akardell

12 lat temudiscuss

I'd entertain offers for iGarageSale for iOS and Android. Though I've pulled the apps from active sale, you can still get a pretty good idea of what they provided at http://www.igaragesaleapp.com/

Was the #1 app for finding garage sales (~10,000 paid downloads and ~10,000 free / lite downloads), but my primary startup has taken off and I didn't have time to maintain.

There are some pretty interesting use cases left unexplored - e.g. social aspects or other verticals (apartment rentals).

If you're interested in making a serious offer hit me up at igaragesale [at] performantdesign [dot] com.

akardell

16 lat temudiscuss

Has there been an announcement on general availability of Gmail OAuth? Found the techcrunch article about an expected announcement, but no announcement as of yet.

akardell

17 lat temudiscuss

You can basically glean the gist of what the figures mean from the following information. Sorry to be vague, but hopefully this gets to the context you're hoping for.

I had some upfront expenses for a custom icon, the website design, a license for the song for the background music for the demo video (including the questionable MP3 freebie), and to run a one day roadblock on the Fusion ad network. Prior to being featured, I hadn't yet broken even on my costs (let alone my labor). The first day of being featured pushed sales past the breakeven point. If sales were to remain steady at this level, the yearly revenue for the app would be much better than an average engineer's salary. There will, however, likely be a very predictable drop in sales once it's no longer featured.

What that means over the long term, we'll see. If the data's interesting - e.g. significant drop or significant lack of a drop in sales, or more key inflection points, etc. - I'll throw up another post about it and consider including dollar figures at that point.

akardell

17 lat temudiscuss

These are worth checking out...

http://groups.google.com/group/iphonedevmn

http://iphone.mn/

akardell

17 lat temudiscuss

Also, if you're trying to start a startup (and aren't living in Silicon Valley) - you should probably answer 408 numbers even if you're not an iPhone developer. Lesson learned.

akardell

17 lat temudiscuss

I know the developer of Alien Splat, which is also in the same New & Noteworthy section this week. He didn't receive a call, and wasn't otherwise notified by Apple that the app was featured. He was surprised when I brought it to his attention.

So - the call was just to get the change in description, not to notify of the placement. Which makes me all the more grateful Apple was persistent, and that they didn't just write it off even though they wanted the change.

I've also heard other accounts of Apple calling to request "special builds" for TV spots, etc. but don't have any first-hand direct knowledge of that.

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

My bad... Split into two lines, hopefully that helps.

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

Or, if they're in a forgiving mood, this will produce one e-mail address per line, regardless of delimited position, (assuming the founders were already on separate lines):

 | sed -E 's/^.*[^[:alnum:]\._\-]([[:alnum:]\._\-]+@[[:alnum:]][[:alnum:]\-]+\.[[:alnum:]][[:alnum:]\-\.]*)[^[:alnum:]\-\.].*$/\1/' 
 | grep -E '^[[:alnum:]\._\-]+@[[:alnum:]][[:alnum:]\-]+\.[[:alnum:]][[:alnum:]\-\.]*$'

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

This one was especially funny for me since I was just part of a company that wrote student information systems -- the software that is used to track student records in K-12 schools. Fortunately, we were using prepared statements :)

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

I'm not completely certain we're not in some kind of bubble, but I can say that if we are, it pales in comparison to where we were in the '98-'01 era. EToys.com had a peak market cap of $10 billion. PlanetRX.com had a peak market cap of $10.8 billion, and I don't even remember that one.

Though they were and are still successful, Amazon and eBay had market caps of $28 billion and $17 billion respectively in early 1999 -- long before they had near-term prospects of showing a profit.

In comparison, $10 billion for Facebook today doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

References: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_20/b3732716.... http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/189.html

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

Smart move on BT's part. Makes for an easy way to further monetize existing bandwidth and increase the value of their Wi-Fi network by adding more hotspots for little cost.

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

This is the second time I've read something recently that Facebook will never be MySpace because MySpace has more users. I disagree. One of the articles I read made it's point by showing a graph that showed Facebook is clearly catching up. It's a few months old, but Andreesen had a really good post on why the platform will always win: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/analyzing_the_f.html

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

Get a home office and a third place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Place). Having recently left my former employer and taken the plunge, I've found myself strangely having the highest levels of productivity sitting for a few hours at a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi.

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

I am located in Minneapolis and co-founded a startup in 2001 that was acquired in 2004. We had a less traditional funding route -- a single private investor / angel who helped get everything going. We pulled most of our engineering talent from a local college and I used connections with a past professor to cherry pick the best of a couple of soon to be graduating classes.

I'm still living in Minneapolis, but having since worked with a number of people in the Bay area and having traveled there frequently, I can say that the environment does seem quite a bit different.

There are a lot of advantages to being in a "startup hub"... More talent that's easier to find, more people to bounce ideas off of, more access to traditional and non-traditional funding sources, etc.

One advantage to starting out in Minneapolis that we found was that salaries for our first employees were significantly cheaper than what we've heard from friends in the Bay area. In addition, the work ethic here is quite high -- it seems easy to find committed, dedicated employees.

Here's a recent article about Minneapolis being rated the top metro center for business (in general, not startups or technology specific).

http://news.morningstar.com/news/ViewNews.asp?article=/DJ/20...

Here's a startup that I recently found out is in the Minneapolis area -- http://www.yugma.com/ -- I'm at times surprised to learn of all the startups that are more or less under the radar here.

If you have the engineering talent and the funding sources, I think you can absolutely get started in a non-"startup hub". Having said that, there are definite advantages to being in a startup hub.

akardell

19 lat temudiscuss

In the context of software development, the ideas expressed really fall into alignment with incremental, Agile development. While I have been fortunate enough to spend most of my career so far in an Agile environment, I have had some time in a more traditional waterfall environment as well. In comparing the two, it seems like a key benefit of an Agile environment is that momentum much more quickly builds upon itself. It's much easier to work with something tangible, tweak it and improve it, than it is to abstractly imagine what it needs to be like, and get it right the first time.

Submissions

IPhone Sales Figures - 78x One-Day Jump

Tell iPhone Devs - Pick Up the Phone

Another App Store ratings snafu, or Garage Sales are for mature audiences only

comments