at all.

Paul: Well if you have any app developers who want to solve that, maybe you want to listen to some past episodes... I know we had Dave Baggett, he was trying to solve that. He was actually the founding engineer of Crash Bandicoot, that big game in the '90s, and he's working and spent a lot of money on that. Then there's another guy, Branko Cerny who's obsessed with trying to solve that problem; that was one of my earliest episodes, back in fortyish. So have a look at that.

Martin, this is a show about apps, final thing. We love talking about apps, it wouldn't be right to let you get away without giving us maybe one or two really cool app recommendations from your phone, that you think we may not have come across before.

Martin: Well, I was listening to a couple of shows earlier, so I was thinking, "Hm, what could I suggest for this?" And I was actually going to suggest Boomerang, as the app that has come out most recently that I've been having fun with. We’ve discussed that one already. So yes, Boomerang - definitely a fun app. Very minimalist, there's not a lot to it, a single-purpose app, but it does that very well. I'll tell you an app that I use every day, and a lot of people have kind of either tried in the past and decided they don't like and have moved away from it, or they've never tried it, don't see the point of it. It's Swarm, which is obviously Foursquare's app for checking in. Foursquare had one app for place recommendations, where do I go for a restaurant, but also all the checking in, of I'm at McDonald's... I don't know if I've ever checked into a McDonald's, but... They moved that off a couple of years ago to a separate app, and a lot of people I think didn't really like that, and I think a lot of people gave up on it around then, but in recent months they've really improved the app. It's so much fun to use. When I check in at places, basically I'm a religious user of Swarm. I literally check in every place I go. If the NSA ever wants to find out where I've been they will just have to hack my Swarm account.

I check in everywhere, and I just love the fact that if I check in somewhere that I have not been for a while, it will say "This is your first check in here in 3 years", or whatever. And they give you so many fun reasons to keep using the app. I love the coins you get when you check in. For example, if I check in at a place I check in every week and I'm the mayor, I might get 13 points rather than 1 for checking. 3 because I'm the mayor, 10  because it's my 15th week in a row checking in at that place, and just all these fun things you never know. It surprises you with a lot of different things. Every Monday you get extra coins for your total, in the form of a piñata that you have to keep tapping on the screen to make all these coins explode all over the street. I mean it's not for everyone, but yes, I love it and I follow a lot of people that I know, so it's fun to see where people are and what they're doing all over the world. Someone I know is at The Wall Street Journal Europe in London at the moment, and I'm thinking, "What's he doing there?" Someone else I know is on a 7 train on the MTA subway in Queens. So yes, it's a fun app. It's been around for 6 years in various forms, but I think they've really got it right in the last few months, and I really love using it, so that's definitely one to check out.

Paul: Well Martin, I'm thrilled, because you happen to have mentioned an app that has never been mentioned before, an app that I use every day as well. I am a big swarmer as well, I'm obsessed with checking in. That's wonderful, and I can't believe that's never been talked about. This has been great, Martin, what a terrific chat. I'm going to make sure that we have all the links to those apps on your episode, that's 375, and you can find that from TheAppGuy.co, just go and search Martin Bryant if you can't see it. Martin, in the meantime, obviously now your e-mails are drying up a little bit, how is the best way of getting in contact with you?

Martin: Always, always e-mail. Yes, it's Martin@thenextweb.com.

Paul: Wonderful. Martin, thank you so much for coming on The App Guy Podcast, really a pleasure talking to you and all the best with your new role and growing The Next Web to the next level.

Martin: Thank you very much.

5 App Marketing Lessons from Tracking Over 10 Million Mobile App Users

Paul: Welcome to The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. I go around the world interviewing guest startup founders. Today, I'm in Belarus (it goes to shows you just how global my show is now). My task here is to really help you out as an app entrepreneur. I find co-founders, founders, entrepreneurs, app-preneurs so you get to learn from the best inspirational interviews.

Today,  I've got the co-founders of SplitMetrics. Max Kamenkov who works alongside Eugene Nevgen. Max and Eugene -  welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Max: Hi Paul, it's a pleasure to be your guest.

Paul: Thank you for coming on the show. Tell us about SplitMetrics.

Max: Well our service, SplitMetrics, helps app entrepreneurs to A/B test their AppStore pages. It helps them to:

• figure out what variation

• what idea of their graphical assets is the most converting one.

I bet your listeners know that advertising costs are getting higher and higher these days. It's getting very important to optimize the costs of user acquisition to get the most out of these ad campaigns. So we are trying to help people to get the idea of:

• how their pages are converting

• what to improve

• how to improve

...and things like that.

Paul: Okay, so you do a lot of work with websites then, where people are going to the app page on the website and looking at split testing those to see which can convert more downloads.

Max: Yes, you got the idea right. So we create pages that look similar to the App Store or Google Play and analyze user behavior on the pages, tracking all their activity, analyzing them and showing the app entrepreneurs the breakdown of what the users do and how they convert. Using this information, they can make the right decisions.

Paul: Well this is a great episode already. I'm really excited about talking to you Max, because there're a lot of questions immediately coming to mind. So for example, in your experience - and if you need to confirm with Eugene who's near you - how many downloads tend to come from a website, compared to directly from the App Store. Do you know?

Max: It really depends on the quality of traffic that you drive to your website's landing page. We've seen that these numbers are not very different. Actually, no one knows the conversion for the App Store, because Apple is a kind of a black box now.

Paul: Yes, that's right. A black box that no one can open.

Max: Yes, so we are trying to get a brief sight on that kind of data. Different kinds of apps or games have different conversions. We've already tracked over 10one million users on our experiments. I noticed the following examples:

- mobile games have a conversion at about five or six percent

- dating apps have a conversion of about 70%

- travel apps may convert people at a range of 45%

.....and so on and so forth. It truly depends on the category of the product that you have in the App Store or on Google Play.

Paul: That's fascinating, so let me just try to understand the data that you've just given us there. So what you're saying is conversion - I'm guessing that's conversion from landing on a website to then clicking and downloading the app. Is that right?

Max: Yes.

Paul: And what you're saying... What a variety of information, 70% would convert when landing on a dating website and they want to download the app. So 70% of those people will actually go and download the app, whereas if it's travel it's less, it's 45%, and even lower for the other one you said. That's a wide variety, isn't it, depending on the category?

Max: Yes. Again, it really depends on the quality of traffic, but if you drive your target audience to the landing page... Well, naturally we call it here not the website, but the landing that looks similar to your App Store. So if you drive your target audience, it will act similar to those people that get to your App Store page, so yes, you will see the conversion like that.

Paul: Okay, I've just had an aha moment, which means that I've totally clicked on something. I'm guessing a lot of people listening to this are sending traffic to the Apple page, where you can download and it opens up iTunes, or to the Google Play page, where you get the install button. But I'm getting it's a lot better to send it to your own server, your  own website, and then start split testing those to see how you can get more people to click that install button, or go to Google Play and click the download button.

Max: Yes, correct. Well, let me tell you how this system works, to avoid any misunderstanding. So basically with SplitMetrics you enter the URL of your AppStore or Google Play page, you create or upload different types of variations that you may want to A/B test... Say you have a bunch of icons and you are not sure about what to choose, you can create the landing pages that will look similar to your real AppStore page, but will have different icons. You get one link, you'll use this link for your advertising campaign. People that click that link will get to the web landing page that will look similar to the app page that you have in your AppStore or Google Play. They will click there, engage with the screenshots or whatever elements they want, we will track all this information and show you the breakdown of the data. When people click the Install or Get button on that web landing page, they go to the real app store, download that from there and then start using the app.

Paul: This is great. First of all, the testing of the icon... I'm already thinking actually for myself, testing the podcasting icon and getting people to the page and see which is better. But I can imagine that's really useful because it could be quite a disparity between different icons; one icon could lead to that conversion of 70%, another icon could lead to that conversion of 45%. I mean, this is a big difference.

Max: Yes, absolutely. That's basically the idea that stands behind this service. When we were working on a special project a few months ago, we got a promotional artwork request from Apple, and we were not sure what kind of artwork to choose and to upload, because every designer has his own vision, his own ideas, and the more people on the team you have, the more difficult it is to choose only one thing. So we were spending hours talking, discussing and decided to upload one variation that fits some extent to everyone's vision. But the reality was a bit different, and we got fewer installs than we expected. So then we decided with Eugene whether we have to find if there's any kind of tool that will help us to define the quality of our ideas, before uploading them to the store. Unfortunately then we didn't find anything and decided to build it ourselves.

Paul: That's what we want to hear, and that is the inspiring bit for any app entrepreneur who's listening to this right now: if there's something that is not being served out there, then go build it. Like you did.

Max: Yes, that's the only way.

Paul: Yes, and that's really where... Rather than trying to copy things that are already successful and that have big marketing budgets - that I fell into the trap of in the past - build something that's not out there. I think that might be the takeaway so far. Tell us about this Apple approach then. So Apple were promoting one of your apps, and they approached you and they wanted to feature you, is that right?

Max: Yes, absolutely. This app is basically a kind of an additional tool for the service that helps interpreters to sign their docs by a digital signature, so it's not like the mobile standalone product. But in any case, when we got that kind of request we were absolutely excited because you know, when big brother tells you, "Hey, get on board", you always get excited about that.

Paul: Normally it's all the other way. It's me constantly bombarding Apple, saying "Hey, can you promote this? Can you do this?" And they're coming to you, which is much better.

Max: Yes, so we were excited. But you know, after we spent many hours discussing what kind of idea to choose, we got absolutely exhausted and the version that we decided to upload was far away from the initial one. To be honest, we didn't decide to build this service from scratch, because before doing the first string of code we talked to our peer mobile gaming companies, friends or mobile marketers, and describe them this kind of idea; we got massive feedback, analyzed everything and it took about three weeks for us to get the idea and deliver it to all our target audiences, get feedback, analyze the results and start prototyping.

Paul: Right. So let me get this straight then, you guys are a team of app builders, app entrepreneurs yourselves, you're releasing apps into the Google Play and the Apple AppStore; but this is like a pivot for you, because at one point in time you had the idea, then Apple approached you, you got stressed out about what to present to Apple for the ultimate conversion, so you started to build your own tools. Then you started to push that out to your own community, and that's the birth of SplitMetrics.

Max: Yes, so we were doing the mobile app that I've already mentioned for service, although we weren't alone there; it's like a company that builds that project. Besides that, we had a mate in our team who has been doing user acquisition for mobile apps for about two years, and he probably got one of the first influencers for our service, delivering the most  valuable feedback. It appeared that he had tried to build something like that, but using Excel spreadsheets and some other tools, on the knee, as we call it here.

Paul: Yes, that's just not going to do nowadays, is it? So hence the idea, and I'm guessing the most valuable is the split testing of various landing pages. Could you split test anything else other than the icons?

Max: Sure. Almost any point or element that you see on your AppStore or Google Play page, you can easily A/B test here. To name a few, they are video app previews, you can measure whether there is any impact on your conversion if you add or remove video app previews; you can A/B test different types of screenshots, the order of screenshots, you can change descriptions, you can even try to test the price of the app, placing different numbers on this buy button; you can A/B test and measure how people pressed Read [inaudible 00:15:20] and engaged with the description, and we currently finished developing the Apple Watch compatibility to give people the opportunity to A/B test whether they have to add Apple Watch support to their app.

Paul: Yes, you could almost add Download on Apple Watch, and not build the app, but just see how many people click that, then you know the demand.

Max: Then also you can decide whether you have to spend the time to develop that kind of integration. An additional thing is that you can also A/B test whether you have to translate the description of your product to a foreign language. I remember Matt was telling us that one day he translated the definition of his app to the Dutch language and saw no impact at all, just because people from the Netherlands speak English.

Paul: It's like their second language.

Max: Yes. Besides the Netherlands, there are a good number of countries that you can't be sure enough, so thus you can A/B test and see if there's an impact on conversion.

Paul: So Max, in all the episodes I've recorded, I feel I've got to ask you some generic questions I'm asked all the time, because these app entrepreneurs are constantly asking me these things, and maybe you can think about your own... We don't need to give specific numbers but give us your own examples, your own results maybe, from some of the campaigns that you've worked with. Do you get more clicks having a video preview, or just having the plain screenshots?

Max: Well if we speak about mobile games, then the answer is yes; a video preview is absolutely a good idea to add to your game because we noticed that gamers do like to engage with the gameplay of your product before installing these 600 megabytes files. So we saw that these video app previews increase the conversion greatly. If we speak about utility apps, which are basically non-gaming apps, it really depends on the category. We ran a few tests with travel apps and saw that there is practically no impact on conversion after they added these video previews.

Paul: Wow, so those depend on the category. Okay, so here's another one: should app entrepreneurs release on iOS or Android? And so I'm guessing if you must have a landing page with both icons, which one gets clicked more? The iOS or the Android?

Max: Well, to be honest, we don't have such information, because in order to measure that you will have to invite both iOS and Android users to that kind of landing page.

Paul: Well what about conversion rates then? How about if you do a campaign for an Apple AppStore, do you get more people clicking the Apple icon to download that app, as opposed to the Google Play store?

Max: I think that numbers are pretty similar, and the reason for that is again, the success of your experiment really depends on the quality of the users that you drive to your test. So basically if you have an Android app, you might be driving the Android users there, which are the target audience for you. That means that they will be more likely to click the download button.

Paul: Have you ever done an experiment with a paid app, where you are inviting someone to a landing page and you announce that it is a paid app, and then you look at the conversions and wondering if there's any difference between the Android users clicking that paid app and installing it, or the Apple users clicking? Because that's an urban myth, isn't it? We all often are told that Apple fans will more likely buy an app, compared to Android.

Max: Yes, so I can say that there is a difference, and the iOS users are more likely to play the button which a price on it, compared to Android users.

Commercial break [00:20:21] to [00:22:55]

Paul: Thank you. There you go. All those people that keep asking me that, there's your answer. If you're going to do a paid app, do an iOS app to start with, because you are more likely to get paid.

Max: Yes, well actually we've run a good number of tests and we keep running them, and sometimes we get absolutely amazing results. I can also share a very interesting point here. We were amazed to learn that only one percent of people click the "Read More" button and read the full description of your app. So it basically tells at least us, or some friends that develop apps that we know, that you basically there is not much need to pay a lot of attention or effort to create a very long description for your app, just because people don't really read it.

Paul: That is fascinating. So just to repeat what you've said, only one percent of the people actually click "Read More." So that is not the most important thing of what you do; the most important thing is the title, the description, and the icon.

Max: Yes, absolutely. Right.

Paul: Wow. And what are you seeing from the cost of acquisition then? You said it was going up. Have you got any guidance on acquiring new downloads, any good place you found to acquire new users?

Max: Yes, sure. I think that before doing any kind of user acquisition, you have to spend some time trying to figure out whether the screenshots or description that you have on your store are good enough, because even one percent change of the conversion may bring you a good number of new users, or may soak your budget. For example, we've been playing around with these statistics and calculated that, say you have a gaming app which has a five percent conversion, and you are able to increase this conversion up to seven percent. One day you want to run a user acquisition campaign, you buy one million clicks to your product, and by having the conversion at 7%, you basically save $70,000 per this user acquisition campaign, which means a good number. This is something that we want to help app entrepreneurs to do.

Paul: I see. So what you're saying is you're helping people save money because it's easier to increase conversions, rather than try to spend more money on getting more people to your landing page.

Max: Well yes, so basically you have to think about both sides. But if you have an optimized AppStore page, then it will be easier for you to run effective user acquisition campaigns.

Paul: Max, I'm loving this chat. I almost feel like we need to go deeper into the launch, and I'm tempted to invite you on to the AppStore launch stories podcast that I'm doing, which goes into more detail. But for now, that was excellent going through all that stuff. There's one more thing I'd like to do before we say goodbye to you, Max, it's the fact that we love to know about apps, we love to know what entrepreneurs have got on their phones. I'm wondering if you could give us one or two app recommendations from your phone; one or two that we may not have come across before. So do you have an app or two on your phone that you could tell us about?

Max: Well I have one of my favorite apps for traveling, which is MAPS.ME. Basically, it's a kind of an offline map of any country in the world, that you can download prior to traveling to that kind of place, and then use it there. Since from time to time I travel to different countries, like Russia, Poland, you don't always have internet connection there, so it's difficult to use Google Maps or any kind of online maps. So what I like about this kind of app is that I can download the app, it has all the points there, like subway stations, restaurants, bars, whatever you might want to find in your city, and I can use it on the go and get around the city easily.

Paul: Great, Max. I will make sure I put links to that on the show notes, so for you listening, just go to episode 299 and it will be Max Kamencov and Eugene Nevgen, and you'll see the links to the things that we're mentioning. Also, I guess I can put a link to some examples of the websites and landing pages that you've been talking about.

Max: Well, in terms of a good app combined with proper AppStore optimization, I could also tell you about WiFi Pro app. They have done a good job in terms of screenshots optimization. Besides that, the app is also kind of useful for me, because it's generally a database of Wi-Fi passwords that you may use while going through the city. If at some point in time you run out of your internet balance or your cell phone can't connect with 3G, using this app you can get connected to a public Wi-Fi or to a Wi-Fi with a password and use it.

Paul: Yes, I will make sure that we put a link to that so people can check it out, not just for the app but also for the landing page because you said it's a good example to see somebody who has improved conversion and what they've done to do that. So I'll make sure I put a link to that. This is great, honestly. What a great episode. How best can we reach out to either you, Max or to Eugene? What's the best way of getting in touch with you guys?

Max: Well you can reach out through the LinkedIn app, or Facebook, or just drop us a message on SplitMetrics.com website and we'll reach out.

Paul: Great. I'll make sure we put links to those as well. Thank you so much to Max and also to Eugene who's sitting there as well. I thoroughly enjoyed going through the chat with you. All the best with SplitMetrics, thanks very much for bringing the world and awesome service, and I really hope the best for you. I'm sure it's not going to be long until Yahoo! or Google are knocking on your door.

Max: Well, you'll be the first one to know.

Paul: You'll get another approach from Apple.

Max: You'll be the first one to know about that then.

Paul: We would love that. Okay, all the best.

Max: Thank you, Paul, thank you.

What I Learned From A Top Journalist At TechCrunch

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I'm your host, it's Paul Kemp. I love this show, we get to speak to the most amazing people in tech from around the world, and I'm going to just jump straight into this, because who better to speak to us about tech than someone who's writing for TechCrunch? His name is Steve O'Hear and he is writing for TechCrunch, editor at TechCrunch, but also he's got a wonderful, long history in technology, in startups, and we may even be able to tease out from him his experience of starting up a company called Beepl. But for the time being, Steve, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Steve: Thank you for having me.

Paul: Thank you for coming on. First of all, tell us about writing at TechCrunch. How many years have you been doing it?

Steve: I've been a technology journalist for eight years, but I think I joined TechCrunch in 2009 and stayed for about over two years, and then as you mentioned, I did drive into a startup and then I came back about three years ago.

Paul: Let's just jump straight into that startup, because a lot of people listening to this show are going through the same thing: they're either thinking about starting a startup, or wanting to do their own thing. Now you're had the good fortune of trying a startup and you've also got the good fortune of being in technology for years and being an influential writer and totally tapped into the tech press. So it must have been a big hit for you when you went through your startup; tell us about the story.

Steve: Yes, I've been mainly covering European startups for TechCrunch for almost two years, and you get to talk to tons of entrepreneurs, particularly at the early stage, so before they get big and before they have PR people. My background before journalism was a mixture of teaching web development, so I've always considered myself to be a bit of a product-type person, I don't like the creative process. So you're talking to all these entrepreneurs and you're seeing them raise funding and launch really cool products and you sort of think, at some point I started to think, "Do you know what? I'd love to be on the other side of the table." And then an opportunity came up where a very talented developer, a tech-type person approached me to do some consultation - which I don't really do, but I offered to the kid a product, and he was just going to get some advice. Then he kind of talked me into getting a bit more involved and then it came to a point where he said, "Do you want to be a co-founder?" and that was really tempting. After a lot of persuasions, I quit TechCrunch and co-founded this startup, with someone I'd met online.

Paul: Steve, I'd to pick up on what you've just said there about quitting because a lot of people I know listening to this right now are thinking those same thoughts about quitting, but it is a massive risk in terms of that leap of faith. How did you overcome the feeling of just taking a big risk? Talk us through how you overcame it and actually did it.

Steve: Yes, sure. So publicly, I made it seem like the decision was quite decisive, but it really wasn't. You know, in tech journalism TechCrunch is pretty big, so I felt like I'd reached that sort of Premier League of tech journalism, and I wasn't really sure if that'd be a way back if I quit. So I really, honestly, I spent weeks and weeks deciding on moving in a pitch stage for the startup that we were pitching to investors. I even made it slightly jokingly part my Interim CEO, or iCEO, which I think Steve Jobs used when he came back to Apple. That's how, I suppose, slightly daunted I was about quitting journalism and doing a startup. So I think it is something that you really think through. On the other hand, I saw this as a really unique opportunity to swap sides of the table, and rather than writing about other people's stories, hopefully write a story of our own.

Paul: How did you go about the initial stages of raising money and getting good exposure about the idea? Talk us through the early part of your journey with Beepl.

Steve: We raised at the worst possible time because we literally didn't have any money left. The co-founder - the technical person - had already developed a lot of the technology on his own, and was literally unable to pay rent. So that's when we quite desperately went fundraising. We had a lead with a Prague-based VC called Credo Ventures, so at the point when I quit TechCrunch was the point when we'd already started talking to Credo Ventures. We knew there was a very good chance of crowding a funding round with this particular VC; but again, as a journalist I covered funding rounds time and time again, but I'm going to be honest, I didn't really fully appreciate the fundraising process. Particularly when you get a VC who says yes and maybe you're offered a terms sheet, that's when the negotiations really start. I remember the first long phone call I had with the VC firm when we started to negotiate what was originally not a particularly favourable terms sheet, because we were so desperate. Like I said, we were raising at the entirely wrong time. You should always raise money when you least need it because then you have a stronger negotiating position. I remember after this first phone call... Having seen the first terms sheet, I remember phoning up my dad and saying, "I've just stared capitalism in the eyes, and I think I blinked first."

Paul: I don't think we've had on this show anyone who's talked in such detail about that process. So you eventually went out, I'm guessing that the negotiations went okay and you did actually manage to raise some money?

Steve: Yes, we closed around... I think on paper it was near $400,000. European startups always announce that or try to. If their funding round isn't too high, then obviously in dollars it would look better. But the original terms sheet wasn't brilliant, and I did multiple negotiations, phone calls. It was really serious, like a stalemate at one point. I managed to get a terms sheet knocked into shape a bit more and by the end both we and the VC were sort of happy that we moved the right amount if you know what I mean. Because this is the weirdest thing about fundraising, and I thought about this as a journalist since a lot: it's a complete conflict of interest. Because when you go into a fundraising negotiation, your job is to make the investor think you're a brilliant proposition; in a way, you're tempted to tell them what they want to hear. But the minute you sign the terms sheet and then you do the shareholder agreement and the money lands in your bank, then you're there in effect, you're a partner. So you're no longer wooing them, you're on a level playing field again, and you have to make sure you level with them. The startup we did wasn't really successful, to say the least. So you're in a partnership where you did everything to make yourself look as attractive as possible, and then in effect you get married and they see the [unintelligible 00:09:03].

Paul: That's a beautiful way of putting it. So what happened then? Because you ultimately learned a lot of lessons and the risk of you never going back into tech was completely a fallacy, because you did. What did you learn from the whole experience that you could help teach us?

Steve: Several things. The biggest surprise was the startup failed ultimately. It was a consumer-facing product, an app where anybody could ask a question and anybody could answer the question, so in some ways it was a little bit like Quora, but with a difference because we had some smart tech that looked at the questions that you had already answered, looked at your LinkedIn, your Twitter, your Facebook and essentially redirected the questions that people asked on the site to those that our technology decided who was best to answer. It tried to match questions in a smart way to those who could answer them. So it had some cool tech and it got really positive reviews. Obviously with a journalism background, I worked very hard and managed to get us covered in every single tech publication more or less, and even place like CNN; so it launched very publicly, but ultimately it obviously didn't solve a problem that resonated with enough users and we ran out of money, so it failed in that respect. So I guess what I learned in a really harsh way was that no matter how much publicity you get, how much hype you build, how strong your relationships are in the industry, if a product doesn't resonate with enough people, if the problem you're solving isn't one that enough people have, then you're probably not going to succeed. And also I've been told many times, it's probably harder to launch a consumer-facing startup maybe in Europe than it is in the Valley, because in the Valley there are more early adopters that will help to make your thing get a certain amount of pickup, and spread a bit more virally, I guess. But that said, this was a few years ago and the AppStore platform helped your product move quicker; everything was getting quicker and quicker. So that was one thing I learned, that PR is not a magic bullet by any means.

Paul: Can I just pick you up on that? It's just genius what you've just said. Seriously, because everyone listening to my show over a length of time knows that I repeat this time and time again: it's about solving a real world problem, and that's the thing I've learned from 378 of this show. You've just confirmed that it doesn't matter because often people think it's publicity, but it is about building something awesome that is actually solving a problem, and I love that you've picked up on that huge theme that runs throughout my show.

Steve: And the problem has to be big enough, at least from a commercial point of view. You may solve a problem for a thousand people. Maybe that problem is a massive problem for those thousand people, but that isn't probably going to be a business.

Paul: Good. Okay, so you just added to it: solve a problem but solve a problem that's going to affect enough people to create a business from.

Steve: Definitely. So that was one lesson, and the other thing I learned was I honestly thought that when I quit journalism that my contact book - which wasn't bad back then, it's a lot better now; but it was pretty good - would probably become useless overnight. Because when you're a journalist you are pitched stories, everybody wants your help, you can do a lot for other people, so they're very nice to you. And when I did the startup, I mainly started cynically because honestly, people want your attention so much when you're a journalist. I thought, now I've quit, right? Most of my Twitter followers, people I've established a relation with, I'm no longer useful to them. And what I've found was the opposite. Actually in this industry people are very willing to help and even though we failed, we got tons of help. There were technical problems we couldn't solve, and I literally e-mailed a contact saying, "Hey, I know you did a startup a few years ago that solved a similar problem." It was really heart-warming, the amount of help I got on that journey.

