May 2012
59 posts
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Galen Ward Blog: Downloads Are the New Hits →
Downloads are as meaningless as hits, since you can game them with frequent updates. Important metrics: Installs, Daily / Monthly Uniques, and Time on App.
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“The telecoms industry is caught up in a trap of its own making driven by a...”
– Future of Communications - Future of Communications blog - Lean Networking
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“Customers are the result of a series of events.”
– Ways to Increase User Engagement | The Intercom Blog
You should be reading the Intercom blog. You should also be using Intercom to engage with the users of your webapp.
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“So if both have no customers, why on earth would a company with an offering...”
– Should Only Startups with Products Get Funded? | Rocket Watcher: Product Marketing for Startups
In other words: you don’t know anything about whether you have a successful until someone is paying you for something. For me, not having an idea is still a negative signal. I think there is a role...
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iOS app success is a “lottery”: 60% (or more) of... →
I don’t know why this is a surprise. Apps are a business. Most businesses fail soon after starting. Googling a bit finds me this About.com article with some business failure stats that says really small businesses show only 55% survived after three years.
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How VCs, Accelerators, and Coworking Spaces Put... →
So if you’re checking off all the ingredients you need to build your own startup ecosystem, just count how many people you have whose fulltime profession it is to support the ecosystem through their normal course of business—not just a side gig or an economic project. Get enough of those and you’ll have your community.
That’s the last paragraph of this post....
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“If the classic shape of a seed has been thrown out of the window, so be it. If...”
– A singularity hits venture capital – Fred Destin – The Kernel
In other words, yes, the current model of VC is still in the process of being disrupted, so various “VC is broken” is not a surprise. Transparency and markets change all things.
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Why Churn is so critical to success in SaaS | For... →
A good read and primer on churn and negative churn and impacts on revenue. Take away: focus on upselling and cross-selling as well as keeping your customers happy to reduce the effects of people cancelling (churn).
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“I’ve been interested in writing an ebook for a while. The first time I...”
– 4 Months of ebook Sales
I’m fascinated by self-publishing AKA boot-strapped ebooks, so in general I’m collecting stories like this. Each market is different, of course, but much like Kickstarter, it feels like people are willing to pay for stuff that other people make.
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“Understanding and utilizing the underlying data of your business is no longer a...”
– Big Data 2.0 — Data as a Platform - VentureBlog
We are still selling data tooling for the most part, rather than tools that let people act on the data.
“The technology industry is a lot like major league baseball circa 2000: it...”
– Software is the New On Base Percentage – tecosystems
Teams, processes, culture. Who cares how much software you’ve built, how do you keep shipping it, maintaining it, and selling it to customers?
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“There are no “right” answers to any of these questions. Hugely...”
– Crash Dev: Unwritten Rules
Chris DeVore goes over various typical starting-a-company questions, as well as what he considers to be the right answer for companies he invests in at Founders Co-Op.
Knowing what your answers are to these questions - or at least, how you go about discussing them with...
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Lightning | Boris Smus →
Boris Smus’ Python based static site generator, if you like Python better than Ruby.
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“The really important point to underscore is that if you abstract the decision of...”
– Mobile Advertising Mediation | Mike Rowehl: This is Mobility
We’re only seeing more and more hosted services that let you make changes, monitor, or otherwise do interesting things by hooking them into your “native” binaries.
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PhoneGap Beliefs, Goals, and Philosophy « PhoneGap →
Moving post by @brianleroux about PhoneGap.
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#PunkMoney - a gift currency you can use on... →
“A gift currency anyone can print, transfer, and redeem on Twitter”. /via @sleslie
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“Perhaps the question about reward/performance isn’t the right one. Why do...”
– Services to Product - Boris Mann
Linking to your own blog post is perhaps a bit weird. I had a great back and forth about these concepts with Jay, and the quote above is from Gord Christmas.
I am really enjoying the new blog platform. I don’t know if it’s the subject matter or the...
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“One of the most radical ideas in the book [Maverick] is that every employee has...”
– Peter Baumgartner | Open Book Finances | scriptogr.am
Here’s the link to the Maverick book on Amazon.
Lincoln Loop is a company experimenting with product (Ginger) alongside their services work. I think this kind of openness is what is needed to excel as a true team.
I would be interested...
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“Now, e-commerce is not so much a business model as an essential approach to...”
– We’re All E-Commerce Companies Now - Bonin Bough - Harvard Business Review
This was from the point of view of a “Consumer Packaged Goods” aka CPG company.
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“I think fulfillment and joy barely enter into the calculus for most founders,...”
– How do I stop “analyzing” and pick between two good choices? by @ASmartBear
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“I’d love to see a study that measures the correlation between a willingness pick...”
– rc3.org - Thinking about resistance to learning new tools
“Honestly, if your business isn’t considering how computation changes things,...”
– Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: the future will be confusing
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“People often say that at dojo4 we design and build software for the internet....”
– toolbox for a better world: do something simple first & listen deeply - dojo4
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“With the advent of Facebook and Apple’s App Store, and with over 2 billion...”
– Why European venture loses so much money – Milo Yiannopoulos – The Kernel
The article is about European VC’s terrible returns, but this point is worth making: we really do have distribution channels that can be global, making it easier for “big wins” to be based anywhere.