Paul: Yes, and I almost want to echo that in the app world, as well among app entrepreneurs it is the same. If anyone listening who is deciding whether to get into this game, you've heard from Steve there that it is truly a remarkable thing that's almost very collaborative, even though many of the ideas are crossing over in this potential competition. We're going to have to switch to journalism now - tech journalism - because you are at TechCrunch and no doubt I have been in touch with many of the listeners who have come out with some specific questions. Do you mind if we go through a few of these?

Steve: No, go over it.

Paul: Cool. One of the listeners was wondering, with sites like TechCrunch how do you manage the relationships, as a journalist, with large companies? With really big VC's or the large companies that have fully staffed PR agencies, and how does that compare with smaller, indie app developers or the smaller startups?

Steve: The huge companies - the Facebooks, the Twitters - they have internal PR people and sometimes even a PR agency on top of that. So you tend to get to know who the PRs are, and at TechCrunch if I don't have a contact, hopefully somebody else does. So reaching out to those big companies is pretty standard. How does it compare? So with the smaller indie companies or the startups, they often don't have a PR agency, or they think that if they hire one, that's their PR - done. That's a mistake, because if you're the kind of journalist I am when you're covering really early stage stuff you want a relationship with the founders. They're the best people. They're the people that can almost always tell their story, talk about their product better than anybody else, with more passion and more knowledge. So I guess the difference is big companies are very corporate, they have layers of PR; smaller companies either do it themselves in a very naive way - which I quite like - or they hire an agency. Now when they hire an agency, they're often in the situation whereby if they hire a bad agency, that agency has much bigger clients, so they're not really worth too much to them. Like I said, or like I alluded to, there's the mistake: if you hire an agency as a small company, that's not PR done. It's not like hiring a cloud provider. It's the beginning, it's not the end. And I know, with this sort of avalanche of Kickstarter campaigns - as journalists, we are so tired of products that get announced two years before they're going to hit the market because they're doing a Kickstarter campaign. But I've had startup founders write to me and say, "Nobody's backing our Kickstarter, but we hired an agency that's really expensive and we still don't get any pre-signups."

Paul: That's not their pitch, is it, by any chance?

Steve: Practically it is, yes. Desperation. So yes, I guess that's where the difference really is. Big companies have massive PR machinery, which is layers of PR; this kind of sometimes slows things down. Small companies either do it themselves - which is okay, but obviously some are better than others - or they outsource, and if they outsource wrongly it backfires because they think the job's done, and really it's not.

Paul: Well Steve, that's music to anyone who is listening, music to their ears because we often want to think that there is a level playing field, and as these big tech companies and big sites grow up, the smaller indie entrepreneur, smaller startup founder can sometimes feel like it's a bit against them if they don't have the money, but it's nice to hear that from your perspective you're on top of this, and you want relationships with the founders.

Steve: I can give you an example. It gets back to what we were saying about solving a genuine problem, or creating an awesome product that people like in enough numbers. I know there's an app called Dubsmash which is blowing up over the last year or so. They didn't pitch me, I reached out to them because I was getting told by a sum of people this app is blowing up.

Paul: Oh I see, so you don't want to be left out in a way, you've got to identify the trends early and make sure that you're on top of them.

Steve: That's right. As a tech blogger, or as a tech journalist, whatever you want to call it these days, I have several things that I try to do, but one of the things that every tech journalist or influencer does is they're a filter. Their job is to filter out the crap and introduce the readers to the good stuff; I mean, on a very basic level. So every now and again there's a breakout hit like Dubsmash, where even if we weren't the first to cover the app, you can't ignore it, right? You can't ignore an app that's doing that well. So again, it gets back to just building a product that's good, that solves a problem or resonates with enough people and the PR, to a certain extent, will take care of itself.

Paul: That is fantastic tips. How about this one then: As an app entrepreneur I know you get this many times, so answer it how you like: how do people catch your eye? Because you talked about wanting to look out for things that are really blowing up and speak to the founders, but how's the best way of making that initial contact with you and catching your eye on something?

Steve: If it's an app that hasn't yet launched, but let's say is going to launch in a couple of weeks' time, then it's literally just e-mail me, tell me what the app does, why it's better or different from what already exists and give me a sense of the timeline of when it's launching. Because if it's too much in advance I'll go, "Okay, whatever. Get back to me a week before you're ready." And if it's today or tomorrow you have a chance of missing out from me personally, because I'm usually pretty booked up with other launches. We have breaking news, we have [00:20:19] that I'm trying to chase where I've been given some insider information, I'm hunting down contacts trying to get a second source for it so we can run it. And then we get stuff that is pretty planned, so a funding announcement that's going to happen in a week's time or an app launch. I always try to [00:20:36]. But basically just tell me what the app does, what the problem is that it solves and why it's different and hopefully better than what already exists. Because to be honest with you most apps don't feel particularly original; and in a sense that's a good thing, because if somebody else is trying to solve the same problem, then it sort of validates that that problem maybe actually does exist for enough people, but I always need to know what the differentiation is. Why is it better? Why is the stuff out there not very good? And you see this time and time again, that many apps just simply take an existing problem that already has some solutions, but we all know that this isn't good and that somebody covers them much better.

Paul: Just moving on now, someone else wants to know what do you feel about the tech press in general? Do you feel like there needs to be a push to promote more diverse role models and more sustainable businesses? Because there obviously is an element, as you said, of hype on the latest thing, but do you feel like there's enough exposure to those sustainable models of tech? Do you have a view on that?

Steve: In terms of revenue models you mean?

Paul: Yes, I think the actual listener is asking about, you know, you read everywhere about the 18-year-old who gets bought up by Yahoo! and all that kind of success stories, but we don't get a good flavour perhaps of all the horror stories as well. For example, you know, how much it was reported about your failure. I feel like this is where the listener is going. Do you feel like we get enough exposure to those things that don't work, as well? Or is there a complete focus on the things that are blowing up and are successful already?

Steve: Yes, we don't. There isn't enough written about failure or enough about horror stories or enough of the bad news. I wouldn't blame tech journalists, we work really hard to get out stories, to get our insight and to get to our information, but at the end of the day everybody says they want the industry to be more open. But those who are really in the know are the least likely to spill the beans. What happens is when an app or a startup fails, you don't get an e-mail a hundred times a day by an app entrepreneur saying, "Yes, we might have launched but you know what? We got a hundred downloads so we ran out of money. We're going back to our day jobs." That doesn't happen. But if that really is what the reader is getting to, I'd actually like writing about failure or near-failure. I wrote a story about a startup that is doing really well now - I forget the name - but they took out a payday loan for the business.

Paul: Wow, that was brave.

Steve: Yes, and I don't know how many days they had left, about 30 days. And now they're fully VC-backed. I think the company is Marvel, which makes a prototype app.

Paul: I've been using Marvel, I think I was told about it over a year ago, maybe two years ago. That's amazing, I didn't realize... Well, I'll tell you what, we'll take a link from you and we'll just confirm that that is it, and we'll put it on the website. So it's TheAppGuy.co for anyone who want to go and check that out; TheAppGuy.co, just search for the episode with Steve O'Hear. Steve, are you okay to do one or two more of these?

Steve: Yes, sure.

Paul: A lot of people, obviously they don't get this time and I want to make sure that we cover a lot of these things that are asked. So here we go: what trends are you seeing amongst your readers? Anything interesting that you feel is kind of a good insight in terms of products, services or apps that are coming out? What interesting trends  are you seeing from your readers and what they're reading?

Steve: That's a hard one. I get to see trends because I get pitched so many ideas every day. There's a lot of emphasis at the moment on the so-called "on-demand" apps that allow you to get something really quickly; which is interesting, because it means that the length to purchasing a service and getting it is shortening. So that's like in cleaning... Everybody calls himself the Uber or apps... So anyway, that's one trend; the short time between thinking you want something and it arriving somehow; it's interesting. And the other thing I still am astounded by is I get pitched a lot of startups that are essentially taking a legacy industry and still moving it online. There are still industries where people do things primarily with phone calls, fax machines, Excel spreadsheets, and a lot of startups I'm seeing are taking in a sense a business process and making it digital. Whether that be finding a room to rent, or farm-tech, agriculture-track, tracking farming processes that again were done with spreadsheets or pen and paper, freight... I've covered recently a couple of startups that are moving the freight industry away from the fax machines to online. And that sort of astounds me, because you think that job surely would have been done like five years ago.

Paul: Yes, that seems like a no-brainer. Wow.

Steve: I think that's where you cannot underestimate specific industry knowledge, right? Because I could probably get a developer and build a better way of tracking farming stuff, fields and weather and all that sort of stuff in terms of crop planning, but I don't know anything about farming. So I couldn't do that. I could do the tech side and I could help design the product, but I don't have that industry knowledge. And that's what I still find interesting: there are still a ton of industries that haven't been digitized yet, and that surprises me.

Paul: Yes, you kind of reminded me of the example of Halo as well, where the three tech guys go and meet the three most seasoned taxi drivers and had a really good insight, wanted to do something like Uber but in London and obviously that was successful, but you think that the bigger advantage they had was insiders who knew the industry back to front.

Steve: Yes, it has to be. As a tech journalist, especially at TechCrunch, I'm so focused personally on European startups. Sometimes it's not tech journalism, it's business journalism and my biggest learning curve often on some days is literally getting my head around a whole industry that has nothing to do with tech. It's just that tech is coming along and is disrupting the existing way of doing things, which is really a completely way of looking at it. So it's not the tech I have to understand, it's a whole industry and why a particular [unintelligible 00:30:37] is going to change that industry, hopefully for the better, although not always.

Paul: Steve, what is nice is that normally I have a section where we try to flesh out an idea for an app, but I think you have just given a lot of people listening to this a great idea, which is to look around for industries that are in the stone age, in a way, and just try and bring them into the digital age. It just seems like an obvious possible winning solution for potential problem-solving.

Steve: Definitely [unintelligible 00:31:13] startups suffer a disservice have an inbuilt business model, which is people pay, right? They pay every month to use that software because it makes that business process orders of magnitude more efficient.

Paul: Wonderful. There is only one more thing we need to do before we say goodbye, Steve. This is a show about apps; you obviously are inundated, your inbox overflowing with apps coming to the market, how on earth can we get you to pick one or two...? But would you be able to give us one or two app recommendations of apps you feel like we may not have come across before?

Steve: That's really tough, I feel on the spot now.

Paul: Okay, what's on your home screen, how about that?

Steve: I'm really traditional. Seriously, because I have to get stuff done. My home screen is a ton of messaging apps, WhatsApp, and all of them virtually. I rely on Skype every single day, and I still do tons and tons of e-mail. So I'm kind of flat boring when it comes to apps. I still am a big fan of Foursquare or Swarm. I think a lot of tech journalists are like probably the only people that use Swarm because they like to check in and see where they've been, and that's kind of funny. But no, I tend to try a lot of apps for a very short amount of time which is really, in a sense, terrible. It's a demonstration of why the app market is so hard to break through because there are so many new apps and often of a very high standard. Over the last few years, I've seen the standard of app design improve remarkably.

Paul: Definitely. Steve, what a wonderful chat with you, I've really enjoyed it. For anyone who want to get links, just go to Episode 378 with Steve O'Hear and you'll see links to Swarm and to other things that we've talked about; I'll make sure we put those in there. Steve, in the meantime, how best can people reach out to you? What's the best way of getting in touch?

Steve: To be honest, e-mail. I'm very responsive on e-mail. My e-mail is pretty public, you can put a link to it in the show notes; and Twitter, I'm also really responsive on Twitter. I like how with Twitter it's quite a good way of having a bit of banter, having a bit more of a human relationship with readers and people who want to pitch me. That said, don't ever pitch me on Twitter. That is kind of annoying because I manage everything in my inbox. So by all means, exchange banter and good conversation and send me links to other stuff that isn't yours on Twitter, but if you want to do a serious pitch, e-mail. Keep it short, keep it sweet, tell me why the product solves the problem, who it solves the problem for, and maybe why it's better or different from what else is out there. Simple. I do tend to reply to every e-e-mail, and if I don't then trace me up a couple of days later and then I definitely do.

Paul: Wonderful. Steve, it's so wonderful to hear that because I've spoken to a lot of entrepreneurs who just get disenchanted with the reaching out and never getting any response, and to hear you say that is wonderful, so thanks so much...

Steve: The only other thing I'll say is you're going to get a lot of no's, right? So take it on your chin if you get a no. It sounds horrible, but don't always expect feedback. I get a lot of people lately when I say no they want to know why. If I did that I wouldn't get any writing done whatsoever.

Paul: Yes, they kind of forget you've got a day job as well.

Steve: Yes, exactly.

Paul: Wonderful. Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining us on The App Guy, what a wonderful journey, and all the best with your next 10-20 years. And hey, don't get too tempted for the next startup but you never know... We'll have to keep a watch, watch the space, right?

Steve: Yes, totally. I'm pretty sure it will happen again, but not for a while. Right now I'm loving being back in journalism, so yes, thanks.

What I Learned From Over 60 Million Views

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is the show that we go around the world and we introduce you to the most inspiring, interesting guests that we can find in the world of PR, entrepreneurship, mobile apps, whatever we can do to help us in our journeys. So if you're an app entrepreneur, or if you're working for a startup, if you're actually running a startup this is the show for you. Man, I've got a great episode. I actually went recently to Apps World and met with this wonderful guest, he's agreed to come on this show. Let me introduce Ryan Johnson. He is the VP of Mobile Engineering at BuzzFeed and we're going to talk about BuzzFeed, I'm sure that you've heard of that. Ryan, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Ryan: Thank you, Paul. It's good to be here.

Paul: It's good to have you on. Now, Ryan, we're going to talk a lot of stuff but I'd love to know about you personally before we start... How long have you been at BuzzFeed and what encouraged you to join?

Ryan: I've been at BuzzFeed for about two years now. They were actually a client of mine when I was doing consulting back about three years ago. I've been doing apps for about six, seven years now, [unintelligible 00:01:29] and then when the opportunity came around to work for BuzzFeed I jumped on it. It's a part of what we do at the company, it's a part of how we view distribution of our contact, and when I had the opportunity I joined the team, to evolve the team and grow our ever-expanding series of apps. I was pretty enthusiastic, I moved halfway across the United States to do it.

Paul: Actually it's a really big outfit as well because I know in your presentation you were talking about just the size of the number of people working at BuzzFeed... Maybe you can give us a sense of the size of the operation.

Ryan: Overall we're well over a thousand people throughout the entire company, but as it relates to apps we've grown the team from when I started from about four or five people, including design and engineering, to well over 50. So in about two years we had ten times growth, which kind of shows how important all this is to us.

Paul: Okay, so we're going to have to jump into some of the things that I can remember from your wonderful presentation at Apps World, and one of them is the sheer growth of the way we share content through messaging. Probably you can talk a little bit about what you're seeing with regards to mobile apps and the way we're actually sharing.

Ryan: Yes, I think it's a bigger picture thing. You look at how people are using their phones, and primarily it's a social communication device, right? In a way I think we've lost touch with that. We call them phones, but we act like they're more computers. A phone itself is a communication device, the entire device started around people talking to each other, communicating with each other and reducing the friction around doing that. It's expanded from there and it went from people calling each other, to people texting each other, to people broadcast-messaging, so when you post something to Facebook you're broadcasting to all your friends, or Instagram to a larger audience, to really now even back to a focus on one-to-one messaging. And you can see that there's been this increasing time spent on social apps and now an increasing time spent in messaging apps, and you look at something like WhatsApp which has 800 million users. Facebook Messenger has 700 million users every month and they're being kind of the primary way people communicate nowadays. I don't know about you Paul, but I always find a way where somebody calls me, as opposed to messages or texts me, but I think that's more a matter of a growing trend.

Paul: Let's just try to understand this behaviour from people, because we love to learn about the way people are using apps, it's something that I'm passionate about as well. So if we see something interesting, we jump to WhatsApp, to Facebook Messenger, to WeChat, to Slack - I guess that's growing - and all these different ways of communicating almost directly with the recipients, or doing group chats. Is that the difference between that and social media?

Ryan: Yes, I think there are different reasons for both. Sometimes you want to broadcast your message out to a large group, you want to maybe announce the birth of a child or some important life event, you want to share it with everyone.

Paul: Ryan, if you want to announce the birth of a child you can do this on this show. We've had this several times now.

Ryan: Well, there's no birth of a child that I know about right now.

Paul: I actually had somebody who almost... I think his wife, ironically, texted him to say that she was going into labour, and he had to finish off the interview.

Ryan: That's a good excuse. Paul, I may be worried if my girlfriend shows up on this show.

Paul: It has known to happen, yes.

Ryan: But anyway what I was saying is that there are different utilities for both of these social experiences, and the messaging one is that inter-personal but one-on-one relationship. I share very differently with my girlfriend than I would with, say, broadcast everyone. I have maybe more public persona that I want to maintain, an image I want to maintain and I think everyone does, and that's different than the one-on-one interpersonal relationship. For us, one of the questions is how do we harness both of those experiences and leverage that in our apps.

Paul: Yes, so how are you harnessing that whole explosion of these messaging apps? What are you doing for that?

Ryan: We recently about a week ago launched QuizChat, which is kind of a [unintelligible 00:06:01] on our quiz format, which allows you to take quizzes with your friends and family, and instead of being focused around one person taking a quiz and then posting it to Facebook, it's about two people taking a quiz together and then sharing it with each other, as opposed to broadcasting it. So we've launched that, it's been doing great. It's also around the idea that the app itself can go viral, and there's a re-engagement there. So far it's been great, it's been growing internationally.

Paul: I noticed in your chat about the QuizChat, you're actually not promoting this through the normal channels, you're just seeing how it grows organically. What have you seen from those organic results?

Ryan: Yes, so first of all as you said, we soft-launched this which is kind of unique for us. We wanted to really treat this like an experiment and see what happened, so we didn't do anything more than the bare minimum amount of promo to get some seed users on the app. We haven't been featured by Apple, we haven't been featured by Google. We leaked a little bit of PR, but not much by our standards. We really wanted to see if there was something to this, whether you could drive app installs from the content of the app itself.

Paul: Yes, because that's actually how a lot of apps have become successful. I'm thinking back to all those apps that have been bought out by bigger companies, and in a way they've all started with this kind of crazy, viral sharing.

Ryan: I think it's something that we as app developers need to be cognizant of, and I think there are very legitimate concerns about app discovery. It's tough to do, there are a lot of apps out there and I think instead of just saying that app discovery is tough and then resigning yourselves to that fact, it's like, "How do we work in that context?" And one of the ways you do that is by focusing on virality in the app itself, and this is one of our experiments around that. But more broadly, we all should be thinking about that; it's an important part of the experience. And you ought to do it in a good and engaging way, you don't want to be annoying. You don't want to be that game that's messaging Facebook friends without people's permission, right?

Paul: Yes, you just click that one button and suddenly you've got posts galore. We've obviously all gone through that with the early parts of FarmVille, and CandyCrush as well was pretty big on that.

Ryan: Yes, and every now and then you still hear that app that still tries to do that or that one thing that slips through where they text message everyone in your contacts or some other horrible thing. In a way, it's losing sight of the goal, which is to create a great user experience, and you can do that if you think about a good virality of the app and the user experience. That's two intertwined things and not like, "I'm just going to blast this out there to promote the app." You can always kind of get focused on the metric and not the reason you're pursuing the metric, and I think those apps lost that fact, but I'd like to think that social quizzes aren't that.

Paul: If anyone's driving and they want to download the app, they can actually go to the show notes; I'm going to put all the links into Episode 388. Just search Ryan Johnson for TheAppGuy.co.

Actually really interestingly, the episode before you we did actually talk about BuzzFeed, and it was because BuzzFeed made a massive difference to this app. About a year ago they featured this app called Beam Messenger and it was life-changing for the founder, because he went from five downloads a day to this crazy viral app, and it was all because BuzzFeed took the initial interest in the app. So it makes such a massive difference to developers when you feature apps. I wondered how you actually go through that whole process of choosing who to promote and how in a way we can catch your eye to get mentioned by BuzzFeed for our apps?

Ryan: First of all we have a great group of tech reporters in our San Francisco bureau who cover all things tech, and I think they're always on the lookout for new apps that provide great user experiences in new and innovative ways. I'm not familiar with the app you talked about, but all the apps they focus on are those fun, new ways to approach problems, they solve problems for users and they're great apps, too. So I really think if you focus on the user - just generally, this isn't just how do you get featured by BuzzFeed, I think this is how you get featured and be successful generally. If you focus on the user and you create a great quality product, a great quality app that solves a problem for people, the rest kind of flows naturally. You have to do the outreach, it won't necessarily sell itself, but if you focus on those kinds of things you'll be successful.

Paul: Yes, because Ryan, if you can imagine, many of the people listening to this do actually get slightly despondent when thinking about trying to get those apps discovered, because we're all competing against the mighty companies now that have huge marketing budgets, they have their own PR agencies. I wondered if there is any room for the small, indie app entrepreneur who is trying to promote their app without any kind of sizeable marketing budget?

Ryan: Yes, absolutely. I think it's difficult, right? It's a lot easier when you're King Games and you have a million billion dollars and you can go buy AdSense at $10 a pop. That makes it easier, but it's not the end-all and be-all. There were a lot of times that that's failed, and there are a lot of indie success stories. Discovery is only part of the issue. You can go get your app discovered, but if users aren't coming back to it, if they're not finding value in it, the discovery is all for nought, right? It's the same thing if you're a big app maker; you can go spend all the money on app installs, but if you haven't made this quality product that has good retention that users love and they want to share it with their friends, it's  only part of the issue. You need that discovery, I think we should view discovery as a way of getting those initial seed users for the app, that then want to share it with their friends, than then have that viral mechanism to come back, to tell their friends about it, to go and message their friends that piece of app content. Discovery is a launch, it's step one. Step two through four, which is keeping users coming back and sharing out your app is equally, if not more important.

Paul: I've actually had one or two people listening to this show ask me to ask you how sites like BuzzFeed manage relationships with the large, major companies that have maybe an attachment to a large venture capital fund, and they have a lot of contacts and a professional PR agency with all the contacts. How do you manage those relationships compared to maybe the smaller, solo entrepreneur who's maybe working from a garage on their own where they're doing apps? Have you got any guidance for us?

Ryan: Yes, I've been on both sides of the isle here. I've done some solo stuff and now I had the chance of working at a particularly large app company, but I think in the end you don't just get to that point where you have those relationships with the big publishers and the big VCs until you kind of reached scale of your app. Once you do that, your entries are aligned. Apple and Google have a desire to promote great, amazing apps and it doesn't matter to them if that's a BuzzFeed or if that's an independent publisher. They have a vested interest in just featuring the best that's out there, providing the best value to their users.

Paul: Yes, I can actually resonate with what you're saying because I recently helped get an app into the Best New Featured section and it was truly because the app was good, and not because we had any influence other than that. I was wondering, you are actually into news and discovery, what did you think to the Apple News default app with iOS 9? Do you have any views on that?

Ryan: Yes, we partnered with them actually. I was responsible for that project at BuzzFeed, working with them to get our content there. We're excited about it, we're excited to get our content anywhere they will pretty much have it, and we think the news apps are a good opportunity for people we may not reach otherwise to read BuzzFeed news, which is a growing part for us. And the native experience there is really solid, the native articles are really well done. It's something we're actually trying to emulate in our apps.

Paul: Yes, I have to say Ryan, clearly BuzzFeed are taking a slightly different viewpoint to maybe other PR and people in tech, because you are focused purely on the content and getting the content out there wherever people may see it or read it, whereas maybe the other viewpoint is we need as many people to come back to our website, so that we can show them ads and all this sort of stuff. What's behind the strategy of just getting content out everywhere? Maybe talk us through the feeling behind that.

Ryan: Yes, I think we go where our users are and get our content in front of them however possible, and then from that we want to get that data back, from all these different platforms, and use that to power better creation of new content. Then you have this cycle of content and data going from one place to many places. And I think one of the reasons we're also really excited by multiple platforms is we can apply the learning out of one platform to a different platform. Things we learn on our upgraded platforms like our BuzzFeed app, we can get say maybe a lot of data around engagement, we can have a better sense on a smaller scale because we own the platform, we can get all the data back from it of what's working, and then we can use that to make a better article to post to Apple News, right? We can just get a very virtuous cycle and the more places we have people interfacing with content, the better, the more data we get back.

Paul: That is so great, I actually now get that. So it's all about the data gathering in a way, from seeing what's popular and what people are reading, and then you can almost incorporate that into your team, the 50-odd people that are working with mobile apps, to make better, more awesome apps. And also talking about QuizChat, the fact that you're creating that because of the trends that you're seeing with the content that goes out everywhere.

Ryan: Yes, exactly. We can see things from all over the place and then apply those learnings elsewhere. We can see what video is working in our app and then promote it on YouTube. It's a very synergistic relationship across all these platforms. Even as an app developer, you can't just view these like wild gardens, right? You don't want people to just go in one place. You want your app to get out in multiple places and your content to go out to multiple places and then eventually funnel people back, if possible.

Paul: Ryan, I've tried not to ask you this, but it's just too tempting: the dress. You probably are so sick about talking about this dress, but this dress is a phenomenon and I know that you use it in your presentation. For anyone who's wondering, it's that dress that gold and white or black and blue. I love that presentation, you showed the server blowing up and how it went viral from a few tweets. How viral was that whole campaign with the dress?

Ryan: Yes, I think that's a great study in the power of virality, and the power of cross-platforms. I just want to say it's clearly a blue and black dress, it's definitely not white and gold.

Paul: I see both, just to sit on the fence. Come on, you were consulted.

Ryan: That's true. The consultant's standpoint is whatever your client wants to see, but I clearly see a blue dress. Many of arguments I've gotten into about it, but it really is a great case study. You can see how a Tumblr embedded in a BuzzFeed post goes to a tweet from BuzzFeed.com and from there it spirals out. Our Facebook post spikes 8 million views and then in the end when it's all said and done it's a very cascading flow of information. One tweet goes out to be posted to Facebook, goes out in the dark social, which is what we call e-mail or other forms where it's tough to track the source of... The compounding power of social media was very apparent there. In the end it, spirals out to about 60 million views from that post alone. At one time, we had 40,000 people on our apps and 600,000 people on BuzzFeed.com, at a given second. And all those 600,000 or almost 700,000 people are probably in apps themselves; over 70% of our traffic is mobile, so most of that is in somebody else's app. So apps are these very important things, it just may not be in our app where the traffic is coming through. It's coming through a variety of apps.

Paul: What's the biggest thing you've learned from that whole experience with the dress so that you could help maybe someone who is an entrepreneur, maybe working for a startup, building their own app and they want to try to learn something from this whole experience? Can it be replicated, and what can we take away and learn from it?

Ryan: Yes, the lesson here is finding that really engaging content that multiple people can either identify with or they find a challenge themselves, something they want to share with their friends. And from that, things could... There is such a low barrier to sharing something, there is so low friction that something can cascade and blow up in a matter of hours nowadays. It's the beauty of something. From an engineering side point, you should be very concerned about being able to scale your site and your traffic for when these things happen, because they absolutely can. It didn't have to be BuzzFeed, it could have been anyone who had that kind of content that gets out there and blows up in a short period of time.

Paul: Yes, and I'm guessing it has actually done very well in terms of bringing attention and talking points in terms of what you're doing.

Ryan: One other thought too is that in August it was something like that Yo app, which is a social phenomenon that people share this virality in the app and things grow out of nowhere overnight too.

Paul: Yes, I mean I feel very honoured with this show, because I've been doing it now for several years, and within the space - it's a bit like London buses - within the space of less than a week or so I'm getting to talk about the Yo app with the person who has campaigned for that, and now the dress; so it's like two pluses at once. You know, I'd love to know what you're seeing; you talked about all this data and...

Ryan: ... Sorry, that's my dog... Wants attention.

Paul: Play with your dog, that's fine. If it was a cat it would probably end up being more viral.

Ryan: It probably would have hopped on my keyboard and knocked off the call.

Paul: It's a shame we can't try to incorporate your dog into a podcast somehow to make it more viral.

Ryan: It's just pretty cute...

Paul: One of the questions someone has asked in the apps to try, the listener is wondering what trends you're seeing in tech that could help makers of products and services in apps? Maybe a trend that you think we probably haven't come across yet.

Ryan: I think some of the biggest trends are right in front of our faces. I think the people at Google and Apple are very smart and talented, and sometimes it's interesting to see where they're investing their time, their resources and their money and where they see things going. And it's into wearables, into the watches, right? You have Android Gear and you have the Apple Watch; and it's in the TVs, too. I find this exciting, there's like an untapped landscape there - how do we create great, engaging kinds of apps and content there, for these two nascent platforms? TV itself isn't nascent, but the idea that we are using this large screen with a different kind of remote to do things beyond video is new, and I think that's an interesting area. And the other really exciting thing too is VR. I think a lot of publishers, ourselves included, are getting really into VR and some really cool things are going to be happening there in the coming years.

Paul: Yes, I'm all into that. In fact, when I met you at the conference I put on Oculus Rift for the first time and that blew me away. Have you put one of those on yet?

Ryan: Yes, I think I wore one at [unintelligible 00:24:24]. I played with a lot of them with Google Cardboard, too. I think we're at a tipping point there, as that starts to be adopted by your average consumer. There are guys like you and me who are really into tech and will jump to this stuff, but when your average person comes into contact with that, that's when it'll hit that tipping point and it will really start to take off.

Paul: Terrific. Well this has been a wonderful job, and the last thing I need to ask you Ryan, this is a show about apps after all, and one of my favourite things is to discover new apps from our guests. Do you have maybe one or two app recommendations for us, that you think would be good discoveries?

Ryan: Recently I've really gotten back into using Swarm, from FourSquare. I've also been using FourSquare a lot, for finding recommendations of things and restaurants. When I was in London last week I was using FourSquare to find where to go.

Paul: Can I reveal a trend to you?

Ryan: Yes, yes you can.

Paul: It's pretty strange... Swarm has never been mentioned on my show, but every time I get a journalist on, or someone in the tech press - so we had someone from TechCrunch, we had someone from The Next Web - everyone is using Swarm in the tech circles. So maybe it's making a massive comeback and that should be the app for 2016.

Ryan: There are a lot of really smart people at FourSquare, and I think they had a tough decision they made with their splitting up the FourSquare app. I think it's really [unintelligible 00:26:11]

Paul: Well, it's very coincidental that you happened to mention Swarm and it was mentioned by the others that maybe compete in your space. So hey, there you go. There's a trend.

Ryan: It's always interesting... One last comment, one thing I always have to remind myself is the world isn't always me and the people in tech, right? There's probably a group of users out there that don't use these things. It's always interesting to see how they use apps and what they find interesting.

Paul: Yes... Isn't it frustrating when you go out and you look at someone with an iPhone and they've just got the standard apps, there are no downloaded apps. They're not using their phone correctly.

Ryan: I know. Well, it's like, "You're missing out on half the experience. There are a lot of great things out there."

Paul: Yes. Ryan, this has been such a great chat. I'm so glad you and your dog could join in. As I said, there will be show notes at Episode 388 with Ryan Johnson, just go and check that out. In the meantime, how can people get in touch with you? What's the best way of reaching out?

Ryan: Yes, I love to talk to people, I love to talk shop. They can just e-mail me at ryan.johnson@buzzfeed.com. I'm also on Twitter, which is @_ryanjohnson_ That's what happens when you make a bad Twitter handle choice.

Paul: Yes, I've got plenty of underscores in mine.

Ryan: Either way, I can be gotten a hold of there.

Paul: Right. Wonderful, Ryan, this has been so great. Thank you so much for joining us.

An App Entrepreneur Learns About An RTB exchange And A Mobile First Publisher Platform

Paul: Welcome to The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp and this is the show where we go around and meet some of the great business founders, entrepreneurs, the leaders in mobile, and we try to help you as an app entrepreneur or app developer. Even if you're doing this as a side project or working on a startup, this is the episode for you because I have a great guest. He delivers huge amounts of ads in an ad network that is called Smaato. He is Ajitpal Pannu and he is the chief business officer, so we're going to talk to Ajitpal. Hi, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Ajitpal: Thank you, Paul. I am happy to be here. Just one correction - we are actually not just an ad network, we are an RTB exchange, and you can call it a supply-side platform if you will.

Paul: Yes, please educate us, Ajitpal. That's what you are here for. How would you describe yourself?

Ajitpal: Smaato as a company has been around for the last 10+ years, and within the last three years or so we have identified an area where we're able to demonstrate a lot of value, and that is essentially on the supply-side of things. When I say supply-side of things, it means anyone who creates content, anyone who creates an app, they are creating something that attracts users and audiences. Some of the times they can generate revenue by selling something inside the app, or charging for their app inside the store, but most of the times they are creating content and they are leveraging advertising to help them generate revenue. We are a company that built a platform that helps those guys get started without having the expertise of being an advertising expert internally.

Paul: How do you do that?

Ajitpal: Sure. First and foremost, anytime you're driving a vehicle from point A to point B, you need a vehicle, and that's essentially a platform. What composes that platform is something that allows you to manage your entire monetization stack. So if you're selling any advertising to anyone, we call that direct sales. If you are looking at someone in a programmatic world, helping him monetize that inventory, that's usually an RTB exchange, and then obviously you also work with a few folks who will take your advertising, or take the advertising space on your app and help you fill that with ads, and most likely those are ad networks who will be going out and reselling your inventory, if you will. In order for you to manage all three of those monetization stacks - that's what we end up calling them - you need a platform that allows you to do that, and the platform is called an ad server. So first and foremost we provide an ad server that we built within the last 18 months. The reason I highlight "the last 18 months" - it's an ad server that's built with all the efficiencies of monetization that are in play today. It's not an ad server that was built 10 years ago and we're repurposing it, reselling it or handing it over to our app developers, if you will. And then the second most important point is this is a free ad server. You can go to Smaato.com and within three steps you can sign up for it and start generating revenue for your app. So that's the first thing we do. Second thing is, once you have an ad server, what do you do then? How do you make money? Obviously, if you have a sales team, you could go out and sell the ads, you can traffic that inside an ad server - that's possible, but most of the times you are good at building apps, you are not good at going out and hiring a sales team and selling that content within those apps to attract advertisers. So in that scenario, programmatic marketplaces have been extremely helpful, because a programmatic marketplace is where a lot of demand partners, a lot of advertisers are connected and they are looking for sources to help them buy inventory, and they do this in a very fast-paced auction environment. So we own and operate our own exchange, and you'll hear me mention this as an RTB ad exchange, and we are very mobile-specific. This exchange operates globally, it's got a total of 290 demand partners that are plugged into it. Happy to go into details, you can tell me when it's too much or too little detail.

Paul: Well, first of all, this is great because I do remember coming across Smaato way back in 2009. What I love is that you're helping app entrepreneurs. My big question to you is there are a lot of app entrepreneurs listening to this show right now who are trying to make an income on the app store. From the things that you deliver, the ads that you deliver, the app developers you work with - is it possible for small, independent app entrepreneurs to make a living in this world now?

Ajitpal: Of course, I think it's a lot easier to make a living in this world than it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago because you needed to own a printing press, and you needed to not only own a printing press, you needed to also find a method of circulating your message. Today all you do is you build and app, and if you build an app that fulfills a need or gap within the ecosystem, you go in and put that on really just two app stores, obviously iOS and Android. And once that's done, if there's a need for it, either via word of mouth, or either via some sort of creative marketing techniques you will gain traction, you will have audiences. If you have those audiences, advertisers are interested in those audiences. And if advertisers find value in those audiences, you have a programmatic way of literally not only attracting those audiences globally from within the app store, but then also monetizing those ad impressions, where people are viewing content within your app, either playing a game or they're essentially reading through something that you might have out there. And you're able to monetize those audiences within three steps if you will.

Paul: Actually, Ajitpal, I was wondering from your perspective... The types of entrepreneurs listening to this show have sometimes tens of thousands of downloads, sometimes hundreds of thousands of downloads. What kind of revenue could they expect from monetization strategies that you offer, for several hundred thousand downloads, for example? Could you give us some sense of what we would likely earn?

Ajitpal: Sure. If you have several hundred thousand downloads, let's just say each one of those downloads happened to come in and spend time in your app... I'm trying to simplify the message here, so let's say they go in and they click on ten things within your app. So that's hundred thousand translates into somewhere in the ballpark of a million to 2 million impressions, if you will. Again, it depends on your app, how much usage there is, how much time somebody is spending in the app, and how much navigation there is and what other things they're doing. Because every single time someone goes to a new page or new section of your app, you have an opportunity to serve them advertising. So let's just assume that number is somewhere between 10 to 20 for those hundred thousand downloads. That adds up to somewhere in the ballpark of 2 million or so views and let's assume they end up visiting your app, to be realistic, 20% of the time within a given month. So that essentially translates into somewhere in the ballpark of 8 or 10 days, and you multiply that with 2 million, so you're coming at somewhere around 20 million impressions on a monthly basis. If that is the case, 90% of the audience - again, these are all assumptions I'm making - let's assume happen to be based out of the U.S. So out of those 20 million impressions, you have the ability to monetize around - another assumption - 15 million impressions, and those are U.S. audiences. Average CPM, which is Cost Per Thousand impressions in the U.S. happens to be somewhere in the ballpark of a $1 - $1.50. Again, this is a global average or a very high-level average. The more unique content you have, the more targeted, better audiences you have and we can talk about at point... Data allows advertisers to buy that inventory more aggressively and pay higher prices. Examples of data are age, gender and location. Let's assume you're able to pass all three of those. If you're able to pass all three of those, you can probably generate somewhere around $2 CPM. Again, for this conversation's sake I'll keep it very simple: $1 CPM on average is what you're able to generate, and you have around 15 million ad impressions, so you're looking at generating somewhere in the ballpark of approximately $15,000 a month as an app developer. Then obviously, if you're running  [unintelligible 00:11:22] that's a decent amount of revenue.

Paul: That is great and inspiring to know because we have an audience that are really eager to try and carve out a lifestyle as an app entrepreneur. So in terms of the monetization strategies you mentioned a lot of different figures there. What can we sort of target in terms of the best monetization strategies, from your perspective? You know, video, banner ads, that kind of stuff.

Ajitpal: Sure. Yes, I think it's a great question and the reason I was thinking a little bit about it is because I'm also thinking about ad-blockers that are being introduced, and I'm sure that's a pretty hot topic if you haven't talked about it. I'm assuming you had to talk about that as a topic...

Paul: Yes, it's obviously a very hot topic for us. What do you think to ad-blockers?

Ajitpal: Well, obviously no one is doing this for free, so I think anyone who is introducing anything that allows you to do ad-blocking, they're looking for a way to make money. And if they're looking for a way to make money, usually they're not driven by cleaning up the ecosystem; they're more driven by generating revenue for themselves. However, I think as an app developer the most important thing for you to monetize your audiences - and I think anytime someone is building an app, if they focus on the content and they focus on the context, their content is being presented in, and they also incorporate advertising with those two themes in mind, and I think the easiest or one of the best ways you will hear about advertising being content and context-relevant is anytime somebody speaks on native ads. Because a native ad is nothing other than a custom ad unit; a custom ad unit where multiple assets are being communicated and you can plug-in the advertiser's assets there, that allow you to have a very soft message delivered in the form of advertising that does not overtake the content, and definitely does not overtake the context when somebody is using that app. So if all of that is kept in mind, I think that's the best approach a given app developer can take. What this also does is it does not make advertising more intrusive, it actually makes advertising more acceptable, but at the same time it also allows you to monetize your app while you're giving away free content to users that are coming to your app for the real reason you developed that app for. So I think that's the overall theme an app developer should think about: they have full control of their app. They have full control of the content, they have full control of the context. If that is the case, they also have complete control of how the advertising should be presented. And I think if all of that is done, ad-blocking probably will not be as big of a topic.

Paul: Actually it just comes on the back of a few episodes before you - episode 375 for anyone listening - we did talk about ad-blocking with the editor at large at The Next Web, and it was his view that actually even though we expected this huge uptake of ad-blocking and all the users will be using ad-blocking, he didn't think that there was this big wave of people switching it on. It just seems like that's not a big issue. Would you agree with that?

Ajitpal: A hundred ten percent. And the reason I say this is the amount of inventory and amount of apps has exploded, and I think even if people start blocking a certain percentage, it will have a very minimal effect on the entire ecosystem. I think more importantly ad-blocking only plays a role when someone is annoyed, and I think if someone is annoyed from a given app and from a given experience, that basically means whoever developed that app, they did not focus on user experience, they did not focus on their audience, and I think they deserve to be blocked. So I agree, I don't think ad-blocking will have any negative impact. If it does, it will have an impact towards more cleaning up the ecosystem as a whole.

Paul: We were going to talk about the types of monetization, differences between video ads and all the other stuff... Maybe we can go through that, because there are developers who are listening to this show and would expect to know what would be the best to put into their apps, to cause least frustration.

Ajitpal: Sure. I'm a big fan of all the different formats, and I think the way we look at the ecosystem is we look at a box. You have a box within your app, and the goal here is to present that audience when they're reading the content with the most relevant advertisement that is tied to the content, context and all other parameters where the advertising message is getting delivered to that given audience. I think that's really what advertisers look for. So with that in mind, I don't think there's one or the other format that's better. I think if you have the ability to incorporate video, obviously there's more value for video, but also at the same time if video volume grows significantly you'll face a supply and demand problem, where basically there will be too much supply of video available; that drives down the price and obviously increases a lot of ad quality issues, increases problems. So I think it really comes down to someone looking at the content and someone evaluating what's the best format I should be presenting the message in. I think - and this is where I mentioned the word "native" - within a native ad unit, you can display a content, a message, you can control an image inside a message but at the same time you can also serve something of a format which is a video inside that same ad unit, and I think that's really where it's going. I wish I had a simple answer for you, to say "Yes, everybody should do video ads because they generate a lot of CPM." However, if that video ad - or the box - is not relevant to the context of that given app, or the content of that given app, then obviously you'll have a bad audience or user experience, and eventually you'll lose someone who is using your app. So I would say more to think about is you have a box and think about all different options of presenting whichever is the right format that fits into the message you're trying to deliver as a whole.

Paul: Yes, what I'm learning from you there is just keep it relevant to the user experience; that tends to cause less frustration and more monetization.

Ajitpal: Yes, exactly. Really when it comes to the format and you supporting those formats, that is very simple and there is a lot of content that's available around it. We've just recently released a monetization guide inside of our blog post area for app developers [unintelligible 00:18:51] and I think the decision should be that you leave yourself open to all the different formats; then you can accept and you also maintain control through an ad-serving platform where you essentially are able to plug-in the right format that fits into the content and the context.

Paul: There are two more things, Ajitpal, before we say goodbye to you we'd like to cover with you. One is that we love to try and identify problems and pain points that our guests are experiencing, and I wondered, in your role there as chief business officer at Smaato, what are the real pain points you see in trying to do your role, and maybe we could flash out some kind of solution, or even an app idea.

Ajitpal: Sure, so what is the problem in my role... Thinking out loud...

Paul: What's causing you a real frustration?

Ajitpal: Sure. I think there are a lot of apps out there that allow you to manage your day and manage all the different things you do during the day, so, for example you can take notes, you can do a number of those things; however, the biggest challenge I think any individual faces is how exactly do you use that content and then that content automatically prioritizes itself based on... So I guess I'm talking a little bit about machine learning here, and the ability to not only just read that content, but based on the content it prioritizes the given tasks that you should be focusing on. I think all of that kind of comes back to being very efficient with your time and with the opportunity you have in front of you within a given day, in order to address the most important items. I think that's a challenge we all face - efficiencies around getting things done.

Paul: I love that, yes. Machine learning as well, for things coming into us, the way we choose time even if it's just a few minutes here and there, trying to focus time. I definitely think time is one of the hardest things to manage. Ajitpal, this is a show about apps, this is the last thing we'll ask you... We love to talk about apps, we'd love to know... Do you have one or two apps you could recommend to us? Maybe ones that we may not have come across before.

Ajitpal: Sure, so let's see... What are one or two apps that I use on a regular basis? I think there's a Pocket app - I really like using Pocket app because I'm able to cut and paste and put things in there that I want to come back and revisit on a daily basis. Frankly speaking, I think app discovery is much easier and I think the goal is how do you minimize the number of apps, but more importantly is... Actually yes, two additional ones that are my favorites come to mind. I think when you're having an extremely busy schedule with family and with work, how do you relax yourself? So I have two apps that I use to take a break from everything else, and you'll laugh at the first one. Because the first one is an app my daughter installed and I end up using it quite a bit just to kind of play the game, and it's the Frozen app. It's by Disney, and it's themed around the Frozen Movie and it's called Free Fall. It's just a game. Frankly speaking - I hate to admit it - I end up playing this quite a bit, partially to get my mind off everything else; that's one. The second one is Buddhify, it's actually a paid app and it's a very good relaxation and meditation app.

Paul: Those are actually two apps that we've never heard before, so congratulations: 377 episodes and they're the first two we've ever heard, Frozen and Buddhify. I will make sure, for everyone listening, you have links to those apps and the things we've discussed on episode 377 of The App Guy Podcast. Just go to theappguy.co and you'll be able to also get links to Ajitpal. How best can people reach out to Smaato or yourself, Ajitpal? What's the best of getting in touch?

Ajitpal: Sure, if you're an app developer, I highly recommend you go to Smaato.com and you sign up for the SPX Platform. It's free, you literally have the ability to integrate your app within three steps, and you can start generating revenue. The end result is if you can help someone make money they will always like you, so I would say that's one that they can reach out to. If they have any questions for me personally, happy to be contacted, it's my first name @smaato.com

Paul: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on The App Guy Podcast and all the best with growing over the next ten years.

Ajitpal: Thank you, Paul. Looking forward to it.

How Developers Get Celebrated As An Essential Part Of The Workforce

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is the show where we go around the world, talking to the most inspirational people we can find in the app world, and if you are into app entrepreneurism or if you just love the journeys of app developers, app startup founders, anyone that's loving this world of apps then this is the show for you; it is called The App Guy Podcast, after all. Now let me introduce to you today's guest; we have a different guest every day, and his name is Jake Ward. Jake Ward is the co-founder and CEO of the Application Developers Alliance, which is a completely appropriate to our show. Jake, it's a very warm welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Jake: Thank you, Paul, I appreciate it. I'm happy to be here.

Paul: Tell us about the Application Developers Alliance, what is it you guys have got going on there?

Jake: The Application Developers Alliance is a non-profit membership organization for developers and the companies that care about them. Like many of your listeners today, I share the common trait that we are still very much a startup, that we've been around for nearly four years and have grown to several hundred companies and nearly 60,000 individual developers in our network. There are days when it feels like we're still working out of a very cramped space on cardboard boxes for tables.

Paul: Actually it's funny you should say that... I think that cardboard boxes just come out as a standing desk, and they seem pretty clever. Anyway, four years... Who would be your ideal member?

Jake: That's an interesting question, Paul. Let me back up... From the beginning, the Alliance focused on many consumer mobile app companies and the developers who were building into this new and exciting marketplace. We did so in a number of ways, helping with business education, hosting events, creating resources and materials that would help developers build better products and better businesses, help them understand what metrics of success look like, how to monetize, how to solve the discoverability challenge. It was always our goal, and to some degree I hope we have already achieved it, but it continues to be our goal that we would support the larger developer ecosystem, which is to say we believe that software engineers at all levels, on all verticals and all skill sets are the manufacturing class of the digital age. They're an essential workforce, they build everything that we encounter in this increasingly digital world. So our prototypical or ideal member can range from a 2-person startup just entering into the consumer app space, to General Electric, and everybody in-between.

Paul: I would love to know about you, Jake, what inspired you to start? You are the co-founder, what inspired you to start this Alliance?

Jake: I'd love to be able to say it was a lightning bolt moment, but like most ideas it is a slow matriculation, a process of refining and iterating... My co-founder, Jon Potter and I worked on this idea, this concept of a non-profit membership trade association for developers for nearly two years before we launched in 2012, and the cause behind it was really the vacuum that was being created around individual coders with the launch of the AppStore, with the ubiquity of mobile technologies and the increasing sexiness of mobile apps. It became clearer that there was a real need for a collective voice on policy issues, for a resource content organization that could act in the best interest of the workforce and do so in an unbiased, objective way.

Paul: So was it really born out of also a frustration that you were having and anything that you were getting out to at the time? Because a lot of the guests tend to talk about solving their own frustrations; were you experiencing anything that lead you to develop this?

Jake: Yes, I think that that's an accurate way to describe it actually, Paul. I was working at a digital marketing firm and I was doing a number of campaigns that focused either directly on, or sort of around developer engagement, including the launch of some pretty significant TV SDKs. I don't want to get into brand-specific information, but the idea was to release these SDKs in a way that attracted developers to build killer apps for TVs. Now this was six and a half years ago, this was not...

Paul: Kind of timely, you know? It has taken this long for Apple to come up with this...

Jake: ... and for Amazon to be right on their heels, and for Samsung, Vizio and other to integrate it right into the hardware. We were way ahead of schedule. It was pretty clear, early on in that campaign, that nobody knew who our developers were, and everybody sort of pointed to the Valley and to California and said, "That's where people who write code that make apps are", but there was largely a misunderstanding of what they did, who they are, how do you engage them and what do they want to work on. I've heard it described pretty recently as being analogous to medicine in the 1900s. If you were a doctor in 1901, you were very important and did an incredibly important work, but that profession doesn't even resemble what it means to be a doctor now, and being a developer today of five years from now is rooted in the science and the technology that it was 10 years ago, but the profession is not going to be anywhere near the same. Coming at that ecosystem from a non-technical perspective - I'm not a coder, I am not somebody who's able to sit down and manufacture digital experiences out of lines of code - I thought of it from an organizational standpoint: how do I solve this problem? How do I give people access to developers? How do I give developers access to each other and to people, and do so in a non-profit, unbiased, objective way?

Paul: It's so great to come across you because I do feel like a lot of listeners listening to this do feel like they're on their own. Let's talk about the networking effect then within your organization. If anyone listening were to become a member, what sort of networking opportunities to you offer, and what online tools as well do you have to achieve those networking challenges?

Jake: Sure, so I would urge all of your listeners to go to AppAlliance.org and sign up as an individual member, with a couple of short questions answered about the type of work that you do and how we can help you. You'll be on-boarded, given a password and user login; that gives you access to our member portal. Inside that member center you'll find hundreds of videos, of white papers of research, articles, things that have been generated from and in partnership with our members over the past few years, that answer a number of very important questions that developers who, as you said, feel as though they're on their own need answers to: how do I make money? How do I know the difference between this monetization option versus that monetization option? What is the lifetime user value equation that I should plug into my app? How should I consider the expenditure of marketing dollars per user acquisition? Those are all important questions that sit at the heart of building a business around an app, and we can help answer that question.

Paul: I was going to say, if anyone is thinking, "Oh, I can go and maybe find that stuff online", tell us why it's more important to source that from inside your Alliance, and from your members than perhaps just doing a Google search?

Jake: Well you can find it online, I don't think there's any question about that; you can find some of it online. What you are not  going to find is unguarded, unvarnished, directly-sourced materials online. We hold a number of events each year called App Strategy Workshops; we have one series that is called App Strategy Workshop Fundamentals that focuses on exactly the kinds of startups and business decisions of early-stage companies that you are referencing, and we ask the top ad networks and the early-stage ad tech companies to give us unvarnished, non-pitch content that developers can then use to make decisions. We go right to researchers and look at numbers, market penetration opportunities, and trends so that we can deliver that information without a sales pitch associated to it.

Paul: I love this because like my whole show - you're episode 383, but throughout the whole series over the several years I've been doing this, I'm always trying to get the genuine viewpoint across, without... Because in a way I hear a lot of my audience, they come into it thinking that they'll be an instant app millionaire because of all the press, and they maybe get the wrong viewpoint. Do you see a lot of that as well, the misguided news about instant app millionaires?

Jake: No question, it is often the case that building the app is the easy part. The user experience is hard, no question, the code is complicated, though not nearly as complicated as, say, any number of enterprise applications, but that the business side is very, very complicated, and is often pre-determined by some luck, by partnership opportunities and just by the market; what is out there at the time and are you able to catch lighting in a bottle. There are a number of companies, big and small, that are doing truly innovative work from a business standpoint; from a monetization, user-acquisition, standpoint. And there are others that are doing tremendous developmental work, or even user experience work. It's pretty rare that those two combine. When they do, it's Angry Birds; it's Uber; it's something sleek and perfect, that reaches millions and millions of people and generates money in a continuous, virtuous loop.

Paul: Jake, you're really exciting me because I'm thinking back on all the big themes I've had from the show, and one of the successes that most of the guests seem to point to is a network. How important do you think that networking effect is for app entrepreneurs?