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“Whereas a firm used to keep the same business model for a generation or more,...”
– Business Models and the Singularity | Digital Tonto
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“There are plenty of examples of happiness-focused companies that promptly failed...”
– Does Culture Eat Strategy for Lunch?
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Early Startup Time Wasters →
Looking back on the first six months of my own startup, I’m embarrassed by how terrible my shot selection was. I routinely spent time on features that ended up having zero impact on the business. I was especially prone to working on short-term (1 to 2 week) projects that seemed fun and harmless, but wasted a lot of time when you add them all up. I simply wasn’t focused enough. Thinking back on...
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Inbox management isn't the future of email →
Darren Barefoot pinged me about this, so here’s a for the record comment.
I don’t think this is different enough than what Gmail’s SmartLabels (it’s in Labs, turn it on) and custom filters do today. Robert Scoble has 1300+ filters in Gmail.
In essence, the summary of PandoDaily’s post is that the future of email is inbox management. Which I don’t think it is.
...
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“It’s awesome that Palmer’s Kickstarter has done so well — but look at what it’s...”
– Amanda Palmer, Kickstarter, and Everything – Whatever
Kickstarter has created a platform that makes many things possible. But, it’s still work, and you get out what you put in.
(IndieGoGo is a similar service that works in Canada)
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Improving UX and CX through Customer Journey... →
Creating a customer journey map helps make the big picture of customer experience understandable
Interesting concept - I’ve long said that customer experience goes way beyond whats on screen, to things like support and sales.
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Overpriced Developer Conferences :: Freelance... →
Putting on a conference is hard. But look at WHY the conference is being put on - if it’s a community event, it’s likely to be worth it. If it’s not, then the whole point is to make money — that margin is where the overpricing comes in.
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“The internet-connected individual has faster and higher-quality access to news...”
– bestkungfu weblog » 20 years
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Eat the Document | TechCrunch →
Here’s that death of binary documents theme, pulled together by Steve Gillmor. Lots of great quotable quotes here.
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Posterous Backup Tool for Mac →
Here’s a Mac app that backs up your Posterous. I am still looking at funding a small Ruby script to do this and get it Markdown formatted.
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John Sheehan : Blog: The API Developer Experience... →
A good write up on what is needed to support an API that you actually want developers outside your company to use. I haven’t seen this abbreviated as “DX” very often (aka developer experience), but I think this is a more common theme.
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Native to web iOS apps, or there and back again «... →
A discussion of the “whys” of going native iOS, to PhoneGap, and then back to native. Most of this seems to be about availability of dedicated resources / expertise in certain areas, although performance / usability always seems to be the item that gets people to go back to native.
Portability is almost never a real concern.
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“Everyone here is a craftsman. Whether our craft is through technology, design or...”
– On Craftsmanship | HARVEST Time Tracking and Invoicing Blog
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Public Beta of Mandrill SMTP Email Service |... →
MailChimp is launching a “one-to-one” SMTP email service. One more piece of your webapp that you might not need to build yourself.
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"Evernote as a publicly traded company could be... →
I actually think Evernote has a brighter future than Dropbox, so this is believable to me. File under “death of binary documents” obsession.
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Why having an MBA is a negative hiring signal (for... →
I’ve considered getting an MBA in the past. But I’ve failed at business enough to learn a thing or two.
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yongfook: Growth Hacking 101 →
yongfook:
In a previous startup we went from 0 to around 500,000 users.
This term “growth hacking” is interesting. The tips are split into Cheap, Scalable, and Expensive. Seems like lots of tips are actually about making great content, and making it easily searchable and shareable.
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Indie bookstores are selling (not closing) -... →
bookavore:
Other bookstores closed. These did not. Why not? And what will happen to them now? This seems like a good moment in time to ask those questions, and could provide us with a good new way to think about bookstores and books and all that.
I would love to run a coffee shop some day. I mean, bookstore.
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Executive Summary Template by @StartupCFO →
Thanks, Mark!
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“It matters little what the e-book actually costs.
It only matters what the...”
– Thinking The Wrong Things About E-Book Pricing
I’m annoyed when I’m standing in a Chapters (or e-book showroom, as I like to think of them) and see hardcover books for less than the ebook. But I’m still not buying the hardcover.
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Research: How People Use Mobile Email | MailChimp... →
This is a great read on mobile email. Lots of quotable quotes, including various anecdotes about how email is triaged both at work and at home at all hours of the day. It’s the computers that are on the go, not the people!
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You’ll never believe how LinkedIn built its new... →
I’m not sure how excited I am by how breathless / incredulous people are about HTML5 + Node.js as a toolkit for building apps, but it is an interesting use case / build description to look at. Bonus points for dissing responsive web design.
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iPad productivity apps - Matt Gemmell →
It’s articles like these that are going to make me break down and buy an iPad.
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“so long as we are programming in decendants of assembly language we will...”
– An IDE is not enough
I don’t program much, but when I do, it’s in a text editor. It’s not even very tarted up (Smultron, for those that are wondering).
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“[Nokia] used to make paper, they used to make cables, and at the rate they’re...”
– Jorma Ollila leaves Nokia, talks about future products on his way out