Jake: I think it's incredibly important. The Alliance recently published our first Annual Developer Insights Report, which is ostensibly a census of the workforce. We asked more than 1,000 developers across verticals and 47 countries about the work they do, on the technologies they work with, etc. One of the questions that we asked - and will continue to ask in every piece that we do - is where are you getting help? Where are you finding resources and answers to questions that you face on a daily basis as a developer, as a producer of these things? And more than two-thirds said their primary ask, the place they go for answers is a personal community.

Paul: That is wonderful. It's like it takes it full circle back to the... I remember doing this, where you spend days and days searching minefields of forums and Google searching, and it would have taken maybe one minute to ask an expert.

Jake: That's right. And increases, whether it's stack exchange or whether it's a personal e-mail distribution or just doing a Google that takes you into a forum, the proliferation of expertise has increased significantly the expectation of answers, the expectation of support has gone up tremendously. Now much of that is technologically-based, right? I need a workaround for this challenge, or I need to find a way to deliver and render in this specific way. What we found and how we've shaped our particular offerings for both our network of individual developers as well as our corporate membership is to answer business questions, is to find ways to almost crowdsource, whether it be among individuals or the companies who are providing those services, answers to business-specific questions, and workforce-specific questions, right? Not, "How do I solve this problem through code?" but "What problems am I going to face when writing on this platform and how do I make money out of it? How do I ensure the integrity of my product? How do I get to market?"

Paul: Jake, I've actually had an e-mail today from a listener, and he is kind of fairly despondent about getting into apps, and I've wondered... You've got this beautiful, wonderful access to all this network, and a lot of different app entrepreneurs; if you could think about those app entrepreneurs that are on the smaller end of your spectrum, would you say it's worth it, getting into the app business?

Jake: I'd say it depends on what your metric of "worth it" is, Paul.

Paul: Okay... Good answer.

Jake: I think a lot of people - certainly in the last decade - have romanticized, and I don't even mean that in the pejorative, but have romanticized the idea of working in startups, and of being an entrepreneur. Here in the United States I know that for nearly three years running the number one profession chosen as an aspiration among high-school juniors is 'entrepreneur'. That's never happened before, it may never happen again, but it happened three years in a row among high-school juniors in the United States. That is a trendline; I like to call it "the Mark Zuckerberg effect." But it's the idea that you can learn a skill, build a business and live a happy, fruitful, profitable life with no boss. Who wouldn't want to do that? But if you can prioritize those things, is it more important to you to make your own hours and to work and be a creator, to make things? Then yes, it's worth it. That's the job, right? It's like being an artist. Is it more important to you to make money? You might want to think about developing for somebody else then, because we know the numbers, and there's no question the proliferation of profitability across the app ecosystem is becoming, let's say more democratized; more people are able to make sort of a living wage, but the space isn't getting any less crowded. Consumer-facing mobile apps are really, really hard. The good news, or potential good news I suppose you could say is that the number of platforms, the technologies and the frameworks for consumer-facing apps and apps, in general is growing at an exponential rate, and the number of connected devices and the requirement of software to guide those devices is going to grow exponentially in the next five years. So if your game didn't take off, or your startup is stuck, without being able to raise funds, it may be the case that your business would have succeeded if there were an audience, but that your skills can be applied in a way to build a different business, where the market hasn't yet been created.

Paul: I love that, yes. Actually building a skill from all the things that you're doing, with the view that it's only going to become more in demand, as the whole market grows.

Paul: There are actually two more things we do before we say goodbye, Jake. One is that I would love to get... We tend to try and find out ideas on this show, ideas for building apps. Now, maybe it's more appropriate for you to answer this, which is what are the big pain points in what you're doing right now with App Alliance? What are the big frustrations, pain points, things causing you a bit of a headache, and then maybe we can flesh out an idea for a potential app to solve that?

Jake: I'd say the number one pain point that we face hasn't changed much in the last three years, and I don't imagine it will change much in the next three years, but it will continue to be the thing that drives us, which is the engagement, the education and ultimately the celebration of developers as an essential workforce, and that the number of companies, traditional tech and non-traditional tech who are increasingly thinking of themselves as software companies coming online makes it easier for us as the organization that represents developers to speak intelligently and passionately about the importance of developers. But the hard part is speaking to the developers themselves. How do you create, whether it be curriculum, or certification, or content or resources, or even research - how do you create that silver bullet solution that can be a rising tide for a workforce of 23 million plus that is generally unorganized, that is mercurial by nature, but more importantly, they're artists, they're craftsmen, and the work that they do is often in small teams - the best work certainly is - and increasingly individualized? How do you reach that audience with credibility and authenticity, every day? That's our challenge.

Paul: I have to say I really resonate with what you're saying. I actually changed career... I've talked about this before, in different episodes; I actually came out of a City job in London, in finance and I remember thinking the tech guys were kind of the back-office, we were the front-office, and there was definitely a divide. Now, having spent years and years in the app business, I'm all for trying to celebrate the achievements...

Jake: You mentioned that you worked in finance... FinTech - financial technologies - are one of the fastest-growing, software-powered verticals in the world today. The number of companies, from American Express and MasterCard who are both members of the Application Developers Alliance and sit on my U.S. and European board of directors respectively, to Barclays and Capital One and Deutsche Bank - all of these companies, these almost ageless institutions that have been around for 100+ years have woken up to a world where transactions are invisible, and the idea is to make the seamless exchange of goods and services and money even more seamless, and to put it in each consumer's hands. That's a very real challenge, particularly on the highly regulated industry that moves at the speed of light and is contingent upon customer satisfaction.

Paul: Yes, I can definitely see a lot of disruption. Jake, the final thing then is this is a show about apps; we wouldn't be right without asking you for maybe an app or two on your phone, to give us a recommendation. Maybe an app that you feel that we haven't come across before, so one or two apps that you recommend.

Jake: You know, Paul, I'm a pretty basic app user when it comes to... I take advantage of a number of utility apps, whether they be banking apps or payment... Obviously, I have the normal Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn stuff, but Hotels Tonight is probably the app that saves my life on more than a monthly basis certainly, when I find myself having to get on a plane, and six hours later I'll be in a city that I did not have time to book a hotel for; I might as well take advantage of a very cheap, open-sourced solution that often delivers really good accommodations.

Paul: I love that, I love Hotels Tonight and, in fact, you reminded me that about a year and a half ago I was actually in the Google Pit, at the Google I/O with Hotels Tonight, and The App Guy was on a podcast that happened to be for one of the other apps, PlayerFM, that was being showcased; so they did amazingly well over the years. Jake, this has been a wonderful chat. I'm going to put all the show notes in Episode 383, so for anyone listening, just go to TheAppGuy.co and search for Episode 383, for Jake Ward. In the meantime, Jake, what's the best way of getting in touch with you, or reaching out and connecting?

Jake: Yes Paul, this has been a lot of fun, I have to do it again soon. I'm at jake@appalliance.org if anyone wants to drop me an e-mail, also follow @jacobmward on Twitter. So give me a shout, I'm happy to answer any and all questions, and for developers out there looking for information on building a better business, better apps, education opportunities and really just how to get involved in the community, go to appalliance.org and sign up for membership.

Paul: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jake, for coming on.

Jake: Thank you, Paul, I appreciate it.

Wireless Charging In The Age Of Connectivity

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. I love this show, I get to meet some of the most amazing entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs from literally around the world. Let me tell you just briefly that before I set up this podcast, I got into technology and I always wanted this type of technology that would charge our devices and all the sorts of things that we use in our daily life. Finally, after 374 episodes, I've got a founder on the phone who's going to be talking to us about wireless charging in the age of connectivity. I'm really excited. Stay tuned for this; of course, you can get show notes from going to theappguy.co, it's episode 374.

Let me introduce my guest, it's Omri Lachman and he is the CEO and co-founder of Humavox and we're going to talk about wireless charging. Omri, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Omri: Thank you for having me, Paul.

Paul: Thank you for coming on. I'm so excited by this subject. In 2009, I had this idea of throwing all your devices into a bag and having them charge automatically because there are wires everywhere. You've done something about it, obviously, so how did you get the idea for Humavox?

Omri: Actually, back at the time, my co-founder, Asaf Elssibony and myself were childhood friends and he comes with electronics and engineering backgrounds... We stumbled upon this from even, I'd say, an emotional place. We were looking at wireless power at the time, and all we could see at the time was magnetic field induction aiming to charge smartphones. It is a pain we all know as users, we all have smartphones, they all go out of power. But at the time, as I said, from more emotional reasons, we were looking at more meaningful electronic devices like healthcare devices - home healthcare devices - that are not used mostly by you and me, the tech fans, it's used by common people, our folks, our kids. Those devices seem to occasionally need wireless charging more than our smartphones. The existing technologies at the time... And by the way, as we speak, the more common technologies for wireless charging are those magnetic field inductions, and the physics behind those technologies is actually a huge block from addressing any other device that is smaller, curved and cannot be precisely placed by the user. So it means that wireless charging wasn't and still isn't really seamless. That was a strong enough of a drive to get us to do something about it.

Paul: It's massively disrupting because the vision for the future is that the whole world will not need any leads to connect to their devices. But where are we at the moment, then? Give us an example of what you can do from a wireless charging perspective.

Omri: Like I said, we wanted to bring wireless charging to a way it's addressing - or addressable - for multiple devices, not just smartphones, tablets or laptops. We wanted something that can actually be seamless. Everyone likes to say 'seamless', but when we say 'seamless' it means that we don't need to think about it. Like Wi-Fi - it's just out there for us to use. So we looked around and realized that if we want to turn this into a real seamless experience then it can't have just one user experience or user interface for charging. It's can't be a pad, or a mat, or a surface on top of which we'll place devices because across the board, across market categories, across users, the experience is changing, the interface is changing, the user is changing, and we want to be able to allow the same user - or a different user, for the same type of device - to charge the device in an intuitive way. We basically looked around and realized that the common denominator for all of these, let's say, smaller-shaping devices now called the IoT and wearable tech, the common denominator is that this is not a smartphone. We will probably not be just throwing them on the kitchen counter or bedside like we do with our phones. We will probably store them, especially because it's tinier, it's more expensive, it's more personalized. It's not something we carry, it's something we wear. So we wanted to create something that would cover all those various scenarios and allow the device makers or the manufacturers to basically blend wireless charging into their design desires, rather than try to fit their designs into the physics of wireless charging. So what we actually do, we developed a way that allows us to turn a volume into a charging zone. What is a volume? It's a phrase that we kind of fumbled our way until we came up with it, because initially when you look at our website or you look at our work, it looks like we're doing charging boxes. We're not doing charging boxes; actually, we're not even a product company. When we say a volume, that's actually those places in life where we keep our devices, or where we just place them when they're in idle mode. A volume can be your car's cup holder; when you step into your car and you just throw your smartphone in that cup holder because that's what people do. That's what we mean when we say, "Let's blend wireless charging into life. Let's tap existing usability patterns, that users already do, and let's blend wireless charging into those experiences."

Paul: Omri, first of all, this is great. I have to say, you're not doing some whacky experiment behind you because I know that there's a big thunderstorm, we can hear the crack of lightning. Talk about nature...

Omri: Yes, that's just the guys in the lab.

Paul: ... experimenting with the charging. So let me just try to understand this then for the benefit of me and the audience here: are you saying that we can remove our leads connecting physically to the device, but we have to actually put them into some kind of volume, rather than have them charge for example on our wrists?

Omri: Correct. One of the things that we're doing right now is charging over distance. Just to give you some background... Opposed to the existing and more, let's say, common methods of charging, we're using RF - radio frequencies - and usually a higher frequency band, so around the bands that are used for wireless communications; it gave us several benefits. One of the first things we did was actually play around with shooting power over distance. When we did our own surveys and talked to consumers, we realized that people are not really looking for secret laser beams to charge their devices while in their living room or next to their bed. There's a lot of consumer psychology around everything, and ultimately when we're talking about wireless power, wireless energy, at some point people would like to know where that energy is coming from, how effective this energy is... So we realized that for wearable devices, whether it's for healthcare, sports, mobile, whatever, users will keep taking the device occasionally off their wrists, off their body, whatever type of product we can think of.

Paul: I have say to Omri, I obviously would love a future where when I walk into my home, everything then is charging through some kind of Wi-Fi where I don't have to think about it. If you think about smartphones, remember all those scary stories when we first had smartphones, that they were going to melt our brains and we mustn't put them anywhere towards our head. That was, obviously, discredited, but with any new technology, there is a kind of fear that comes with it. Is that what you're saying?

Omri: The main issue right now when we're thinking about power over distance, whether it's throughout the room or even across half a meter, for example, is the fact that wireless charging is all about efficiency. As we know, the rules of energy preservations are still there for those of us who practice the physics of the technology. So when you're actually transmitting energy, especially in those forms of wireless charging that can actually be targeted for a certain distance, the energy loss is quite substantial. I might just say that right now one of the things that we did at Humavox was join the newly-emerged organization for wireless power standardization. We're actually working with some of the other companies in our space, we all have a common goal.  We pretty much understand what the various flavors of wireless charging are doing out there, and realistically I think we're very far off from a point where someone can actually shoot the necessary voltage throughout the room in a way that will be safe and effective for charging. What we're actually talking about right now is trickle charging, it's the ability to shoot raindrops of energy throughout the room that may not charge your device but may keep... I always find myself going back to the example of filling a swimming pool with shot glasses; that may take time. But if the swimming pool is actually full, and then we have those shots or raindrops of water or energy, then this will probably make things last longer. This is the commonality where we see ourselves with some of the other wireless charging technologies that are targeting power over distance. Right now, regulation authorities, FCC, and equivalents are very clear on what they permit with respect to power over the air, especially when the regulation is already out there. I mean, we're using the same frequencies used for Wi-Fi, GSM, Bluetooth, so it's very clear what you can and cannot do. But I think that this is one of the key achievements or progress for wireless charging. Having a single standard organization that will allow several of us various flavors of wireless charging to come together and create something that is serving the purpose, and the purpose here is the life of consumers - you, me and the rest of us.

Paul: Omri, this is one of the biggest problems that I think I've faced. I guess it's a modern world problem, but certainly wires everywhere. I'm sat here next to a plug point because I need to be close to it, the different connectors... It's just a pain and I have always longed for a world where we don't have to think about charging, it just happens around us.

Omri: Correct.

Paul: This is a wonderful problem to solve. Now let's talk about you and your journey because you've got a great idea, you've got a great company. How did you and your friend actually get it off the ground, and start the company and get the funding?

Omri: I'm coming with some personal, let's say, mileage on the entrepreneurial highway. Ever since I can remember myself, whether working for my family's business, which is very far from the high-tech domain, it's actually in the industrial space, ever since I can remember myself, I was working around CNC turning and milling machine, forging, raw materials cutting, everything that takes a material and turns it into a product; ever since I can remember myself, I was starting something from scratch, from an idea, bringing it to a point where it's being used by users and then moving along. I'm also doing some early stage investments myself. It was how you take this idea and how you take this ship and actually start sailing. I have a pretty clear idea, for myself as the person steering the ship, as the CEO of the company. Let's just say... I always have this comparison where I say as a startup company, we're leaving the harbor. We know, or we think we know where our destination is, and then the water is always stormy, no matter what; it's always stormy. And for as long as we have those lighthouses that would remind us what is the real goal for which we took this journey, we'll be able to get there. If we have the right crew, and each member of the crew is really fulfilling their position and destiny, then we'll definitely get there. So what I'm trying to say here is that it's all about the people, and if you the right crew and if you really remember what your true goals are... Because throughout the way you can encounter numerous goals that usually tend to confuse the entrepreneurs - how do you raise money? How do you put the right slide in the right presentation, for the right investors? All of these distractions and background noises can definitely get your ship to shift from its course. For as long as you can remain focused and clear out those background noises, then you'll definitely get there.

Paul: That is wonderful advice. I'm thinking for anyone who is coming into this new, for example listening to you, getting inspired by the potential of doing something themselves, what would you suggest to them? What would be the biggest thing to focus on, if they had to focus?

Omri: Remember that whether you're developing an application, a web service, or wireless charging, focus on who you're developing for, not on who you're trying to sell this technology to. Because engineers will probably keep working with engineers, and that's perfectly fine because without those tremendous engineers we can't have products, but ultimately and usually we're developing for users. And for as long as you really find the right market and the right user for the technology, product or service that you're about to develop, then that will definitely get you there. What I'm trying to say here is ask the right questions, not the buzzwords or trendy questions that show on various web magazines, that can definitely distract people; really ask the right questions, and moreover, the most important thing is listen. I've seen this, and this is probably coming from my investor perspective where I get to take the side corner of the table and look at the teams working and see how you can so easily get distracted, just by listening or focusing on stuff that you read on some blog, that are completely irrelevant for you, but that seems like the right thing to do because billions of people are talking about it on Twitter right now.

Paul: That's wonderful advice. Just the amount of noise out there... How actually did you get feedback from consumers and users? Give us some tips on how you went about that.

Omri: The simple term would be 'have no shame.' Go out to people and talk to them, and whether you're having a coffee and asking your waitress what she thinks - of course if your product is relevant for her. But really go out there and talk to people. For wireless charging as a concept, as a vision, it doesn't take a lot of questions because some things just go without saying: yes, everyone wants a cord-free world, so I don't really need to go out there and ask people whether they want it or not. But then it really comes down to the deployment. Wireless charging in its first generation, like every... You know, there's this famous [unintelligible 00:19:20] research on the adaptation of life-changing technologies, or life-changing contributions and there's always this first curve for several years where this technology pops into life and usually fades in a certain way, and then starts this 15-25 years curve when the technology is really aggregating into life, and that's where we are right now. It was really looking at what happened with wireless charging so far, why have we been hearing about this for ten years, yet I allow myself to believe that you don't have a wireless charging pad on your table right now; I know I don't.

Paul: No, I don't.

Omri: And there is a reason for that. Someone was doing something wrong. I mean, they did a whole lot of right for sure. I'm fortunate enough to share a table occasionally with some of the admirals who were steering this in the first generation, but the approach was wrong, in many ways. Now we have the ability to learn from that, and focus on markets, on verticals and segments where maybe it's not as sexy; when most entrepreneurs start their startups, they all want to sell to the Samsungs and Apples out there, and I do, too, but maybe it's more right to find those users or consumers who really need what you're doing, and through those platforms you can actually escalate and bring the goodness and the benefits of your technology and product. Wireless charging again, as our topic for this conversation, is something so huge... I mean, it's really supposed to take cords out of our lives. It's not something that can be pulled by a single company. The same technology will not be charging electric vehicles and hearing-aid devices; you can't use the same technology for both. You know what, I'll revert on that because I can't say the word "can't", but it's most likely that it won't. This is the beautiful thing about the standard organization right now, it's that we see several flavors, several different technologies starting to sit around the same table and see how we can bring this basically to the benefit of common good. But when you that and you really find those areas, and I believe this is what Humavox did, and even some of the feedback we're getting from our competitors - which we're fortunate to be able to talk with occasionally and get their feedbacks - it seems like we did some right things along the way. So targeting those markets where the technology may not be as shiny, yet way more meaningful.

Paul: Omri, there's two more things I've got to do before we say goodbye to you. One is that I did hear you say that you do take investments into other companies so I'm just wondering, speaking to you from an investor with all these entrepreneurs listening to this show, what would be your big questions that you would focus on and ask when potentially making an investment in a company?

Omri: I don't want to catch trendy buzzwords, so I won't say "my investment philosophy" because I don't work in being an investor; I have some rich friends who do. So I don't have a philosophy. I only invested so far in technologies or products that I believe can that can have a significant impact on common people's life. It can be a medical device, it can be a financing or payment service, but for as long as I believe that it can actually impact life. I don't invest in good businesses or good ideas, I invest in greater people that have great ideas, but only if those ideas can really make a change across the globe, across all people categories. The first thing I ask a person is, "What are you trying to change? What problem are you trying to solve?" Because I meet a lot of guys and girls, entrepreneurs of all sorts, and some of them have some great ideas for money-maker, business product, applications, whatever. That's not my cup of tea. I'm looking for those dramatic impacts, and I'm looking for that sparkling shine in the eye when someone is talking about their product or their invention or their idea. I'm looking at them and usually, I have the capability of understanding whether I believe or not that the person in front of me is actually capable of grabbing hold of the steering wheel and drive this boat or this wagon and execute their idea.

Paul: Omri, that's great because you've just said "What problem are you trying to solve?" is one of your big questions. That is one of the massive themes to come out of all these episodes, with all these great entrepreneurs and founders. It's all about problem-solving, and I try to reinforce that message time and time again. Too many of us get distracted by the noise, as you say, and don't focus on solving a problem.

Omri: For sure. I mean, I can give you one thing that I'm always telling the people I meet. I always start by saying, "Let's put the presentations aside, at least for the first part of the conversation." Because mostly I would see 10-20 slides, 80% or 90% out of which would be stuff taken from the web because someone said it should be in the presentation. Realistically, I just want to hear out the person talking, not reading. I want to be able to understand. And I'm never putting myself... First and foremost, I'm an entrepreneur myself. As I said, I'm not working in being an investor, and as such, I understand the other side most likely better than I understand the investor side. It's really all about understanding what you're trying to pull, why are you doing this? I would say that the majority of the people I meet are great, but they saw something or heard something and came up with something for their personal lives. And that something may be presented as the problem, but in many cases by the time the conversation is over, I think that they themselves realize that the problem maybe isn't as big as they thought it is, and sometimes maybe I turn out as the bad cop, but if I managed to save that person the resources, trouble, pain and gain of getting out there and potentially maybe even raising money, because... I would say one thing that is maybe very important for me to say in this context - and this is actually a part of a philosophy - I always envision this as if there is a virtual pool of money out there, meant to be invested in startups and in new innovations and disruptive ventures. And if someone is squeezing into that pool and managed to drain some of it to something that is maybe not as meaningful, then that resource just went, instead of someone that can actually be using that resource to bring something really greater. So I think that it's sometimes the investor's responsibility to not be judgmental; because probably 90% of the stuff I see, I can't understand. So I'm never being judgmental, but I think that it's about responsibility for everyone to really ask themselves whether this is a cool application that's going to be making some money and maybe there are many ways to execute it, or this is really something that I need to go out there and raise funds from private investors at first, that will be putting in those hundred thousands of dollars on something that may be not as great.

Paul: And Omri, this is a show about apps, so the final thing we're going to part with is, we cannot say goodbye without asking for one or two app recommendations that you could give us... Maybe one or two apps that we haven't come across before.

Omri: One of which would be... And I would first say that I'm very far from being non-biased here, one of them would be Yallo, which is a company I invested into. That's not an endorsement, in any way; I invested because I really believe that what they're doing is tremendous and great. They're reinventing basically the dialer experience. So that's definitely something I recommend, it's available on Google Play and now on iOS.

Paul: And I would say everyone listening to this should have that on their phone, because Yosi Taguri, the CTO was on Episode 358, and if anyone is listening to this and hasn't listened to that episode they should go back and listen to it because it's fascinating.

Omri: Yes, I definitely recommend it, and again, not because I'm a stakeholder there, but because it's really tremendous. The other recommendation would be to something that we all know, but I think it's one of my most used applications, which would be Flipboard.

Paul: Right, yes. Absolutely. What sort of sources of news are you pulling into your Flipboard?

Omri: Well, mostly technology sources, I guess it's not a shock.

Paul: You're allowed that. Omri, I have to say this has been just the most enjoyable conversation and the first time we've actually had a guest who has had to go through a horrendous thunderstorm and keep so professional and so energized. So thank you so much for bearing with us while all hell breaks loose behind you.

Omri: Yes, it just turned into a blizzard.

Paul: Now, all your contact details will be on the show notes, so for anyone who cannot write this down because they are driving, or mowing the lawn, or running away from a thunderstorm, it's Episode 374. Go to theappguy.co and search for Omri Lachman. But for the time being, Omri, how best can people connect with you, reach out and get in touch?

Omri: Either e-mail or LinkedIn would probably be the quickest and best ways to contact me.

Paul: Terrific, okay. Omri, thank you so much for coming on The App Guy Podcast, and all the best. I'm definitely going to have to get you back on when I actually have a device that's charging wirelessly, that's not my toothbrush.

Omri: Well, I invite you, Paul, and all your listeners at CES; we'll be showing some cool stuff and that's coming quick around the corner. And you can always catch up on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter what we're doing, what we're up to. We'll keep heading towards a cords-free world and hoping to make an impact.

Paul: Well, we're all supporting you, we've all got your back. Literally, I think this is the first time a hundred percent of this audience is behind the idea. Thank you so much for coming on.

Omri: Thank you so much for having me, Paul. I appreciate it.

How To Get Your Content Discovered

Paul: Welcome to The App Guy Podcast. I'm your host; it's Paul Kemp. This is the show where I help all entrepreneurs, anyone who wants to know what it's like to work in a startup, or the startup scene, entrepreneurship, helping people - this is the podcast to give you an insight into what it's like to get into the scene and to help other out and to live a pretty awesome life with regards to entrepreneurship and startups. Do stay tuned for this episode, I have got a great guest. Actually, I've known this guest for quite a long time digitally, in the digital world, and it's the first time I've had him on the show. His name is Hans van Gent, and he is the creator of Inbound Rocket, but he's also got a full-time job in the fifth largest agency in the world, which is Havas and he can talk us through digital advertising, content marketing, a lot of stuff. So we're going to learn a lot from Hans. Hans, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Hans: Thank you for having me, it's a great honor to be part of the podcast series. I've been listening to the podcast, for some time already, and it's always very helpful.

Paul: It's great that you've come on. Now, we have a history together; we've known each other in various Slack groups, and we've been helping each other out, and that's the wonderful world about digital now, that you can build up good relationships with people that you've never met. Tell us about your full-time job first because you are doing advertising. How did you get into advertising? Talk us through how you started working in the digital world?

Hans: Well, it's a bit of a funny story, I think because to be honest I don't have any background in advertising. I studied computer sciences when I was still at university, and I was working happily in that scene. I was working at a small internet provider in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. At one point I had a girlfriend who was working in advertising, so I got to see a bit of the trade, and I helped her out with things that she got stuck on, and at one point I was thinking to myself, "You know, maybe this advertising world is something for me. Maybe I can switch to this world." But of course, having no official background in advertising and no education in there, it might be a bit difficult to get on board; so then I was thinking to myself, "What could be the easiest way to get onboard?" And that was actually through project management. I thought it doesn't matter if you don't know the trade; as long as you can manage projects, then you can work in any company, so that was sort of my step in the door into advertising, four or five years ago. I've been growing in there, I've been learning a lot from the industry and currently, I'm working at Havas Worldwide in Brussels, where I'm the Client Service Director for the digital department; I'm responsible for the entire digital business of the agency there.

Paul: Hans, the most inspirational thing, which will be very appealing to those listening, is the fact that you're working full-time, but you have a secret passion for the startup scene, entrepreneurship and helping people out. Because when you get home, you start doing all this work in content marketing, and you're the creator of Inbound Rocket, so maybe we could focus on that. Firstly, how on earth do you find the time to do all this stuff that you do online, outside of your job?

Hans: Okay, advertising is not really that much of a normal job, like a 9 to 5 job, although there are some similarities. You work a certain set of hours during the day and then in the evening when you come home, you can either sit on the couch, watch some mind-numbing TV and basically waste your entire evening, or you could do something useful with your life.

I'm a very strong believer that if you know something yourself, and there are people that don't have that sort of knowledge, then you should try to help out those people. I have got a lot of friends who are in the startup scene, so that's how I got introduced into that part of the world.

In 2012, I ended up being a contestant in the StartupBus in Europe, and that got the ball rolling a bit more. I ended up being the director in 2014 of the StartupBus in Europe, again next to my main job. We've been organizing weekends where we teach people the basics of entrepreneurship. Through all these different types of events that I do next to my main job, I started to see that most companies fail not because they don't have a good product - they might have the most brilliant product in the world - but they fail because they end up not having any customers.

One thing is, of course, are you really solving a problem that is big enough that people are willing to pay to use your product? In the end, though, even if you are solving a problem for people, if people don't know about you then you're still not doing any business. So from that learning and from what I saw happening there, I came to the conclusion: Okay, how can I help people in that space? I ended up looking around and seeing that a lot of these startups use WordPress as their content management system for their website. They end up installing a lot of different plugins, like 20 or 30, all doing their own little thing. They delete a couple, install some more, and in the end, it's all little islands not working together.

There are a couple of big companies out there who help with marketing automation, but those prices are just way too high for startups and small, medium enterprises. So then my logical conclusion was, okay, if these small, medium enterprises and these startups are running on WordPress and they still need to get customers, why don't I try to help them with that? So I had the idea for Inbound Rocket. Having a technical background, I started validating the idea and working on the first version. But at one point - you know how these things go - if you're not a hardcore developer, it's really difficult to make big steps. Via my network I approached this amazing guy in the U.S. Funny story, I never met the guy in real life; he's an awesome guy, but I never met him in real life, and we're trying to build a business there.

Paul: I know what can help... I mean, if you can imagine that someone listening to this is maybe working for a startup, or they've got their own app and they're really struggling with discovery, you've got a great way of helping with discovery because you do a lot of stuff with content marketing. I see you posting all the time, you're writing, you're posting on various websites, and you even share a lot of the traffic that that generates... What's been the best thing that's worked for you with regards to content marketing?

Hans: I think the mistake that a lot of people made in content marketing is that they first have the idea: "Content marketing is big. I should do something with content marketing." They might start off good; they might produce a couple of articles, but, in the end producing content is really difficult. You have to take the time to investigate your market to be able to write some good stuff. A lot of companies, in the end, their blog, it turns into some glorified status update, and they say, "Look, we hired somebody" or "We've got a new release" or something like this. But content marketing is just a different way of solving the problem you're trying to solve with your product or service. If you look at it from that sense, it becomes a bit easier to come up with articles on how you can help your customers. You have a product, you have a service, you have an app, and you think, "Okay, I can help people with this", but the app is just one part of trying to fix somebody's problem. With content marketing, you can expand that reach, and you can expand on helping people, trying to solve their problems.

Paul: Yes... This comes on the back of an episode, and if you haven't actually heard this episode I do encourage listeners to try to go back and listen to Janet Murray, episode 386 where she said, "No one really wants to read about a new hire, or a new release, or a new update." It's a completely boring subject. Obviously, very relevant to the company or the startup, but not to the world. It doesn't matter. So having a story and having something compelling, or... She mentioned having something that helps the reader know that there's something in it for them. So what I'm learning from you is that you write things that help people, help people achieve or get answers to that question, or just with that knowledge. Is that right?

Hans: Indeed, I once read somewhere online or heard it in a podcast, this brilliant anecdote: Someone said that the big problem is that even if you're thinking that you're on the right track, a lot of people, when they start writing, they are approaching it in a way that is way to difficult. Because what happens is that if I know a certain subject, and I know a certain subject well, automatically your brain thinks, "Oh, the rest of the world knows this", and then you don't write about it because you think it's useless and nobody cares about this. But the anecdote I'm referring to is that, okay, look at it like this: if you go to high-school or you go to university, the first day that you arrive at the university, indeed, you don't know anything indeed. And after four years of being at the university, you know everything: you know where the toilets are, you know which teacher you need to approach for whatever subject, etc. But on the other hand, every day there's a new bunch of freshmen arriving, on the internet. Just like every year, there's a new bunch of freshmen arriving at university. Even though you might think, "Okay, I know the world, I know everything," because of the fact there's always a new bunch of freshmen arriving, even with something that for you sounds very mundane, and you think, "Sure, I know this subject. Everybody know this", there are always a lot of people out there who still don't know this, and you can still help them. Even by just writing out those kinds of things, you can get a good grip on the market and educate a lot of people, and thus attract a lot of traffic.

Paul: I'm going to encourage everyone listening to this who is getting inspired to go and write something. If you're listening and you're an app entrepreneur and you haven't written anything, or blogged about anything, or posted anything, right now. It's great traffic; it's great for your profile. Let's talk about what we do. We met through a Slack group, and we do help each other out. What have you learned over the year of posting things on various sites? Have you got any good recommendations for us?

Hans: Well, it all depends on your market, on the app. Of course, if you have a certain project and if you have a certain product, then that product is solving the problem for what in advertising we call a certain Buyer Persona, somebody who is your ideal customer. And your ideal customer has certain spots on the internet where he or she hangs out. It could be on Facebook, but your ideal customer could hang out on Reddit, or on all sorts of forums, websites or communities online, I think before your start writing if you try to define - just like you defined who is your ideal customer for your app - if you know your ideal customer, then you know also in what tone of voice you need to start writing, what type of content you can start writing, and you know where those people are hanging out. So if you want to start promoting your content, go to the places where your customers are. That could be anything, ranging from Quora to Reddit, to LinkedIn or Twitter, it doesn't matter. It's very difficult to say, "Okay, go to this website," because what might work for me doesn't necessarily have to work for somebody else.

Paul: How about this, then? How about we do a case study, and we treat you as a consultant? So in the previous episode, just to kind of link this show together, the previous episode was a video app; it was a unique video app that's got a unique proposition of changing the way we edit, in real time editing. If I was to try and promote that video app - because I'm sure that's very similar to a lot of people listening to this - where would I go and what would I do?

Hans: I think, for starters, for somebody working with video it's very logical to go to video places like YouTube or Vimeo, instead of writing something. Because content marketing is more than just writing; it can be the creation of visuals, or in your case, what you're doing here with podcasts is a form of content marketing by itself. So it could also mean that content marketing for this person when trying to attract an audience could happen by creating useful content on a YouTube channel, or on Vimeo; Twitter would be suitable - you can tweet a video, as well. In this case, it makes more sense to go into that direction and see where the audience is there.

Paul: Yes, and it also can be a complete waste of time if you don't get it right... Because I've spent years on the web, and it will suck up huge amounts of time, and if you spend it posting to various places where nobody is going to read it and nobody is going to watch it, it does consume a lot of time. How can we ensure that we can get discovered with our content, as well as the apps? Should we partner with people who have already made audiences? Give us some advice on that.

Hans: What is always really helpful indeed is writing on different platforms, guest-writing, for example. When you know there's another company out there who has a bigger reach than you; maybe you can swap an article, saying "Look, I will write an article for you guys, why don't you write an article for me?" Another good way is approaching the thought leaders in your industry. What I've seen happening on our blog, at Inbound Rocket, for example, is some post where in one week, I created a post about a certain subject, and in the following week, I did a follow-up post where I let in the opinion of industry thought-leaders on the website. I think you were part of one of those posts, as well. And one, it's very easy, you can just create a Google Form and stalk these people, send them a tweet, "Hey, can you give me five minutes of your time to fill in this form and be featured in my post?" A lot of people are helpful, and you know, five minutes of their time is nothing. On the one hand, if they help you with these five minutes, they get more exposure as a thought leader, so it's like an ego boost for them; and as soon as the post is online, they are always really eager to share, of course, because it's their face on another website, and it's their opinion, so it helps them in the ego again. But on the other hand, as soon as those industry thought leaders start sharing that content, of course, they have a lot of followers, so it ends up having a lot of traffic for you again.

Paul: Okay, I love this strategy, and I'm just going to try and break down what I've learned from you. So this is a post that you put together, that had all the different thought leaders that you knew had some influence, and you wrote about them individually and what they were advising.

Hans: A concrete example in this case - at one point I wrote a post about how you can optimize your landing page. There are different things like social proofing, etc. to make your landing page more convincing. On the other hand, for startups, it's really difficult if you're just starting out to have the social proof because nobody wrote about you yet, you don't have user reviews, so the case for really early startups is a bit different. So I approached a couple of industry thought leaders and said, "Okay if you need to start a new business right now, and you need to create a landing page, how would you make sure that it will help convert?" I asked them just this one question, I put it in a Google Form and just stalked a bunch of people on Twitter. From the 30 people I ask, I get maybe ten responses, and I include those responses in a new post.

Paul: It's absolutely genius, Hans, what you're advising. It's a great strategy for anyone who's thinking about trying to increase their discoverability for what they're doing. So there are two things we need to do before we say goodbye. One is that I love to try and tease out potential new ideas for disruptive apps. Now, we can either just ask you outright if as you're going about your business - and I'm assuming you're incredibly productive - do you have an idea for an app? If you do, great; if not, we can explore another way of doing this.

Hans: Well, I have an idea already, for some time, and I was listening to one of your podcasts the other day and I think somebody already mentioned it a little bit.

Paul: That's the thing in the app world - everything's already been done.

Hans: Well, it's not being done yet at the moment, so this is a golden opportunity, I would say, but I just really don't have the time for it. The fact is that a lot of times... I'm from the Netherlands, but I'm working in Belgium right now, and I don't know when these public holidays are in Belgium, so it's always a big surprise for me; like one week from now we have a day off, and I never know these kinds of things, and that makes it really difficult for me as well to, in advance, plan a nice weekend away, like a city trip with my girlfriend, for example. So what would be ideal for me, if there was just a website or application where you could say: okay, two weeks from now, in that weekend I can leave on Friday evening, I need to come back on Sunday evening; this is my budget, tell me what I can do. Because right now you go to ten different websites to get your plane information, then you might find some cheap flight but you still need to find a hotel, you need to find activities, and it would be awesome if you could just tell me, "Okay, two weeks from now you could go to Rome, you're sleeping here, you can visit this concert. Or you could go to Berlin, you visit this museum, and you're staying here." Just give the budget envelope and give me my options.

Paul: So Hans, for everyone listening who has the ability to develop apps, they need to take this guidance. When you hear these stories, time and time again, and these needs, we're definitely on to something. I was only talking about this the other day... We need someone, as a family here, to curate our weekends, curate our life, in a way. Because I don't want the hassle of booking, all these different options. I just want... Here's my budget, and I want them to tap into my Facebook feeds so they can see what I like to do, and I want them to tell me, I want some service or app that tells me what to do. I pay the app, and it just takes care of everything.

Hans: It costs so much time that by the time you find a decent flight, the hotels are too expensive; and you just want to get a small weekend away, and I don't need to spend two evening or three evenings trying to find something nice to go to.

Paul: Hans, it's a perfect idea, so I want someone listening to this to build that because that is a genius idea. All the best apps that are massively successful are doing some curation, and what about curating the one most important thing, which is our lives; taking especially the weekends, curating it so that we don't have the stress and hassle of booking all these different things individually. It's a genius idea. Okay, the final thing then... This is a show about apps, so do you have an app or two that you think we may not know about but could be a good recommendation? Please don't close the recording, as well. This is usually the bit where I lose the guest.

Hans: Well, on my desktop I've been using Grammarly lately a lot, especially since I'm writing more. As you might have guessed from my accent, I'm not a native English speaker, so writing in English sometimes, even if I think it's correct, it still might give some weird stuff and especially if you're doing content marketing, you want to be correct in your English or in the grammar you're writing, and Grammarly has been a major help for me, trying to spell all the different quirks I do wrong in my writing.

Paul: Okay, I love Grammarly. You introduced me to that a while ago, and I've been using it and I love it. I think it's great. I haven't yet gone for the upgrade. It's basically for anyone, you need to go and check it out; I'll be putting links on the show notes. Grammarly gives you a free and then a paid version. You have these critical issues, and then you have the advanced issues. When you pay for those advanced issues, are they worth it?

Hans: Yes. So I've got a paid version indeed because I love the product, and if I love something, then I will reward the people who made it and I will always pay for it. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to pay for it, but the other thing is indeed the options to have some more in-depth knowledge about your writing, it's awesome.

Paul: You're making me feel guilty now. After this, I will go and pay for it. You're right, there is a maker behind these things, and there's no better endorsement of the product than actually paying for it.

Hans: Indeed. A couple of years ago I wanted to start using an application for my coding called Coda, and in the AppStore it's not possible to do a review, test it out for two weeks and then decide to pay for it. Maybe it's changed by now, but I'm not sure. To be honest, what I did have I torrented the application, I used it for three hours and them I said, "Okay, it's good." I deleted the application, and I still bought it.

Paul: Wouldn't you wish that every app user is a bit like that? I mean, look at some of the reviews that you get for free apps... I do feel like we're living in a society where sometimes there's no appreciation for the creators. But when you're a creator yourself, then it gives you a huge amount of appreciation for the things that are created for us. Do you feel like that's fair?

Hans: Exactly, that appreciation is important; the guy needs to pay for his lunch as well, and he needs to pay for a roof above his head, so it makes a lot of sense to help out. And because of the free economy, a lot of these things are so cheap nowadays. It doesn't really matter... I'm a paying customer for example for Evernote. I love Evernote, as well, and I'm more than happy to pay for it, it's only a couple Euros a month. Of course, in the end, you always have to be careful that you're not paying for a hundred different things a couple Euros a month, because then it's still expensive, but...

Paul: Yes, I can confess I am a paying customer of Evernote. So, Hans, that is great, I will put links to that in the show notes. So for everyone listening, it's Episode 394. To get to that, you just need to go to theappguy.co and just type in 394 or Hans van Gent. What's the best way of getting in touch, Hans? What's the easiest way of reaching out to you?

Hans: Well, if you're looking for me just type my name; I think by now in Google I'm occupying the first couple of pages.

Paul: That is the best answer I think I've ever heard on this whole show. Just google me.

Hans: Yes, well if you're active online for more than a couple of years, you start to occupy that first page, for a bare minimum. So it's way easier than handing out business cards... Just search for my name. But you can always find me on... I think the easiest is reaching out via Twitter, that's @jcvangent, or with that same username basically on every social network.

Paul: You have just proven to anyone who has maybe a slightly unique name that they need to be content marketing because the benefit of that is that you google the name and you will be everywhere on the first two pages. So that's almost a justification for that time and effort into the content. Hans, this has been a great chat. I'm so glad that we could get you on the show finally, and all the best with Inbound Rocket. I do recommend people to go and check out inboundrocket.co, and thank you for coming on.

Hans: Thanks a lot of having me. After listening to all you episodes, it's been a real honor to finally be on one myself.

 

No one likes to be stalked (but we love stalking)

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is the show where we get some great founders on the show to help you in your app entrepreneurial journey. If you're listening to this for the first time, there's a whole rich archive of episodes dating back several years, 400+ episodes to get through. You can find those on iTunes. Let me introduce today's guest, who's going to inspire us with his journey. He's got a wonderful, rich history of being involved in lots of different mobile stuff. His name is Rich Pleeth, and he is the founder of Sup, and you can just go to supmenow.com, check it out. Rich is going to talk to us about that app and much more, so Rich, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Rich: Thanks so much. Episode 405, how exciting!

Paul: It is. It's great to get here. We've had lots of amazing chats. In fact, a lot of this stuff you've been involved with. You mentioned GetTaxi in the pre-chat, but you've done stuff... Maybe it's good to start off with a little bit of history about what you've been doing in the app world.

Rich: Sure, so I actually started my career at L'Oreal, which is why I have such great hair, thanks to their wonderful products. I did one of their first digital campaigns using YouTube, and a few weeks after I did that campaign I got a LinkedIn e-mail from a recruiter at Google, asking me if I'd like to come and interview at Google, and I said I'd love to. So I went down to Google and I interviewed there, and after 12 interviews I managed to get an interview at Google, which was great, and I launched Google's first Go Mobile initiative, so it was really encouraging brands to go mobile, if they should go with a mobile web application or they should actually get an app, which was really interesting. I then moved off to go and lead Chrome marketing in the UK, so myself and my team, we managed to get Chrome to be the number one browser in the UK. We then launched Chrome Books, and I was also responsible for doodles in the UK, so how the Google homepage changes with various different things. From there I went to GetTaxi, as their global CMO, so I was leading the expansion across the globe. They're now in about 52 cities including New York, London, Moscow and Tel Aviv. I did 74 flights in 2014, which is a lot of flights. So I was always in a new city, or a new place every day. What I found was I'd always miss my friends, so I'd check in on Facebook, hoping that a friend would say, "Hey, I'm also in Madrid", or "I'm also in JFK. Let's grab a drink!" And it would happen an awful lot, but it would always happen two hours or two days later, and it would never be instant. And people don't use Find My Friends because you can stalk people - and stalking people is really fun, don't get me wrong, but being stalked is not so fun. So we came up with Sup, which is a beautiful, seamless experience to see your friends more, but without the creep factor, because we don't have maps, so you can't actually see someone's exact location, you can just see if they're in your area.

Paul: Rich, I don't even know where to start because you've got such a huge wealth of success that keeps following you around.

Rich: I don't know if it's success, a lot of it is luck.

Paul: Well, I mean, we're all using Chrome thanks to you, perhaps, and our Chrome Books, getting taxis... How do you focus on one thing? It seems like you've moved around quite a bit. Is it hard to stop yourself just falling in love with all these different solutions that you're bringing out?

Rich: So I have a really big weakness, I very much crave a challenge, so I always need to be challenged. And I've had such a fantastic time at Google, but towards my end of my time at Google, Google was a 55,000 person company, up from about 15,000 when I joined, and it had become a little bit political, a little bit bureaucratic, and you couldn't challenge the status quo every day as we had done when I first joined. That's why I decided to move to GetTaxi. It was much smaller, obviously it was very much a startup mentality, and moving on to my own thing is really... That's what it is. I have one thing, that I'm not particularly good at all. Like, lots of people are brilliant, I have lots of people on my team who are brilliant at things, whereas I'm really not brilliant at anything, I am just immensely curious. I like finding problems, I like figuring out how I can solve them, and what I say to my team is that I'm here to make sure that you guys do not have any road bumps, you don't have any barriers, you can just carry on doing what you love doing, what you are brilliant at. And because of that, I tell people I'm not particularly good at anything. I just am hopefully okay at problem-solving, but I am great at picking out great socks, so I will say I'm great at one thing.

Paul: Actually, you've just picked up again on this big running theme that I have throughout the entire history of my show, which is the focus on solving problems in the world. How important do you feel that is in creating an app, or selling up a company?

Rich: I think that's just so crucial, because my job... I'm a total generalist, okay? I'm not particularly focused on anything. I am a generalist, and my whole thing is I have a brilliant CTO, I have brilliant iOS developers, I have a brilliant UX designer and I have a brilliant head of growth. But when they have a problem, or they can't get through to something, or they need something, that's when my job kicks in; I can make sure that I can help them with the problem myself, within our weekly one to one or just in an informal catch-up, or whatever it may be. The number one thing I think that makes a very strong leader, opposed to a boss, is that they're problem-solving, they're worrying every day about how you can get to the next level. Our developers, for example - we didn't have fast enough internet this morning; it's just a very small problem that we had, and I have to go figure that out, how we're going to get faster internet in the next 10 minutes, to make sure these guys can do it. You know, little problems like that, and then you have the bigger problems, which is we need to get another hundred thousand users in the next two weeks, how do we actually solve that? So I think that a really big part of it, especially now that there are so many startups around, you need to be nimble, you need to be able to move extremely quickly, and you need to be able to problem-solve.

Paul: Rich, one of the things that I'm picking up on is that you've been successful in... You've mentioned L'Oreal and Google, and the actual campaign there for Chrome, and all these things that you've been involved with. App discovery is one of the biggest challenges that I'm often asked. Any advice on how you actually get your app discovered, downloaded and used?

Rich: This is the thing. Everyone's talking at the moment about how do you discover apps, because there are so many startups out there, there are so many apps that are launching, and the App Store has probably over a million or a few million apps and more are launching every week. So how do you get out above that noise and actually make people want to download your app, and the first thing is to create... I look at it like SEO. Everyone, when I was at Google, would say, "How do I make sure that people are finding my website?" And the number one thing is to make a brilliant website. So for me the advice is, with an app, if you're trying to get above the noise, create a brilliant app that's solving a problem, that people are going to actually want to use. If you can do that, you can get press out of it, you can get investment out of it, and hopefully you will get Apple to feature you, as well. And then there's also obviously all the paid channels you can go through, but growth hacking is something we spend a tremendous amount of our time on. It's really exciting because you can figure... You know, you probably do 500 growth hacks every few months, and probably 499 or even 500 of those will fail, but you're going to find out one, maybe it's your 1500th growth hack, and that could work and that could suddenly get you a million users. So it's just trial and error, and trial and error, and figuring out what works, what doesn't work. You have to make sure you're having a lot of fun along the way, because if you're not enjoying it then there's not much point in doing it.

Paul: Yes, I actually agree with you, Rich, because I've spent the last year... Persistence, it really does pay off in all the apps I've been involved with. It's amazing when you appear as a best new app, and you kind of realize what got you there and you start using that technique. So in terms of actually starting your company, you've gone from the safety net of being employed to now running your own thing. How did you overcome that fear of making that change and just committing yourself to your own startup?

Rich: So I've always had that fear, I have to say, because I've always wanted to do my own startup. When I was at Google I was thinking, "Do I go do my own startup now, or do I go to another startup?" And I went to another startup because I wanted to learn, and I think learning is so important. And do I regret not doing it sooner? Maybe, but I've learned so much and I've met so many people that I felt it was a really good time to do it. When I quit my job I had to give my laptop in, I had to give my phone in, and I'd never owned my own laptop because my company had always given it to me; I'd never had to pay my own phone bill because they'd always given me a phone. I'd never had to get health insurance, or get travel insurance because that's already being provided for me. And suddenly you're out on your own, I was like "It's Monday morning, what do I do?" I had to go to the Apple Store and buy myself a new phone, buy myself a new Mac, and then my calendar has gone from a beautiful, colored rainbow of many meetings in there to nothing. I now need to start my own things, and I probably had a 20-minute panic attack every day that I was unemployed, and I was like "What do I do now?" I'm literally no better now that I'm just sitting around not doing anything, and it was like, "You've got to get out there." So I got business cards printed, which I think is brilliant because then you're like, "I'm a professional now." So I got my own business cards printed, and then it's really a matter of hustling, you know? I went out and I went to every single networking event I could possibly go to, every single founder event or founders group I could get into. And some of them are great, you meet fantastic people, but some of them are rubbish, and you meet one person or you meet nobody, and you're like "Well, this was a waste of an evening." And you have to fully immerse yourself, get out there and meet as many people as you possibly can, because you never know when that person might be like, "Oh, my friend is investing in startups. You should meet him.", or "You can help that person out." I think that's the nicest thing about the startup industry: no one is there to take, everyone is there to give and help, and so many people I've met I've managed to help out, get investment or get a good lawyer, or get a good accountant, or introduce to some graphic designers, or help them get other people. And as long as you're willing to give, people are willing to give to you, and I think that's the great thing about startup culture: everybody wants to help everyone out.

Paul: I love that, I really do. I mean, it's what we live by here. In terms of actually getting the funding, did you have some prior connections that helped with that process? I'm assuming that you started this as a funded startup and not bootstrapped.

Rich: So we started it in March when I quit my job, and we had no money, we had no leads, or who could give us money or anything. I'd been helping raise money for GetTaxi, but we raised 150 million dollars, so we raised a lot of money. And so when I finished at GetTaxi I contacted some of the people I'd managed to meet, and a lot of that was because I was very interested in that... People who I'd been talking to of funds and introduced me to other funds, and their friends, and stuff, so I had a very small network there, and it was really just going out, building a great pitch deck and getting out and hustling. We had our first break with JamJar, who are the co-founders of Innocent Drinks, and I messaged Richard Reed who I'd happened to do a little bit of work with at Google, and I said, "Hey man, I haven't spoken to you in probably 3 years, since the very early days when I was at Google. I've just quit my job, I'm doing this startup..." and I went over to him and presented him the deck and he loved it. I was just really lucky that we got that stamp of approval from a very major VC that's very well respected, and it made it significantly easier to go raise. But until you get that full amount you are hustling every single day. I probably did like 300 meetings with people, and some of them just have no interest, they think your idea is horrible, and you just walk out of the room, you feel a bit terrible about it, and then you have to go to your next meeting and be super positive and super enthusiastic, "This is the best idea ever!" even though someone's just told you that this is never going to work and you should go get another job. I've even had e-mails from people that they've accidently CC'ed me on, saying that this is such a rubbish idea, the founder should just go and get a job, but he was a nice guy. And you're just like, "Oh, hi guys. I think I was actually CC'ed on this." But then you've got to pull yourself together in the next 10 minutes and go to a meeting and pitch like your life depended on that, and you didn't hear any of these negative comments. What I always say is people are going to hate your idea, no matter what, even if it's the best idea. People would have hated Google, people hated Airbnb, and you can see some of the e-mails that the founder got there, about how much people hated it and were like, "This guy is going to fail." You just have to believe in your idea so much, and no one is ever going to believe in your idea as much as you do. If you look at Larry Page and Sergey, no one believes in Google as much as they do, and no one ever will. No one believes in Sup as much as I do, no matter what they say. I talk about Sup all the time, I dream about it, I talk about it with my friends, with my parents, with everybody, and no one is going to believe in it as much as I do. And if you believe in the idea and you think it's fantastic, and that it's going to change the world, that's how you can go and change the world.

Paul: Rich, this is just such a fantastic chat. You're covering all these big themes that often come up. I mean, you also mentioned the importance of networking, and also believing in your own idea, which I feel like a lot of us maybe do get lost in trying to chase what's successful. Let's talk about Sup because we haven't really spent a lot of time talking about the app, and I'd love to give people an idea of what it is doing. So could you give a real case scenario of how someone would actually use Sup?

Rich: Sure, so first of all you should go download Sup. You can just type in Sup into the App Store and you can download it, or go to supmenow.com and get the app. It's a beautiful, seamless experience. We've gone with pink because why not, because it's in your face, it's really nice and bright, and it's a really beautiful design. If you ever play with it you can see how close some of your friends are to you just by pulling your finger down the screen and people fly in and out in a very beautiful way. The real idea was that I wanted to see my friends more. I was always in new cities and I have a lot of friends on Facebook who I have no idea if they were in the city I was in at the same time. Sup lets you safely see if someone is in your area without stalking them. You can't see their exact location on the map. I was in New York two weeks ago fundraising and I got a notification that one of my friends, James, who's actually an investor at Bulletin, he was in New York at the same time as me. He was 400 meters away from me. Now, we haven't managed to see each other in the last six months, because we've both been immensely busy, but because we were 400 meters away from each other in New York we managed to go grab a beer. So how great is that? I would have never known that James was in New York. We both got a notification, we were less than 500 meters away from each other and we just walked two blocks and managed to grab a beer together, which was awesome. And now what we're seeing is time and time again people are sending us Instagram posts or tweeting us that because of Sup they've managed to see their friends more, and they've managed to have some time offline. Instead of just messaging people on WhatsApp saying, "Hey, is anyone around? I'm in central London." or "I'm in the West end, anyone around?" you can now go on Sup and you can see if anyone is within your 2000 meter radius, which is less than 20 minutes walk, or within 20 meters, which could be in the room with you. Even this weekend I was in a bar, we were actually watching American football with one of my house mates, and we went on Sup - because he's also an investor - and we saw that both of us were obviously sitting in the room, but we saw someone else was in the room, as well, that we didn't know, and it was one of our friends who was also watching American football in the same room as us. So these magic moments happen when people come together, and Sup lets people come together and makes sure that you don't miss out on those moments. We know that missing out obviously sucks and that people hate planning; you love being spontaneous and saying, "Oh yes, let's grab a drink because you're around the corner", and Sup lets you do that more.

Paul: I'm already in love with the idea as well. How does it pull your contacts?

Rich: Sure, so you log in via Facebook and what it does at the moment is you can then invite friends - so I'd urge you all to invite friends because you get a better experience if you have friends on it - but then it goes on and at the moment you can see everyone on the app, but then you can press one button and it will show your friends only, so then it will show your Facebook contacts on there. I have around 164 of my friends who actually use the app, so I have a great experience. One of the key metrics we're working towards is making sure that everybody on the app has five or more friends on the app, so we're really encouraging people to invite their friends to use the app, as well. If you think about it, when WhatsApp launched not many people had WhatsApp, and WhatsApp is totally useless if none of your friends have it; and WhatsApp slowly built it up that some of your friends got it and then some more and more, and now all of your friends have it. And with Sup, some of your friends have it now, but it's just going to take a little bit of time to get all of your friends on it, and then it's going to be a beautiful experience. And one of the exciting things we're doing is we're going to be adding lenses, so just as you'd put sunglasses on if you're going out in the sun, you'll be able to put a lens on. It could be your friends lens, it could be your professional lens, it could be maybe a dating lens, or it could be people who are ex-Google lens. And that's really exciting, because one of the big problems that LinkedIn have, for example, is that you connect with people all the time when you go to events, or you meet them wherever you may be, but then you never see them again. What we're trying to do is we want to bring LinkedIn offline, so people can see their friends and their connections more, but actually in real life, rather than just seeing random updates on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Paul: Yes, and actually I think one of the big challenges as well is how to use Facebook in a business sense, because it is primarily more friends and family. A lot of business people, I don't actually use Facebook, that's LinkedIn, and I can imagine that that dynamic is something you're trying to overcome by having Sup.

Rich: Yes, and it is really interesting, because LinkedIn have this tremendous problem that it's becoming a little bit more spammy, you get recruiters and stuff on there, whereas I'd love to see some of my LinkedIn connections, but we just never communicate and it would be a bit weird just sending them a message, whereas if, say, the CMO of TopShop was having a coffee near my office in Finsbury Square and I got an alert saying, "Hey, the CMO of TopShop's nearby", I can send him a message and say "Hey dude, do you want to grab a coffee quickly?" he may say "Yes, let's do it." Or he can totally ignore it, it doesn't matter, but at least we've had that connection, and then maybe I can e-mail him the next day and say, "Hey, sorry we didn't manage to meet up. It would be great to catch up some time." And magic happens when these connections come together. The whole reason why we've raised money is because I networked. I went out and I hustled for three months to go and meet as many people as possible. And I think with this new LinkedIn integration you'll be able to see your context more and hopefully progress your career better or progress your organization better.

Paul: This is a wonderful chat. So there are two more things which we'd like to do before we say goodbye. One is that we do get a whole bunch of makers, creators, app developers on this show and we often like to look for trends or new ideas, and I wondered, as an entrepreneur, are there any trends that you're seeing in the marketplace that you perhaps can talk to? Anything that we could maybe flesh out an idea for an app?

Rich: Yes, so I think one of the really interesting trends... We were just talking a little bit earlier about financing - the most interesting trend I see at the moment is that if I put in front of you a portfolio of companies and I said, "Hey, you can invest in Microsoft as one company, or you can invest in 20 of the hottest startups, including Uber, Airbnb, DropBox, WeChat... Which one would you rather invest in?" And I think everyone there would choose 20 new startups that could all become a juggernaut and really may be the next huge thing. The trend here is we're seeing that the older companies are becoming slower and less agile to iterate, and Facebook has done incredibly well here, and I think their stock is hugely undervalued, because if you look at the top apps downloaded in the world, Facebook is in the top four. They own Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It's just absolutely incredible how they've managed to consolidate that top position there. What we see there, obviously they tried to buy Snapchat and I think that probably Mark is really regretting the option of only offering 3,5 billion dollars and not offering them 20 billion to start with and buying SnapChat because then they'd have 5 of the most popular apps in the world. So I think we're going to see that a spread out of new mobile-first companies come about that will be changing the way that we interact with people. Instagram, for example - fastest growing social network. SnapChat has a hundred million daily active users, and I think that as that progresses we're going to see that these smaller players become more and more important. Obviously, in the last year we've seen Apple and Google both grow in dominance while Microsoft has decreased in dominance, and I think that they're both winners - Apple and Google - and Google is going to continue to win in new markets while Apple is going to continue to win in the Apple ecosystem where it's people with higher wealth and disposable income, and it's really exciting to see where we're going to be in the next few years with apps. And I think that the big trend is... You know, can you imagine a future where you don't know if any of your friends are around you? That's what we're solving here with Sup. If you can imagine a future where you just don't know that your friends are also in Hawaii when you're in Hawaii, then that's just crazy. And I think that that's where the excitement for us comes, that hyper-local is just taking off, and I think that Sup is going to be really interesting in terms of the mobile web in the future, and looking at how apps evolve and how we want to see our friends more.

Paul: Just listening to you on Facebook, it is pretty amazing. As someone who's had some apps hit the top charts, it's... They seem to come and go, but the top chart seems to be still dominated by those apps. Can we compete with the dominance of the big players?

Rich: Yes. It's really interesting... Can you compete? Well, we're looking now... WhatsApp was competing and they went and bought them for 21 billion dollars. Let's be honest, I'd be very happy with 21 billion dollars in my bank account. I think I could pretty much go and do anything, I'd have a great summer in 2016 with a yacht somewhere. But I think you can compete. And how you compete is that as a startup app you are far more agile. You can pivot, and pivoting is a really big thing. We want to see what works, what doesn't work with the app, and we can kill stuff immediately. Whereas with Google, if they're trying to do something with Google+ for example, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on launching, hundreds of millions of dollars on the team and getting it ready, and it just doesn't work. Whereas startups can go and they can create a new platform, they can see if it works. If it does work, they can invest in it, they can pivot, they can see how it goes. I think there's always an opportunity to be more innovative and more exciting and faster. And it's all about speed. If you can do something that is brilliant, that people love, that people want to use, and people are going to use it twice a day, then you are on to a winner and you should definitely just go and pursue that.

Paul: Rich, we're in danger of you going through every single big theme of this show, because you mentioned pivot, and that's another big one. So it's almost like a quiz show here...

Rich: I'm getting the right answers.

Paul: You are. The final thing is, I often ask about a tip for an app, but I actually think... You've mentioned that you're in a lot of networking groups as well, and I'm guessing that you also use Slack, which I know has been mentioned quite a lot. Do you have any virtual networking groups that you could recommend to us?

Rich: Yes, I think some of the good ones on Facebook that I'm part of are London Startup Events, which is great, I'm also a member of the Young Entrepreneurs Network, which is based actually in New York, but it's really very active in Europe, as well. Then on Slack, which is a product that we run a lot of stuff off... I'm a member of Tech London, which is very good and you have a load of stuff on there, which is awesome: you can do introductions, you can do marketing, skills, whatever that you may do. Another one is Nomads, which is about $70 to join, but it's really good. It's called Nomads, but it's digital nomads, and you can go in there, you can chat to people if you need advice... I often will post on Facebook if I need advice, or in digital Nomads or in Tech London, and usually someone will message me and say, "Hey, I've had this problem before. Do you want to have a Skype call about it?" As I said, if you are willing to give... And whenever anyone asks for advice I'm always one of the first people to say, "Yes, sure. Send me an e-mail." And I want to say to your listeners, if anyone has any questions or anything about this talk, or they want to just bounce an idea off me, you can always e-mail me. My e-mail is Rich@supmenow.com, and I always reply, and I will always get back to people. Or just send me a tweet @richpleeth, and I'm always super happy to help people out because I know that the startup ecosystem is all about giving and not about taking. So I'm super happy to help people; never be afraid to ask, because people have been through the problem you're having before and I have problems every day. I'd love to talk to you about how you got your apps to the top of the AppStore, and sharing ideas is how you learn. And if you stop learning you're going to fail, because you just need to be learning every single day, and I make sure I'm learning every single day from my team, from VC's that I'm meeting, from mentors that I'm chatting with... And you just have to make sure that you keep doing that.

Paul: Wonderful. Rich, all this stuff is going to be also on theappguy.co, just search for Rich Pleeth, episode 405. It's been a wonderful chat, I've really, honestly enjoyed it and it just sets up for an excellent 2016 for this show. Thanks for being an awesome guest, Rich, and all the best with the growth of the app.

Rich: Thank you so much, it's been really lovely to talk to you. Thanks!

Be Socialable : Be Valuable

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is the show that gets the best CEOs, the best founders, so that you can do something awesome with your life, understand how it is these people are successful, and you can then learn from these people, these founders, these entrepreneurs, so that you can become successful as well. I do go around the world, and I am in a wonderful location because in Italy there's a terrific startup that's actually starting to take over the world. The name of the company is Buzzoole, and it's the CEO and co-founder I have today. His name is Fabrizio Perrone, and he is the CEO of Buzzoole. Fabrizio, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Fabrizio: Hi, Paul.

Paul: Thanks for coming on. So I know that Buzzoole is a very innovative startup. It's certainly innovative in terms of big data and predictive analysis, and has won loads of awards. I think you've been nominated as Top 15 European Startup, and you have a massive growth rate. Tell us what it is, what is Buzzoole?

Fabrizio: Okay, so we created Buzzoole with the main goal of unifying the power of word of mouth and the digital PR campaign and the conversation effect to the media investment, with the easiness of display advertising purchasing. I had previous experience in a digital PR and social media agency, and I understood all the inefficiencies of this industry. We tried to solve these, and thanks to the technology we were able to develop a platform that was defined by VentureBeat as 'the Google AdWords of buzz marketing', so a platform where brands can schedule their digital PR investment so they can create conversation about their brands in a genuine way, by themselves, putting the budget they want with a pay-as-you-go model. Of course, the basis of this platform is a huge technology that is able to analyze more than 1,000 influential topics inside the conversation of our user and to understand and detect real influencers in each market.

Paul: This is great. So, as I understand it, you were looking at the inefficiencies of hiring a PR agency, which is usually very expensive, and you have gone to help brands by getting mentions from top influencers. Is that right?

Fabrizio: Yes... Not really just top influencers, because our goal is to go beyond celebrities. I said that the influencer market is in a hype, and a lot of brands care about getting mentioned by celebrity X or Y. What we are trying to teach is that involving real people is much more effective and efficient in terms of investment. Of course, if you need to engage with the top 5 influencers of a specific industry, in a specific country, probably you don't need any technology, you don't need any agency, because you already know who they are, and you already know how to engage with them. You just call them, ask them how much they want, you pay them and you engage with them. Our logic is different. Try to find not just five celebrities, but try to find 50 or 100 common people, that have a real influence and an authentic audience in this specific topic, and try to engage with them in a genuine way; so not just paying them, but involving them with brands experience thanks to our gamification system. Thanks to this approach, we can have campaigns that are much more effective, because they are perceived as being much more genuine, and this will amplify the engagement of that campaign, and the engagement is on average up to ten times more than the celebrities' campaign, just because these people are closer to their audience and are perceived as more genuine. On the other side, it's much more efficient because, of course, involving a large number of people could be very costly if you do it manually. But if you do it with the help of technology, you can save up to 90% of the internal management cost, and the final result is that, compared to the same reach, our customers are saving 70% of their investment, and they are able to plan this budget with the same easiness of a display budget. They can put the budget they want, they can stop the campaign, they can optimize it, they can monitor it in real time, watch ROI analytics and so on.

Paul: So let me try and understand it, and also help the listeners to understand it. Obviously, it would be easier for them to go to your site, Buzzoole.com, but in the interest of anyone listening who may be driving and just wants to understand - I, as a brand, I have the ability to pay for lots of ordinary people to be promoting me, rather than paying a huge amount for a celebrity, for example Kim Kardashian, to tweet about me. It's better to go to the people that have real engagement, the ordinary people. Is that right?

Fabrizio: Yes. We recently released some content titled, "Move over, Kardashians. How the average Joe's are changing the influencer world", because thanks to data, we analyze the engagement rate and the cost to a celebrity, as opposed to a real influencer, as we call it. On average, real influencers have an engagement rate that is 25% higher than a celebrity's, and they have a cost per engagement that is about 3%. So, of course, it's a more efficient segment to involve. This doesn't mean that celebrities are completely worthless. Of course, for certain reasons, for certain brands, involving a celebrity could be the right choice, for example for a positioning need. But in terms of efficiency of the investment, and to consider this kind of investment not as a special project as a launch, but as a new media channel where brands have to invest in an always-on way, this is the way to do it.

Paul: So you have some amazing brands that you have worked with: Red Bull, Nissan, Bacardi, Ford, Alfa Romeo - these are huge brands. Tell me how you encourage the users to talk about the brand? How does that actually work from the user perspective?

Fabrizio: On the user side, they are included in a wider gamification system. Users can sign up to our platform and connect their social accounts, and have a free dashboard where they can learn how their influence is declined through social media, and then they can use a free tool to improve their influence and personal branding. For the user side, we are like a gym to their personal branding, and of course they can be involved with the brand they love, for campaigns. Mainly, they are getting three kinds of rewards: first of all, they are getting visibility - growing into our platform, earn badges, earn ranking, give visibility to them. A lot of users that grew thanks to our platform and our technology now have direct relationships with top brands, so they can grow thanks to our platform. They can earn an exclusive experience with a brand, being chosen in campaigns, and they can also earn credits doing several actions within the platform, not just participating in the campaign. They can convert these credits into Amazon gift cards when they reach a certain level. We try to engage with users in a genuine way, trying to get them rewards for the action that they took within the platform. Of course, we try to engage with them in the sense of adding value to the brand's brief. Also, thanks to the badges and the exclusive rewards for the best creator, who have the best engagement, and so on.

Paul: Fabrizio, I'm loving this chat because you're reminding me of a chat that I had three years ago now, when the show just started, about tapping into influencers, and if anyone's interested they should contact me and I'll let them know exactly what episode that was. So I'm going to try and understand you, what Buzzoole is - I'm going to summarize what I've learned from you. I believe it's a way of tapping into your connections with your brands, using my social accounts. I connect them, you help me grow my social accounts, and I get rewarded through credits and through other experiences. What actually happens... How do I promote the brand? Do I just choose what they will automatically tweet or post image-wise, or do I have some involvement in how I promote the brands on there?

Fabrizio: No, we never do automatic content, or stuff like that, because we really want users to be able to add value to the brand's content. Of course, the type of posts could change to suit certain goals - it could be a blog campaign, a Twitter or an Instagram campaign... So depending on the channel there will be different types of content, but usually, you receive from the brand all the information to create your own content, with certain specifics, like hashtags, or something like that. So you create you content, saying whatever you think about these brands, and these specific activities. It could be a second screen campaign related to the television. We are doing lots of campaigns with, for example, Master Chef or X Factor, to obtain second screen attention, or more traditional campaigns for product launches, contests, sample campaigns where brands send samples to users and they want to get product reviews or very vertical Instagram campaigns. Other brands are using us to push their social content, in substitution to Facebook advertising. For example, in that case, users have to create buzz around the social content of a specific brand.

Paul: This is fascinating, and it's relevant to our discussion here. This is a show about apps, and you have your own app, as well. How does the app integrate with the platform, Buzzoole?

Fabrizio: The app allows users to connect the accounted, managed campaign that they have on their desktops. We are now releasing a new version that will improve all the functionalities. Of course, the app is really important for us because it's the way to reach our users in a faster way. Our focus will be stronger and stronger on the mobile app.

Paul: Also, I was listening to you describe the brands, and I wondered how the brands retained control over what you post, because I could imagine they want to only encourage positive promotion, and nothing too negative or, I guess, crude. How do they stop the bad posts?

Fabrizio: On average, you have to consider that users that are participating in our campaigns and that are subscribed to our platform want to grow, and they want to be trusted influencers. The main resource that every influencer has is his credibility, so doing something completely against a brief is something bad for the influencer's reputation. Brands can, of course, create briefs that leave higher freedom to the user, or can enable a feature that is called 'double-check', which is like a pre-approval of the content. This is recommended for brands that could have legal problems or something like that; when the user prepares the post, they can ask the user to send a draft through the platform to pre-approve it, or ask for any changes.

Paul: Great. On this show, Fabrizio, there has been a long-running theme of understanding the real problem that the founder is trying to solve, and I think what you're trying to solve is this problem of people spending a lot of time on social media, building up influence, but not getting any reward from the platforms, or not getting any reward from brands for word of mouth. You're actually stepping in and saying, "Hey, you've got this influence, you've spent a lot of time building up your influence, here's how you earn rewards from just doing what you're normally doing on social media." Does that sound like the problem you're solving?

Fabrizio: Yes, of course. We are trying to create a loyal community, a loyal brand ambassador community. This is something different, because influencer marketing is not something new, we didn't invent anything. We are trying to make an existing process more efficient. Of course, if you look for a platform that could pay you for something that you post, you can find tons of platforms that could do that. What we are trying to do as a unique selling proposition is to combine our technology to really individuate a specific user that could have an influence on a specific topic, and engage with him in a genuine way. Also, helping them to grow in terms of personal branding, and as a genuine brand ambassador, so not like a paid user that could one day, for example, talk about an automotive brand, and a week later talk about computers. We want to help users to stay close and to get rewards for promoting brands they love.

Paul: Wonderful. So there are two more things that we need to do with you, Fabrizio, before we say goodbye. One is that we always like to try and understand the success that you've had, and try to, in a way, copy from you the lessons that you've learned. So could you talk through the growth of Buzzoole, and if there's been any point in time that has just been quite unique in terms of a spike in subscribers or publishers? What was the big spike, and has there been a big spike in your growth, over the years that you've been going?

Fabrizio: Of course in terms of clients we've had a huge growth. If you consider that we launched our product in June 2014, and we were about 5 people, and at the end of 2014 - 6 months later - we had more than 250k in revenues and we were 10 people. In 2015 as a whole we had a growth of 30% month over month; starting with revenues of 30k/month, at the end of the year we will have more than 200k/month in revenue. We're close to more than 1.5 million of revenue in 2015, and we are more than 30 people. We are opening in London, we have been chosen by Unilever as one of the best 15 startups in Europe, and we also entered into a UK program called Global Entrepreneurship Program by the UK government, so the UK government is also helping u. Thanks to The Bakery, which is one of the best accelerators in London, we are also entering into the UK market. I think these are the most impressive metrics. In terms of users, we also had a huge growth. Until April 2015 we had something like 15,000 and now we have more than 60,000, so it's four times what we had eight months ago. In terms of staff, we are now  more than 30. I just hired one person in the UK that is refusing a Facebook offer to come into our project, so this is amazing, we are very proud of it. Our future plan is to create metrics into the UK, and by September open a new round to go to the U.S.

Paul: That sounds fascinating. So the final thing to talk about is understand your personal journey. Many people listening to this are considering becoming founders of their own startup, or working for a startup. In your opinion, is it worth the ups and the downs, and the pain that you have to go through to become an entrepreneur, become a founder? What would you say to anyone who is thinking about going into that lifestyle?

Fabrizio: I can say that it's really difficult. If you see a company that is going well, you just see that, but you don't see all the pain, all the bad moments that the founders went through and, of course, we had a lot of those. We had lots of good moments, we had lots of celebrations, but we also had lots of moments where it seemed to be really difficult. I can remember challenges in terms of finding the right people... In June 2014, when we were launching the product, we had one month of cash left, and we were starting to get some clients, but we were really risking running out of cash. The best talent that you can have is determination. Never give up, and always believe that you can do it. I know it might sound cliché, but it is true. I had previous experience in other companies, and this is my second startup, to be honest. After my degree, I started a company, in 2008, and I sold that company in 2013, so I already had more experience. My first company was a digital marketing agency that was focused in Italy. It was not about international growth, it was about getting clients in Italy. We were a small agency, we were lucky and were able to sell the company, but we had to create a new team that had all the required competencies and the determination - those were the most important needs for a successful startup.

Paul: I love that. I loved the quote that you said, "Always believe you can do it", that's what I'm taking away from you. Fabrizio, this has been a wonderful chat.

Fabrizio: Thank you.

Paul: For everyone listening, you can go to theappguy.co and search episode 417, and you'll get links to Fabrizio and the actual platform, Buzzoole. But for now, Fabrizio, how can people connect with you on Buzzoole? What's the best way of getting in touch?

Fabrizio: Of course, people that would like to have more information can drop us a line at info@Buzzoole.com, or just subscribe to the platform to have your dashboard and your social analytics technology. For all the brands that could be interested, you can reach us at brands.Buzzoole.com. You can follow us on Facebook, on Twitter and you can ask for a live demo in the brands platform, so you have a lot of ways to get connected with us. You can also follow me, I am @Fabrizio on Twitter. Let's keep in touch!

Paul: Well, thank you very much for coming on this show, and talking us through your journey. This is why I do this podcast, to understand the real story, the ups and the downs.

Working At Apple, eBay and IBM Was Nothing Compared To Starting Our Own Company

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I'm your host, it's Paul Kemp. This is the show where we get some great founders, co-founders and we learn about their journeys with their apps, so it helps you as an app builder, as a maker, as a creator. In fact, what I do is I go all around the world and find the most inspiring app entrepreneurs and we talk to them about their journeys. Today I have some good friends of mine who are the co-founders of the Veloxy app. This is a wonderful calendar and Sales enablement app. Let me introduce Samir Majumdar and Sauvik Sarkar, They are the co-founders of Veloxy. Guys, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Samir: Hi Paul, thank you very much. This is Samir, co-founder of Veloxy. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk to you about our journey, about the app, what we have been doing, and about what life looks like in our trenches.

Paul: Yes, I love the way you say trenches, yes. And you've got Sauvik there, I want to say hello to you, as well.

Sauvik: Yes, sure. This is Sauvik, co-founder of Veloxy. We started Veloxy one and a half years back, and it's been a pretty interesting ride so far.

Paul: We're going to find out all about that, Sauvik; we're going to go through your journey, so let me, first of all, ask you how did you guys meet? How did you get together? Because we have learned on this show the importance of co-founders. How did you guys get together? Maybe you can start, Samir...

Samir: Sure. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I worked at some big companies, as well as quite a few startups.In my last company, where I was vice-president of engineering, I worked with Sauvik there for quite a few months. I immediately found out that he's one of the best. Just to talk a little bit about the journey, in my previous company, Ingenuity Systems, I was one of the first ten employees. I was responsible for development of all products. During that time I had worked with sales executives and sales professionals.We implemented SalesForce, Marketo, and Informatica with our product line. At that time, I saw all the frustrations that sales people were having. In spite of us spending a lot of time and resources in integrating Salesforce with other products, people were not really using it. When they were in a meeting with the customer, they were not able to access right documents and they were not aware of a critical product issue that customer reported few days back. Disaster! All those issues were because information was scattered all around the place. Everything was not in Salesforce and it’s not realistic to think that everything will be in Salesforce. Emails and calendars have tons of relevant information. That's when I thought, "Hey, there must be a way to solve this problem", and when I met Sauvik, we started talking about it, and that's how this whole thing started. I will let Sauvik talk about his journey.

Sauvik: Thank you, Samir. I worked at big companies like EBay, Apple, IBM, and then I met Samir in one of the companies. While we were talking about stuff, we talked about sales people, both of us had the same experience. Although CRM spent is around $24B in 2015, research shows that CRM adoption is less than 50%. Sales professionals have no incentives to use CRM system as it does not help them in closing more deals. So we came up with the idea that there should definitely be a better way to do this and what better way to solve a problem where sales people are moving around and are mostly mobile, than with a mobile app. That's when we got together days and nights and brainstormed this idea of creating a powerful platform and a mobile app that solves this very basic problem - how to make sales professionals more productive, how they can use their time more efficiently. At the same time the app should make data entry to CRM systems seamless and automated where ever possible. Having high quality data in CRM system will be incredibly beneficial to sales executives and the whole organization who has invested so much money in the CRM systems.

Paul: So, Samir and Sauvik... You've picked up on a big theme, which is:

“solving a problem”

So many of the successful entrepreneurs actually come back to this theme. So, I wanted to remind the listeners/readers that it's so important. The thing I'd like to just ask you both:

“how did you overcome the fear of leaving your steady jobs?”

Samir: That's a very good question. Frankly speaking, I have been entrepreneurial for many years. Before Veloxy, I worked at another product. We even launched it. It was a marketplace for re-agents. The market is completely fragmented. Scientists don’t know where to find the best for their experiments. So we created a marketplace for reagents where we'd list reagents from all those vendors and scientists can come and buy reagents from our site. Although the company had enough traction, I did not take the leap of faith to jump full time there; that was a lesson. I didn't stop there either. When I met Sauvik, we started Veloxy. Life is too short. I thought, "Hey, I have to do this. If I don't do this, I will repent for the rest of my life." This is a problem that I'm very passionate about; it’s near and dear to my heart. I want to see people productive. These days there is no excuse for people not to be productive, especially with all the mobile phones and the access to data that people have. The unfortunate part is people are not taking advantage of that. So that's when I said, "Okay, let's do it full-time. We have domain knowledge and technical expertise. This is a problem that can be solved and we can solve this problem together."

Paul: Yes. Sauvik, again, the same question to you because, as Samir says, in his words, you are the world's best from the technical standpoint, so I'm guessing that you could have your pick of jobs. I mean, you've already been working at EBay, Apple, IBM, they're all wonderful companies. So how did you overcome your fear of quitting and doing your own thing?

Sauvik: Absolutely. My thought process resonates very closely with Samir. I created a lot of apps in the past, mostly as an individual, and I also tried to involve other people in there, but one of the most important things, I have noticed and also felt that you need a really good partner to have a great startup. There are exceptions, of course, but at least, there should be two people in a startup. Both partners/co-founders should be very passionate, so that's why when I met Samir I felt that he has got this in-built passion for doing new things and solving real problems. When I talked to him, we kind of resonated with the same feeling about productivity and the opportunity that it provides. We have both seen that sales people's lives can be improved dramatically using the latest modern technology on the mobile platform.

Paul: Sauvik, before we leave this thought, I just want to say that what I've learned is that it's important to have a good co-founding team where you both believe in the problem that you're trying to solve... I've really learned that. So let's talk about that problem because I think the listeners still need to understand what it is you're trying to do. Give us an example of a sales person and how they would use Veloxy to solve the problem, and what the problem actually is.

Samir: Sure. Sales professionals are typically very busy. They have back-to-back meetings, and they have too many things to do and too little time. Research shows that they are wasting 65% of their time in non-selling related activities like looking for documents, team meetings, meeting with their boss, updating CRM and other administrative work. They are spending only 35% of their time doing real selling - the selling that will make them money, that will help them reach their revenue target, that eventually will help their company. There are a lot of things that they're doing which are not directly contributing to their bottom line, and that's where Veloxy comes into play. Veloxy helps them in organizing their day, organizing their meetings, e-mails, deals pipeline, leads, tasks and more. Veloxy aggregates relevant data across SalesForce, Google, Exchange, and your local phone. Veloxy also integrates social networking information from LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus, CrunchBase, Google Scholar and other sources into one place, contextualizes and presents it to sales professionals in a very user-friendly, easy mobile interface. Veloxy proactively notifies them about very important things that might have fallen through the cracks. No longer sales professionals have to worry about missing out things. Today, sales professionals are trained to look for information. We are changing that paradigm with Veloxy. They no longer have to look for information when they use Veloxy; Veloxy will take care of that. Some very simple examples: let's say they are dealing with 20, 30 deals. Out of those, some deals might be at a very late stage, but we don't see any activity on different systems. Based on our proprietary “Touch Point” score algorithm, when Veloxy determines that a deal is at risk, it sends a notification to the sales professional. "Hey, what's going on?" Maybe the deal is on track, but at least, we are watching out. When they receive an important e-mail from somebody, Veloxy notifies them. If they forgot to respond to an important e-mail, Veloxy notifies them. When someone changed something for one of their deals in SalesForce, they get a notification. We are changing their behavior, where they no longer have to constantly look for information. Another typical example - sales manager sends too many e-mails to their sales reps asking "What happened to this deal? Did you update that deal? Is that deal going to close on time?" Using Veloxy they no longer have to bother their sales reps. The manager gets immediate notification when something important changed in a deal of his/her team members. Thanks to Veloxy, now they can use their weekly sales meetings to discuss strategy on how to close different deals rather than asking for deals status.

Paul: Yes, let's just jump in here, because I think we're getting the examples... Is this really an enterprise app? I mean, is this primarily for companies to distribute amongst their sales teams, or do you see it as a consumer app that is going to be independently downloaded by sales people?

Samir: We are seeing it both ways. We are seeing individual sales professionals downloading the app and using it by themselves. We have thousands of users, and we are getting very good feedback, and they're really liking the app. The other model is... Enterprises are loving it too. We are talking to Director or VP of sales or sales ops executives; they very quickly start to realize the value Veloxy brings to the whole enterprise and roll it out to the whole organization. So the model is working both ways.

Paul: That sounds like a terrific model as well, because who wouldn't want a load of sales people spreading 'word of mouth' about a great app that's helping them close deals? So I can imagine the spread of this is going to be quite rapid when it starts to get traction. Sauvik, maybe we can jump to you as well and ask you about what you feel is a good user example of someone using Veloxy?

Sauvik: Yes, sure. You know, one of the things that Samir mentioned was closing deals, and the other thing where Veloxy helps is opening new deals. One of the typical use cases that we have seen is people are traveling all the time, and they're at a certain location, they meet with a client/customer and they have time to meet with others in the same area, but they have no way to find out what other customers are there, that they can meet. That's where Veloxy comes very handy. Veloxy quickly shows them what other customers or prospects are there. In addition to the customers, Veloxy displays all contact information on a map, and they can see which set of customers are right at that location. They can also do a quick research. Veloxy automatically researches customers, their geo-location, their Twitter, their real-time LinkedIn profile, and also gets information about their e-mails that are going back and forth with the customer, so that the rep has a clear context within minutes so that he/she is ready to talk to the customer. I think that's one of the biggest features that a sales rep using Veloxy finds.

Paul: I'd love to pick up on one thing, which I know will help all those app entrepreneurs that are wanting to learn from you the good things and the bad things you've learned yourselves, because none of us have a roadmap; we don't know what works, what doesn't, but we can only learn. You mentioned at the start that you've been working on this for a year and a half... Can I assume that a lot of that time is on the technical aspects of the app, rather than on user acquisition and getting feedback from users? Have you actually focused more on the technology side up to this point?

Sauvik: Initially, of course, we focused on the technical side, built the product. We have been working very closely with the users and getting their feedback. We try to be very proactive and put those feedbacks back into our pipeline and try to make sure that we actually listen to all our users and deliver a product that is useful to them every day, several times a day. Most of the time it has been technical, but the product has also grown over the last year.

Paul: Samir, maybe I'd ask you then - what have you learned from that? Because I'm guessing that you've actually funded this whole thing yourself, between the two of you... Am I wrong? Did you get funding for the company, or is this all bootstrapped?

Samir: We are completely bootstrapped. Sauvik mentioned, along with the product development, we have been focusing quite a bit on the customer development. As a lean startup, both of these go hand in hand. Initially, we had to do quite a bit of platform development work. Sauvik worked on it by himself for quite a while, and once we had the MVP we started engaging with users and have been getting feedback on a daily basis. We get their feedback, we incorporate the feedback that is aligned with our long-term roadmap and the cycle goes on. The thing that has been quite rewarding is to see how appreciative the users are and how much they love Veloxy. They say, "Hey guys, we love Veloxy and we're going to tell other people about it." That is very satisfying and gratifying and there is nothing that can replace it. Seeing your users using the product that you built from scratch, it's like seeing your baby grow... It's surreal, seriously.

Sauvik: Absolutely.

Paul: So, Samir and Sauvik, I want you to imagine this right now: there are two people listening to this who are at the start of their journey, where you were a year and a half ago. What would both of you recommend to those entrepreneurs that are just about to start out? They quit their jobs, they've got an idea, they're about to start working on an app, they are doing it using their own money - what's the biggest advice you could give them, based on what you've learned over the last year and a half? Samir, maybe you can start with that.

Samir: I think one should spend enough time validating the need, and going a little bit deep into figuring out what is out there. As you probably know, Paul, this sales enablement or sales productivity field is quite crowded. There are a non-trivial number of companies who say "We solve this problem, too. We solve that problem, too." We have done thorough research and the reality is:

"nobody has solved this problem".

Everybody claims that they solved this problem. Everybody's trying to do some part of it here and some part of it there. Can you imagine a salesperson using six, eight or nine applications for their job? They simply don't have time. They should be using only one or two apps, at the max, to get their job done. So I think for entrepreneurs who are starting their journey, understanding what the pain point is and really validating it before they jump into building something is something I would highly recommend.

Paul: Okay. And Sauvik, what would you recommend?

Sauvik: I definitely agree with Samir. New entrepreneurs definitely need to make sure and vet out their idea and make sure that it solves a real pain point of somebody. The other thing I would probably recommend is  - as I've experienced, and Samir definitely has experienced - you know, life in the entrepreneurial field will be very stressful and there will be a lot of ups and downs. So you have to be very resilient and make sure you put more than 100 percent every time and stay positive. If you know that that is a real problem, just make sure that you keep on working on it. There will be times when you don't see a lot of results, and there will be times when you will be overwhelmed with results, so just make sure that, from an entrepreneurial perspective, you just keep steady and keep on working on it.

Samir: One more point I would like to add is - I think Sauvik alluded to that - I cannot stress enough the importance of having the right co-founder. Finding the right co-founder is extremely important, probably way more important that the problem that you are trying to solve, or what you are going to do. This is a stressful journey, but having someone who you can trust 150% is absolutely important. It's not that we don't argue... There are times when Sauvik and I argue for two or three hours. I'm serious. I will tell you, my wife jokingly tells me "You have never talked to me as much as you talk to Sauvik." This is the truth. We fight, we argue, but again, this is for one mission: to build the best sales enablement app for the sales professionals. The alignment has to be there, otherwise, things are not going to work.

Paul: Yes, I'm almost thinking back to the growth of Twitter. I don't know if you've read the book about the founders, but they were all falling out...

Samir: Yes.

Paul: So look what happened to Twitter. I mean, constructive feedback and being passionate about your idea is what I'm learning from you; this is really a very important point. There is one more thing we like to do on this show, before saying goodbye to our founders. One is we love to discover new apps, and I'd love to know if there's an app that you can recommend that's really helped you and your business. So maybe you have to pick up your phone, have a look at it... Sauvik, maybe we can start with you. Pick up your phone and let us know if there's an app that you can recommend, that you think is maybe one that we haven't come across before.

Sauvik: Yes, let me think... So we have used for our product backlog an app called Trello; we have used it to keep our backlogs. It's pretty handy, and two of us, or other people can also use it, and you can very quickly create backlogs and segregate by type of product, features, and it's very handy when you're on the go, because it's mobile-friendly; there's an app and then it's also available on the web. I have used it, and I think Samir has also used that pretty much every week.

Paul: Great, okay. That's Trello, there will be a link to that in the show notes of episode 414, theappguy.co. Samir, I would love to get a recommendation from you for an app that you tend to use. It can even be impersonal if you want to give us something cool.

Samir: Sure, we have been using UberConference quite a bit. We love it. It's for setting up meetings, getting user feedback... It's a conferencing app, and they have a web-based product, as well. We mostly use the web-based product.

Paul: Yes, I've used that once before. Have you ever tried recording over it? I must admit, my first experience of UberConference was quite poor quality, but it's very easy because there's not software to install. I seem to remember just going straight to a browser...

Samir: Yes, we have not recorded it, but we just use it for giving the demo. What we do is we use the QuickTime Player app and then we can do the live demo using that, and people can see it on the other side.

Paul: Great, there will be a link to that in the show notes - UberConference. Have they been successful, those pitches, demos? Who have you actually shown them to, potential users, or investors?

Samir: Absolutely... Investors, we mostly go and talk to them in person, but all the demos - I'm telling you, Paul, users are loving Veloxy. This product has legs, and we are going to really take it to the next level. Our goal is to reach out to thousands of sales professionals to use Veloxy. One thing I probably haven't mentioned,  Veloxy not only helps sales people closing more deals, it also helps organizations significantly because using Veloxy sales people are able to capture 150-200% more data into SalesForce, and data quality is significantly higher, which eventually helps organizations doing predictive pipeline forecasting. Unless you have enough high-quality data, no matter how good your forecasting algorithm is, it's not going to work. So Veloxy is a win/win situation for organizations as well as the sales professionals. It's a good time to be in this space. We are loving it!

Paul: I was just thinking, actually... It must be quite challenging, as well, because I can imagine the hardest people to sell to are sales people themselves. [laughter] This has been a great chat, I'm sure it's going to inspire others to do the same as you have done: find a great co-founder, come up with a great idea, both believe in it, and then quit whatever you're doing and passionately pursue it, because you need to do it. I love that - you just HAD to do it. So there will be links to you guys in the show notes of episode 414, but in the meantime, maybe Sauvik, you can give us your contact details. How can people reach out to you? And Samir the same, how can people reach out to you, as well?

Sauvik: Sure, so I can be reached at sauvik@veloxy.io.

Samir: Same for me, I can be reached at samir@veloxy.io. The last thing I want to probably mention quickly is although our app is mainly targeted for the sales people who are on the road, we do have an excellent calendar app, we call it “Your calendar in steroids!”. Paul, do you remember Tempo AI? It was a calendar app. In Veloxy, we have built a calendar on steroids. Anyone can use our calendar app. To all Tempo calendar lovers, try out Veloxy. You will love it.

Paul: Okay, so what you are saying is you can use it for the calendar, as well?

Samir: Absolutely, this is one of the best calendar apps out there, check it out.

Paul: Terrific. In fact, I would endorse that because I was always a big fan of Sunrise, the calendar; then they got bought by Microsoft, which is always a downside...

Samir: Yes, and Tempo was acquired by SalesForce, and they shut it down. Any Tempo users out there, we would love to have you try out Veloxy.

Paul: Yes, and actually there's just a final thought that I have to throw in, which is you get all these wonderful apps that seem to have rapid growth and you just love them; I'm thinking Mailbox for my e-mail. Then they get taken over, and it's just an acquihire by the company, and then they shut the thing down, which is really frustrating. I can't believe they've shut Mailbox down, that's just crazy. It was one of the best ever... I can remember the waitlists, you had to get on a waitlist to get on this thing. I thought that was crazy, but that's what big companies do, I guess.

What I Learned From 2 Billion Downloads

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. I am your host, it's Paul Kemp. We have one of the most amazing guests we've had on this show, because in the past we've had apps that have achieved 660 million downloads, we've had apps that have achieved several hundred million, but this is a gentleman who had built app businesses that have in total achieved a billion plus downloads. It's amazing, his name is Narry Singh, and he calls himself a passionate builder of digital businesses. He's currently the managing director of the digital business strategy at Accenture. Narry, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Narry: Thanks so much, Paul. Delighted to be here.

Paul: So in the time that we have with you now, I would love to know, in your journey with the Talking Tom apps - which is over a billion downloads - how did all that come about? Have you got anything we can learn from you during that whole time with Talking Tom apps?

Narry: I would say a couple of things. I think the first thing which most of us that were involved with the journey [00:01:34] actually Talking Tom and Friends exceeded two billion downloads not too long ago, and are probably in the top ten apps downloaded, of all time. I think that Talking Tom and the initial series of apps were started by a very capable set of founders, of Outfit7, who came up with the idea of Talking Tom and the idea of actually having a character that wasn't really a game, but something that could help kids express their own creativity, and make them sound and look cool. I think one of the things that our co-founders very insightfully pointed out was that most kids might get tired of games, but they'll never get tired of a reflection of themselves. I think that that very subtle, but not so obvious observation on children and what is perceived to be cool, and quite frankly the monotony of playing the same game time and time again has contributed to the success. And then of course, most importantly, I think Talking Tom is probably - I am, of course, biased, but I think some of our characters are probably some of the most exquisitely animated and interesting to see animations on a phone that I've seen.

Paul: We're a bunch of app entrepreneurs ourselves, you've been extremely successful - was there a breakout period where you just knew it was going to be this huge success? For example, did you point a PR agency to get publicity, or has all this come about through word of mouth and sort of an organic download trajectory?

Narry: I think when I was at Outfit7, the parent company that created Talking Tom and many other apps, I think in the four years prior we had probably spent about 60,000 dollars total on PR, and I think 50 of that might have been a mistake. Our user acquisition strategy... We had initial success with Talking Tom - the very first Talking Tom - about six, seven years ago, but we built upon it, and I think what we did was a couple of things. I think the timing was also good, the app store wars weren't as competitive, but I do think that there were a couple of things. Number one was we created some very interesting game in social dynamics, where the more you shared what you did and created with Talking Tom, the more interesting it became to you. I had my nieces at the time do a duet with Talking Tom, and Talking Angela, over a song with Nicki Minaj. Of course, she published that on all her family's walls and Facebook posts, and things like that. So there was an inherent virality in Talking Tom, and its entire franchise.

I think the second thing is that one of the things we realized early on, there were about 18 apps when I was with the company at the time: Talking Angela, Talking Tom, Talking Santa... The talking genre, if you will, on the AppStore was created by Outfit7 and a few of us, but what we decided to do was rather than focus on individual characters at that time, we called them Talking Friends, and we created a kind of a sense, if you will, of collectability, very much like Pokémon, where if you had one, you actually wanted to have the rest of the collection. I think that dynamic also helped create some additional downloads. I would say the third is we experimented, not always successfully, but very early in our transition focused on China, and we had - keep in mind, this is about five, six years ago... It was very unclear that the Chinese download market would be as much as it was, or the monetization would be ever figured out, but we made a pretty big commitment in Asia and China, and that contributed massively to some of our downloads.

Paul: It's such an amazing journey. Let's get straight through some of these then. I want to ask you, if there's one thing a startup can do to get noticed, what in your opinion could they do? This is in the app startup business - what one thing can they do to get noticed?

Narry: Paul, it's a very tough market out there. You and most of our app entrepreneur friends know that it's a brutal marketplace. It's highly consolidated towards the top hundred apps, but what I would say - and I know this doesn't sound the most helpful - what I would say is be obsessed with the product, and be very clear on what are the one or two primary motivations for someone to open your app. Not three, not four, not five, one or two. We obsessed about the most excruciating details of the user journey. So a lot of people would open up our app - when would they open it up? Would this be standing in a coffee line? What would the dynamics be? So I would say the one thing you can do to get noticed is - and it depends on category, of course; I'm talking about the entertainment category, the gaming category, which is where we belong - be obsessed about the product, and understand what that one motivation is, that your users have to open that app the first time, and is there a reason for them to come back. This is maddening advice for most app entrepreneurs because it's so simple, but unfortunately, it happens to be true.

Paul: Very, very valuable. Now, the other thing I want to touch on is that normally on this show we have founders that have quit corporate jobs to go and start running their own company. In a way, you've gone about in reverse, because you've built very successful startup businesses yourself, and now, in fact, we're due to cut this off because you're rushing to a client meeting. I just wondered was has it been like to go from running your own thing to then now being part of a very large corporate like Accenture?

Narry: It's been mostly good, it's been different, and I was quite prepared that it would be different. The way I look at it is kind of our job and my team's job at Accenture, in a way, is to actually build a new business, and a new practice within Accenture, that leverages all of the assets that Accenture has and, of course, a breath-taking distribution network of clients. In a way, in the app world, if somebody gave you an embedded distribution base of a hundred million monthly active users, you'd be quite delighted. That's the analogy of one of the motivations for Accenture. There's a massive, global scale, there are some assets, there are people, but yes, it is different. I think that for most of us entrepreneurs, I think you have to be very prepared, to be patient. There are definitely differences in speed, in terms of getting things done, but I think you would trade off speed for scale. And as I said, it's been different, but for the most part, it's been a wonderful trade-off.

Paul: That's terrific. The other thing we wanted to ask you - this is from the listeners of this show - when you're evaluating an idea - and that can be for a digital business, or maybe even a tech idea from a client - do you have a framework to weed out the weaker ideas?

Narry: You know, Paul, having made quite a few investments and, of course, being in Silicon Valley for so long, you see the quest for ideas to be evaluated a lot, and I have to say, I don't have any magical, silver bullet that makes it guaranteed, but there are just a couple of very simple, common sense rules that I apply. I think that the first one is the market need big, which is obvious. I think the second one, which is perhaps a little less obvious, is it's urgently required. I think even most great entrepreneurs usually get the product market fit right; what most of us don't get right very often is timing. So what I look at and focus on a lot in terms of good or strong ideas is not just if it's a good idea, but is it an idea whose time has come. I would say time and time again, what has become clear to me is that timing might be one of the most important factors for your success. You can be right too soon.

Paul: Yes. Have you got an example of something you've done that has probably been a bad timing?

Narry: I would say... I think there's a series of companies. In fact, I would actually argue that perhaps in the late '90s I was involved with a company called Cronos One, which was one of the very early B2B marketplace companies; it was a darling of Wall Street and then it wasn't. I think as I look back somewhat more objectively over the last 13 or 15 years, I would say that our vision for marketplaces, our vision for transparency and liquidity of pricing, our vision for connected supply chains was mostly spot on. I think what we got wrong was the openness, and the adoption, and the readiness of large enterprises to buy into that vision. I think it's becoming more and more clear right now, as you look at some of these large marketplaces that enterprises are using right now, that there's a chance we might have been a decade too soon.

Paul: Right. So this is very selfish for me, because I'm a broadcaster here... I've got a setup which is less than a thousand dollars, and I'm competing with all these companies that are old radio stations, that have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars investment in equipment, so broadcasting is obviously changing... What are your views on digital broadcasting, podcasting - do you have a view on the adoption of it? How is it going to look going forward?

Narry: Paul, I have to admit, I'm no expert in broadcasting; I would love to broadcast my messages more. Look, honestly, I couldn't even venture an intelligent answer. What I will say is, as a user, for the most part... You know, most of us follow great content, no matter where it is. And I think to the extent that - and it certainly sounds like you have a wonderful curation of different kinds of speakers and backgrounds, again, I think great content wins every time. It doesn't have to be the size or the nature of the equipment, as YouTube and many other open media platforms have shown. I think it's all about the content.

Paul: What sort of content or audio shows, or stuff are you reading online? Maybe you can give us one or two places to go and get the content that you're looking at.

Narry: I think it varies depending more on mood. I wish I could be more absorbed in deeply intellectual and thoughtful stuff...

Paul: Okay... You are behind Talking Tom, remember?

Narry: Yes, that's what I was going to say... I have no problem and I do not apologize for silly tastes, that's what made Talking Tom successful, people being unapologetically silly. But I will say there are a couple of things... I find Feedly incredibly important and useful in my life, I find it a wonderful way to summarize, and I like the user interface at Feedly; I think the design is clever, I think the latency of the screens in-between our flipping is wonderfully done. So I'm a fan of Feedly as a way of getting my news digested every day. I think in terms of specific content, for most of us in tech, Recode.net - which used to be Decode - by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, is one of the most insightful and, quite frankly, breaking stories you can get in tech. So there's a series of things like that that I listen to.

Paul: Great. Actually, there seem to be not enough app entrepreneur shows; I mean, I'm one of the few. It looks like we've got about five minutes or less, so what I'd love to know is if you had some free time and investment - so just imagine that you had a lot of free time and unlimited investment - what massive world problem would you try and solve now?

Narry: That's a great question, Paul. About one of them I'll tell you: it's baffling to me that with all of the information there is about what makes a good diet, that we don't teach our kids more about food. It's baffling to me that there are not mandatory classes in curriculum all over the world, that talks about what good food is, what is carbohydrates, what are proteins, why do they matter. I just think that, at a very fundamental level, something that's so critical to the quality of individual's lives... And this is one, but I would say that I'd focus a lot on education about food and, quite frankly, make it more fun to be healthy.

Paul: Actually, one of the founders of Fit Men Cook will be listening to this... I was involved in the launch of that, helped out a little bit, and it reached number two in the AppStore, beating Minecraft, and it's constantly featured by Apple. So it does show that recipe apps, and trying to do the right thing, eating well - there's a demand for it. Would you agree?

Narry: I'm delighted to hear that. I didn't know much about the show, but I'm delighted and I certainly will check it out.

Paul: Okay. Finally then, just to squeeze another one in... Have we still got enough time? I know you have to rush off to a client meeting, Narry.

Narry: I do, in fact I just got to the door of the building; that's very kind of you.

Paul: This is wonderful. I mean, we're broadcasting and you are rushing to a client meeting. Can I squeeze one more question in?

Narry: Absolutely.

Paul: Do you see large organizations partnering more with lean startups? How do you see that whole integration, because you talked about the large resources of big organizations, but the nimbleness of startups - do you see more collaboration?

Narry: Definitely, and I think that's one of the more exciting areas of work that our team does - helping large companies get the best innovation from startups, but at the same time also helping startups to have scale, and leverage the distribution, the assets, the brand, the local geographic knowledge of large companies. I mean, look, I think large companies have struggled, for the most part, to get the best out of startups and vice-versa; these are different worlds, different cultures, different speeds, different urgencies, different motivations, quite frankly. But I think the time is upon us. There's a plethora of large companies doing everything from hackathons, to accelerators and corporate venture capital funds, and what have you. So we spend a lot of time figuring out what is the right engagement model for startups, but I'm very bullish about the idea that, for a certain species of startups that are at a certain stage where the technology risk is not that high, large company partnerships and, in fact, large company exits could be one of the most interactive things over the next five years, as the public markets dry up and as funding certainly seems to be getting a little bit more sensible in evaluations.

Paul: That is wonderful. Well, I'll let you go then... The last thing, how can people reach out and connect? Do you have any social media accounts that we could post in the show notes?

Narry: Absolutely. I would say the easiest thing is @Narry_Singh on Twitter.

How To Accelerate Your App For A Mobile First World

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. This is your host, I'm Paul Kemp. This is the show where we go around the world and meet CEOs, founders of just the most amazing app journeys that we can find, and it really does help us out in our journeys because we learn from these people. I'm actually delighted to be joined today by someone who is really supporting this show. He is Jeff Kim, he is the CEO of Neumob. Neumob - you would have heard me talking about that quite a bit recently, so I really wanted to get Jeff on and dive deeper into Neumob. So Jeff Kim, welcome to The App Guy Podcast.

Jeff: Paul, I'm very happy to be speaking with you. Thank you for taking the time.

Paul: Thanks for coming on. First of all, let's just jump straight into Neumob - what is Neumob and how can it help the app entrepreneurs and developers  that listen to this show?

Jeff: Sure. Neumob, our tagline is 'App acceleration for a mobile-first world', and in short, what we do is we make apps faster, on both wireless networks and Wi-Fi. We increase the speed of load times and wireless transmissions faster so that users have a better app experience.

Paul: Alright, that's a great tagline. How did you come up with the idea? You must have obviously been in the field of mobile. Talk us through your inspiration for this idea.

Jeff: Terrific, yes; I would love to say it was hatched in my brain, but it was actually much more pragmatic than that. Customers came to us and started seeking this kind of solution. I've been in the CDN (Content Delivery Network) space for the better half of 16 years, and in that space it's all about making websites faster. But along the way customers started coming and telling us, "Hey, our websites are fast enough. Can somebody help us with our app performance?" and we therefore figured out that there was no solution in the marketplace. That's how Neumob was born.

Paul: Okay, so you were saying that customers were coming to you - was this you in your company, or were you working for someone else?

Jeff: I was the president and COO of a company called CDNetworks a while ago, and actually the specific customer family was Beats by DRE, before they got acquired by Apple. They were very mobile-focused, mobile app and e-mail. All they wanted to do was focus on the app experience, and they specifically asked for a solution like this, and they surveyed the market and there was no solution. As we talked to more and more customers, we figured out that they had the same kind of pain.

Paul: Did DRE take an investment in the company by any chance?

Jeff: No, no. After the Apple acquisition, I think they went on their own separate journey.

Paul: The reason I ask is two years ago we had a chat with a guy who got some money from 50 Cent to start his startup, and he ended getting two million downloads. So the thing I've learned from you already, Jeff, and anyone can take this away in their own journeys, is to just listen to customer feedback, what they're asking for and build something that people want. It seems to make sense.

Jeff: You know, it's how the old business works, you just listen to the market, and the market is creative enough to tell you what they need and what they are looking for.

Paul: So what sort of customers are you working with? For anyone listening, do you cover the whole spectrum of small startups in the entrepreneurs and app developers right through to the big guys? Give us an idea of who should be using Neumob.

Jeff: Absolutely, we do cover the entire spectrum, and I'll start off with the small startups and the indie folks. If you come to our website, Neumob.com, there's actually a startup package, and you can use our service, you download the SDK, you put it into your app, you get a hundred gigabytes - which is a significant amount for a startup. We're happy to serve the startup community that way. Our core business is actually selling to enterprise apps; these are the big names like LinkedIn, Yahoo!, Groupon; all of those app-centric companies who want to make sure that their apps are lightning fast for their end users around the globe.

Paul: How much faster would you predict the apps get when they are using Neumob?

Jeff: Right now, what we're seeing is within 4G LTE cities like San Francisco and New York, is a 40% speed boost for their apps, based on the current benchmarks. When you start going into 3G areas or even 4G not LTE, or even just faraway places for us like Australia or Germany, India - you start seeing 400% speed improvements, which is obviously significant for a business.

Paul: And I was just wondering, what do developers need to do to put Neumob on their app? You talked about an SDK - is there a lot of stuff to learn to put this in, or is it pretty easy?

Jeff: It's very easy. We know that app developers out there are facing 'SDK-fatigue'. there's an SDK for everything these days, with ads and analytics and all of that. Our differentiator is that our SDK actually has a very unique value proposition, in the fact that it will capture all of your wireless traffic and speed it up. For most customers, it’s two lines of code, and it just redirects all of your traffic to our SDK layer and starts working our magic to make everything faster.

Paul: And do you support third-party software as well? I'm thinking some of the app building tools out there, like Titanium, for example, or is it more for the core development?

Jeff: We want to support all of them. Obviously for native iOS and Android - that's functioning; we've just announced support for Unity about two weeks ago. We'll be launching our Web Bean support, Cordova, and the list goes on. We want to make this accessible for every app developer out there.

Paul: Also, Jeff, have you done any research on the difference it makes to retaining users by having a faster app? Is there something you've done to help us understand the benefits of actually giving users a faster app?

Jeff: That's a great question. I will say that's one of the more exciting pieces in the industry right now, that we're collecting that information with our customers for their business KPIs right now. A lot of the learning that we've come to along this way are from the website world, and in the website world, big companies like Wal-Mart and Google have published studies that even a one-second difference converts into 25% more revenue, and there are similar metrics/stats there. What our friends over in the mobile app side have figured out is that those same metrics and those same revenue increases are translating over into mobile. One of the things that our marketing team is planning to do over the next year is to start collecting those metrics with our customers, leading the charge on producing those benchmarks. In the same way that on your desktop you expect things to load in under two seconds, mobile apps are going to be the same way with regard to expectations from users.

Paul: Jeff, we've covered a lot about Neumob, I'd love to know about you as well personally, because this show is also about the inspiration that we get from the CEO and the founders that we talk to. How much fun is it - I guess it's a strange question, but what's it like running your own company, and would you recommend that for other potential entrepreneurs that are listening?

Jeff: Wow, that's a big question. I would say this has been a blast. It's incredibly fun, but I'll tell you - you've heard this adage before - some days are sheer terror and the other days are sheer ecstasy, that's the kind of spectrum that you run. I will say especially in this mobile app market, because the ecosystem and the market is just opening up, we're learning so much every day. I mentioned before that I worked in a corporate IT, CDN, core operations in IT, but the mobile app world is brand spanking new, and it's just so much fun learning stuff every day, as the market develops.

Paul: And Jeff, I've had a lot of people who have actually listened to this show and made a change in their life, in their career, they've moved over to startups, moved over to the entrepreneurial world - is there anything you can give us to help us overcome the fear of leaving a corporate role and starting our own thing? Because that's one of the biggest hurdles we get. Sometimes it's just too big a jump to take. How can you help us understand what you went through to make that jump?

Jeff: Well, I'm probably gonna give you a little different perspective on that. I'm not a B2C person, I've always been a B2B person, and on that front - it's kind of what we've alluded to earlier in the conversation - you really want to see that there is actual customer demand and market demand before you start developing this kind of stuff on the B2B side. Whereas on the B2C side, obviously it's massively more exciting; you know, you get a WhatsApp, or you get an Instagram and all of that. Personally, I don't know how that market works all that well, so I won't be an expert on that, but on the B2B side, if you have customers and you see a need and you can fill it, you should jump and take a look. But it does come with experience and knowing your market very well.

Paul: Yes, actually a lot of people do talk about B2C (Business to Consumer), but you're doing B2B. Would you say that it actually may be a little bit more profitable to be in B2B? I think a lot of people overlook it, but do you think it's wise for anyone listening to actually consider that kind of market, or do you need a special network to enter B2B?

Jeff: No, I think B2B is always more pragmatic, because you're selling to other businesses and enterprises, and they come with budgets, so it should be considered. I think one way to get into this, and I've seen a lot of my Silicon Valley brothers and sisters do this, is to go with development tools. So there are deep linking companies, a lot of analytics companies. One way to do that, which is kind of B2C-ish, is to serve the developer community, and kind of learn the ropes that way, and eventually get into the enterprise, once you have more market requirements.

Paul: Yes, and from your perspective then, what are you seeing the big challenge is for small startups that are mobile-first and only mobile? What are in your perspective the big hurdles and challenges that we face in our businesses?

Jeff: As of late, as everyone has seen, the market definitely has cooled down. Here in the epicenter of venture capital, I think you're definitely seeing a cooling-down season. So just like anything else, there's summer and there's winter, and right now we're kind of entering into winter, so even more caution has to be played in having a sound proposition for adding actual customers, and then have a plan for revenue and profit.

Paul: Yes, because Jeff, one of the big things that we've done over the 427 odd episodes before you on this show is to try to get to the raw truth, unravel the onion, overcome the hype and get to the real situation. So you mentioned that we're all going through a cooling down period - what sort of indicators are you seeing to suggest that we're cooling down?

Jeff: I guess I have a good vantage point, the fact that we're pretty much like six miles away from Sand Hill Road, where all the VCs are. I also have the benefit that during our fundraising, we actually had 14 different investors in Neumob, so being able to survey them, talk to them, ask them "What are the market conditions? What are your recommendations and advice?". They were very good with giving me that feedback. My conclusion on this is pretty much an aggregation of data that our investors here in the Valley are telling me.

Paul: Right. And actually, you mentioned fundraising as well, so another big question I often get is how to actually go through fundraising - any tips that we can have? You've just gone through that - is there anything you could help us with to understand how we can improve our ability to fundraise.

Jeff: The honest truth is there is no one way. It's hard. By the conclusion of our Series A, I had talked to 66 investors, up and down Sand Hill Road and in San Francisco. The first 20 had rejected me, so I guess one thing is persistence and courage to keep going if you truly believe in your business. You will get rejected. On the flip side of that, you've got to listen to the rejections, and listen to why they are passing on you and what's going on. That helps you work out your business model. The final piece obviously now is you've got to get in their network; you can't throw in a business plan onto a website or put up an e-mail address. It's who you know, or who that person introduces you to. That's the way it's done.

Paul: Yes, and I'm guessing actually your location is pretty handy as well, the fact that it's on your doorstep. Do you think that's critical to actually running a successful app business, to be based in Silicon Valley?

Jeff: I don't think it's necessary to run an app business, but I will say that it definitely helps raise funding, because people are people, and the VCs are people as well. They want to see you, and they want to shake your hand. You know, if you're anywhere remote, it's going to be difficult for that personal interaction. Because, at the end of the day, they're writing you a check and trusting you with this money, so that old physical, personal thing needs to be there.

Paul: So Jeff, there's two more things we need to do before we say goodbye to you. One is that I go out to the audience just before we're about to have a chat, just to see if there are any question, and Quentin Smith wants to know what it is you have to do with the SDK, and I guess he wants to know does it actually speed up performance? You've kind of addressed that, but how involved is the amount of code that you need to put in in the SDK?

Jeff: A very good question. It really is one line, it's “Initialize Neumob”, for both Android and iOS. That's pretty much it.

Paul: That's great. So really then, you don't actually need to be a coder to be able to use Neumob.

Jeff: That's correct.

Paul: The other one is from Morten F., who's a student and iOS developer. He wants to know... 70% to 90% of latency in mobile application occurs in the mobile mile, which is the distance between your outer edge and your user device. Is that where you're really tackling the speeding up of the apps, through the mobile mile?

Jeff: Yes, great question. Absolutely. Our real differentiator is the fact that we're increasing throughput over wireless networks, be it O2, or Vodafone, or Verizon here in the states. We didn't too much about the technology, but what we actually do is once you invoke that SDK, it captures all of your wireless traffic, we convert it from standard TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the internet, into our proprietary UDP protocol, where we can do special things to maximize throughput. So there's some hardcore technology underneath that bundle line of “Initialize Neumob”, where we change the protocol. We enable our own special routing so that we can maximize how much data goes up and down the wireless signals.

Paul: Yes, because I can imagine that... I mean, how much of a percentage of traffic do you think are actually using their apps and smartphones through wireless and mobile, rather than broadband?

Jeff: There's plenty of market research out there, yet one of the things I've said in the past is everyone talks about mobile-first. Well, you have to be thinking global-first.. If you’re going to serve the next billion users, well those next billion users are not in the UK, and they're not in the US. They're in places like India, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America - and they have jumped past the desktop stage and they're going straight to mobile, and all of those mobile users run 3G networks.

Paul: And the final thing, Jeff, is we love to get tips from our guests. Without touching your phone, do you have an app or an online tool, or a tip for us to help us with our own app entrepreneur journeys?

Jeff: Sure. One of the tools that we use a lot is a tool called Aro. It's freely available, and it's produced by AT&T. What it actually does is it analyze all of your network traffic. So you plug your Android device or whatnot into your laptop, and you run it through Aro and it shows you all the different network calls that your app is calling. I encourage our customers to actually do this, to see, "Wow, my app is making all these different calls". It helps you to figure out why things are slow, and why there are so many dependencies to make your app work better.

Paul: That's a great tip. On episode 428 there will be a link to Aro. Jeff, it's been a great chat. I want to make sure that everyone listening does have the opportunity - they can go to Neumob.com obviously, then there's full show notes at Episode 428 on theappguy.co, just search for Episode 428 with Jeff Kim. Jeff, how best can people try this, try Neumob, reach out to you and connect? What's the best way of getting in touch with you guys?

Jeff: If you're a startup, just come to Neumob.com, download the SDK and give it a try. If not, again, just come to Neumob.com and contact us and we'll reach out to you.

The Hottest Startup Vying For Most Hype At SXSW16

Paul: Welcome to another episode of The App Guy Podcast. This is a special and great episode - episode 432. I get to speak with co-founders, founders from around the world, and today I've got a co-founder of a really cool app. It's an app that I've been playing with for over a year in beta, it's an app that has absolutely crushed it on ProductHunt, had a massive launch recently, a long time waiting. We're all going to learn a ton, so if you're an app entrepreneur, an app founder, a startup founder, just interested in apps and do side projects, this is the podcast for you. Let me introduce to you the co-founder of Anchor - this is a great app that I've been playing with - his name is Mike Mignano. Mike, welcome to The App Guy Podcast!

Mike: Thank you, Paul. I'm excited to finally talk to you as well. As you said, it's been a while.

Paul: Yes, so for everyone listening, we connected over a year ago now, and you had Anchor and then you basically took the decision to go into beta and have a really long timeline for iterating the app and doing a beta, and you have now had a massive launch. So tell us what that year was like for you.

Mike: Sure, so I think around the time when we reached out to you, we had only just created the beta shortly beforehand; it was probably around a year ago at this point, maybe in February or March 2015. And when you have a beta, you naturally want to get feedback from people who you think will understand and appreciate the product, so I think the way we found you is we were looking around for people who had podcasts, people who were used to recording their voice and comfortable recording their voice, we discovered your podcast and loved it, so I think we just sort of cold reached out to you, and that's how we got talking. But I think shortly after that we realized that the product maybe wasn't quite ready for as many people as we initially thought, so we got back to working on the product and iterating on the product. We worked on it for a really long time, almost a year since we initially kicked off the beta.

Paul: Let's talk about the product, Mike. I look at it as recording bite-sized podcasts that anyone can join, but tell us in your words what is Anchor.

Mike: Sure, so we like to think of Anchor as radio by the people. There's this concept of radio that's been around for about a hundred years; we all know what it is, we've all been hearing it our entire lives, but radio has always been something that only certain people can realistically contribute to. It's always been something that you can only really break into if you are a professional broadcaster, or if you had some really expensive equipment, or you understood the tricks of the trade. Then podcasts came along, and podcasts were great because they helped break down some of the barriers, but they're still just not something that every person can do easily. I can tell you this from my own personal experience; I wanted to create a podcast, and I found it to be pretty difficult. So I think that was the initial idea for Anchor - we realized that this was a process that more and more people were interested in, yet there still wasn't an easy way to do it, and that gave us the idea for Anchor. We said, "Hey, let's democratize the voice-recording and sharing process. Let's make tools that are extremely simple, and let's make a medium that is more closely similar to how we all communicate in real-life, in person: we talk, we listen, we have a conversation, and let's make Anchor conversational. So let's take radio, let's take podcast, let's make them easy to contribute to, easy to consume, and let's make them conversational, just like having a normal human conversation."

Paul: So Mike, when you were starting working on the beta, what were the big changes that you made as a result of the feedback that you got? Because you guys were changing so much stuff, it was wonderful watching you. What were the big takeaways over the year that you worked on it?

Mike: I'd say one of the biggest, and probably the one that's most obvious in the product and the one that people probably the most exposure to is the time limit for waves - in Anchor, we call recordings waves. We initially launched the beta, the very first v1 of the beta and we didn't have a time limit for waves, we just left if completely open-ended. We figured, you know, these people aren't professional podcast creators, so naturally the audio that they record will be short, and bite-sized and easily consumable. We actually found that that wasn't the case. When people didn't have a time-limit, they just talked forever. We found that to be a bit problematic, because given that these people don't have broadcasting training, given that they're not professionals, giving them a completely open space and open canvas to work with would ultimately lead to content that wasn't super-interesting. So we took a look at all the waves that we had in the early beta and we identified the best ones, the ones that we believe to be the best ones, and we saw that the duration of these waves was on average around a minute and a half. So we said, "Okay, let's try two minutes", and that's where the two minutes came from, and it seemed to work. It seemed like that would be enough time for people to say what they want to say, but it was also short enough that it encouraged them to be concise, speak quickly and get their thoughts out there, so that's where that came from.

Paul: Mike, it's great because I'm seeing a lot of people connecting with me now on Anchor, a lot of people that I follow and recognize. You had just a terrific launch, particularly on ProductHunt, which has, if I remember, over a thousand upvotes. I just wondered if you could talk through the launch, it's one of the big challenges we all face when creating apps. How did you prepare for your launch, and then ultimately how did you actually go about launching?

Mike: Sure, so we've been active members of the ProductHunt community for a while now. I've been going to that site for a while now, and upvoting products that I liked, and commenting; I even had submitted a few of my own prior to Anchor, and I knew how important it was for an early product - especially one that's community-driven - to have a presence on ProductHunt on launch date. So we actually put a lot of preparation into our ProductHunt launch. We had a friend and actually also an investor at Anchor, Matt Hartman, we had him post Anchor to ProductHunt early that morning of launch - I think it was at 6 AM Eastern - and we immediately jumped on there with a comment. We had also prepared images and graphics that we'd add to the page to make the page look alive and enticing, and we just stayed engaged on there all throughout the day. I was pretty much glued to ProductHunt all day, answering questions through comments, making sure people felt like they could talk to me. I think it was a combination of a product that people really liked and the sort of openness that we put out there through the comments on ProductHunt that lead to such a successful ProductHunt launch.

Paul: Mike, I actually did have a previous app I worked on and we launched on ProductHunt and we managed to get to the number one in the music category for the app. I just wondered - what impact do you feel that that launch on ProductHunt had on your position within the AppStore? Are you able to tell where you ended up on the AppStore as a result of the successful launch?

Mike: It's really hard to say exactly where it put us or where it helped us get, but I'm definitely confident that it had something to do with it, absolutely. I think those early community members, especially those who were so passionate about products and trying things out, I think people like that are instrumental early on, in the early days of a product and especially on launch day. So I don't know where it put us in the charts, but I know that ProductHunt had a lot to do with us having such a big first day.

Paul: What I'm learning from you - because we love to try to dissect your success so that we can emulate it - is that I guess having a large or long beta, and having a lot of community already established, when you do have the app hit the AppStore, you're getting a lot of immediate downloads from that community, which then propels you up the charts. Is that fair?

Mike: That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but what you're saying makes sense. I think we did have a large community of people - not an astronomically large amount of people, but we had our own, small, tight, little community that was excited for us. They were excited for us to launch, they had been waiting for a long time for us to launch, and so the day we did launch they were excited to help in any way they could, whether that be telling a friend, or telling multiple friends, or getting inside of Anchor on day one and helping create some content that some new users could interact with. So yes, I think you make a great point. I think not only is that early beta group totally pivotal in getting that early feedback and helping shape the product, but they're also really important for launch day, in helping make the most out of your launch.

Paul: Mike, one of the other things that we often experience ourselves as app entrepreneurs is we have the post-launch blues, where you've had a terrific launch, you've hit the charts, you've had a lot of downloads, and then momentum seems to tail off. Have you seen a dip now after the launch? Have you got any kinds of press release, PR strategy to keep the momentum going?

Mike: We're not doing any sort of publicity, or press strategy, or anything like that, and I can honestly say that the momentum has sustained up until this point, and maybe even increased. I think it's because of the type of content that's coming out of Anchor. People record this voice content, they put it out there on the internet, they put it on Twitter, maybe they share it on a medium blog post or something like that, and because the content of Anchor is interactive, I think that content is naturally sucking more people back in. So we haven't experienced the lull that you're talking about that. That said, I've worked on plenty of products before and I do know that that lull does come after a launch, and I'm sure we'll experience it just like everyone else does, maybe very soon. But for now, it's been about two weeks and we're still experiencing a lot of momentum. We're working constantly, around the clock almost, to keep the servers up and running, keep the website operating, listening to our users both in Anchor and on Twitter and through e-mail, and fixing bugs and building out new features that the community is asking us for.

Paul: I get a lot of questions about funding and how to go about it. Do you have any tips in regards to your experience, on how you raised funding?

Mike: The reason we decided to raise money, and not everyone chooses to take this path, and I think it's important that whatever it is you're doing, you take the path that's right for you. But we decided to raise money because there came a point in the early days of Anchor, probably shortly after you and I came in contact with each other, where Nir and I both realized we really wanted to make a run at this, we really wanted to go for it. And to go for it meant we had to be working on it full-time. In the early days of Anchor, we were not working on it full-time. We had other jobs, we were working on it at night, we were working on it very, very early in the morning, before having to go to our full-time jobs, and we realized that to got for it we couldn't sustain that schedule. We couldn't maintain working on it as a side project, we had to put a hundred percent of our effort into it. And neither of us were in a personal situation in which we could support that lifestyle financially, neither of us had those means to do that. So we realized if we want to make a go at Anchor full-time, we're gonna have to go and raise money to be able to support this endeavor, and that's ultimately how and why we decided to go and seek out fundraising.

Paul: That is wonderful, because you did actually quite a few interesting projects beforehand. Have you got a quick snapshot of what you did before Anchor?

Mike: Sure. I was originally a computer science major and came out of college working for a couple of consulting firms, but then realized that I really wanted to work in an industry that I was very passionate about, and I've always been passionate about music and audio, so I got a job as a freelance web engineer for Atlantic Records, the record label here in New York, and I ended up working with them for about five years before deciding to go off into the startup land, and I joined a company called Aviary. Aviary is a company that has a really great and really simple photo-editing app for iPhone and Android, as well as a photo-editing SDK. So I worked as a head of product there for a couple of years before the company was acquired by Adobe, and then I went on to work for Adobe for a little while before leaving and starting...

Paul: Yes, Aviary was massively successful, it was everywhere. In fact, I think I even use it within SquareSpace, so it must be adopted as a third-party solution for a lot of different options.

[00:16:22.21] commercial break [00:18:40.04]

Paul: Mike, there's two more things we need to do before we say goodbye to you. One is that we would love to know about you and whether... You know, you've just made the decision to go for Anchor full-time, a year ago or so. I wanted to know, because others are inspired by the guests we have on this show - is it worth it? Is it worth all the pain, all the agony? Would you recommend life and an app entrepreneur?

Mike: For me personally yes, without a doubt; I can say yes, it is worth it. I have always been someone that's wanted to pursue starting my own company, starting my own business, building my own product from scratch, I've always wanted to do that. Now that I've done it, I wonder why it took me so long. But I know that that's a hard decision to make; I even struggled with it, as confident as I was in Anchor, and the idea, and the mission, and what we believed about the product, even I struggled with making the decision, because I had never taken a risk like that before. And there are things that you always hear, that people worry about when they're going to take a risk like that, and I had all the same worries and fears that everyone else did, but I can honestly say that once I've taken the risk, once I've gone for it, there hasn't really been one time since doing it that I've looked back and questioned my decision, or questioned whether or not it was the right move. I can't say that that's going to work for everyone; everyone has their own, personal situation, their own set of responsibilities, and I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I was able to make this work in my life, taking this risk with it, but not everyone might be in that position. I absolutely would say it was worth it for me, and I think it's one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life, especially in terms of my career.

Paul: And what is it you love about what you do? If you had to think about one or two things that stand out as being a co-founder, what is it?

Mike: I've always been someone that likes to create things. I've been a musician my whole life and I've loved creating music. I've also been a photographer and I've dabbled in art and painting as well, and I've always loved creating things, and putting them out there into the world. With Anchor, and specifically building apps and creating apps, I love it so much because I get to create something that someone else can interact with and get value out of in their own life. And when it's something that for at least some people has a very positive impact on them, or their life, or their entertainment, or their enjoyment in some way, I think there's nothing better than that - just to know that you can make some tiny, small difference in someone else's life with something that you create. I think that's the best part of it.

Paul: I love it. So the final thing is I want to try to figure out how people should be using Anchor, in your mind. So if anyone's listening to this and wants to know whether they're suitable for using Anchor, what kind of user cases do you find get most value from Anchor?

Mike: I'm hesitant to say anything too specific because what we really want from Anchor is for people to just feel like they can be themselves, like they can just talk and say whatever they want to say to anyone, anywhere in the world. And in doing that, it opens up the door for anyone else to respond, and engage in a real, human conversation with that person. So initially, when we first started talking about Anchor, I would say the type of content that would be most successful on Anchor is the same type of content that would be successful on the radio, but I don't really say that anymore because I don't want anyone to have any sort of preconceived notion about what it is they should or shouldn't be saying on Anchor. I just want them to be themselves and say whatever comes natural to them.

Paul: Yes, because I guess the other thing which we didn't touch on, but is absolutely obvious, is it's a real platform. On Twitter, all the celebrities have departments running their Twitter accounts, but with Anchor there's a realism that you get when hearing someone's voice, and genuineness. Is that right?

Mike: Absolutely. I think it's a special medium; I think voice is a special medium that carries a different type of weight than the weight that text, or photo, or video carries. I think when you hear someone's voice, it comes with so much nuance and emotion, and I find that that's something that gets lost in other mediums. My friend Matt Hartman and Betaworks investor likes to say there's something very special about having someone's voice speaking directly into your ear. It makes you feel like you know that person, even if they're on the other side of the world, and I think Anchor can do that for people, and I think voice is special.

Paul: Well, it's been a wonderful chat. Everyone listening, they can go to episode 432 on theappguy.co and get full links to Anchor and Mike and Nir. In the meantime, Mike, how best can people reach out and connect with you? What's the best way of getting in touch?

Mike: I think the best way, naturally, is to go into Anchor and search for my full name, Michael Mignano in Anchor and we can talk on there. I've been talking to a lot of our users on Anchor every single day, and it's great to just have these real conversations with people. Of course, I can also be found on Twitter, @mignano, or you can reach out to Anchor on Twitter, @anchor.

Paul: Wonderful. Mike, it's so terrific chatting with you about Anchor, an app that I absolutely love and highly recommend. Everyone should be downloading it, playing with it. Thanks for coming on the show and talking about Anchor!

Mike: Thank you, Paul. I'm really glad we were able to talk.