Techneur

This segment is the first of a multi-part post cataloging our adventure as we push our March Madness iPhone app to the top of the store.  We’ll show you our revenue, stats, and share our experiences while they’re happening.  We’ve even set up a counter website where you can view the app’s free downloads, $1 upgrades, and conversion rate.  So instead of getting important work done, you can stalk the app 24/7 like I do.  We’re basically blogging our entire strategy and analyzing it for your entertainment.

Brief History: Reflect7 & our app Final Madness:

We’re a small software company (3 part-time dudes) located in Lincoln, NE.  That’s right, Nebraska now has software and the electricity to run it (watch out Google!).  Our Final Madness app has been released for about a week and it’s been steadily gaining ground since we started our marketing campaign.  The guys and I took a bet on how much revenue we thought the app would accumulate.  Corey said $15k, JP said $1.5k, and I said $54k.  Initially, I was going to do $15k but it would have been a jerk move to go right above Corey’s estimate, price-is-right-style.  Instead, I went balls out to $54k to make it seem like I had some inside mojo.  But honestly, if Final Madness can just break into the top ten list for free sports, we’d all be happy.  Not because we’re making money, but because we’re finally starting to make sense of the app store.

The Campaign:

1) Our first order of business was to release a simple and elegant app that would never crash.  We adopted the 37signals mantra, “Underdo your competitors.“  I’ve been doing that my whole life, just ask my previous girlfriends. Our mobile developer must have been doing it too, because that is where Corey shined.  He built a simple bracket slide interface with live scoring, push notifications, linked stats for every game, and previous years brackets.  Everything a basketball fan needs to follow March Madness.

2) Next was cross-promoting Final Madness in our other apps.  For the last six months, we’ve had nearly 200 team-specific applications on the market.  Here’s the customer breakdown:

The sport with the $ next to it represents apps that people paid for.  The ones without a $ represent free apps (about 75% of our total). You can see in column O33 that we have about 60,000 customers.

Reflect7 is operating off the assumption that making a top 10 list in any category is a self-feeding process where new views bring in more downloads, which raises your app rank for more views.  Our goal was to leverage our 60k customer base in a condensed time period leading up to March Madness.  If we could convert 33% of our base to Final Madness in a period of 7 days, we’d be looking at 20000 downloads.  That’s almost 3000 a day and enough to get us to the top five of the Free Sports list.  After that, we’d hopefully sustain a top presence from the list view and March Madness hype.

So far we’ve inserted icons in all of our 91 NCAA basketball apps and a handful of our NBA apps.  Final Madness had the largest jump in sales after those updates were approved.  The conversion strategy seems to be working, but we’ll have more on that next week when I crunch the early numbers.

3) Our next move was to build a Final Madness website with a Twitter/Facebook promotion. That promotion began today.  We’re giving fans a chance to win a 40” Flatscreen when they retweet or update their facebook status with our message.  So far, we only have about 5 entries so if you’re reading this, the odds are pretty good. I’ve never done anything like this before so it’s really up in the air.  We’re tracking all the links so it will be interesting to see the numbers next week.

To supplement the promo, we’ve set up a facebook fan page and decked out our twitter page Final Madness style.

Well that’s all for now.  If you’re just tuning in we’re sitting at 2033 downloads with 44 $1 upgrades and it’s Saturday, March 6th at 6am.  We still have a few marketing tricks up our sleeve but you’ll have to wait until next week to read about them.  With this being a big College Hoops Day, I’m anticipating 1000 downloads. Hopefully, that will push us into the top 10 free sports apps (fingers crossed).

Check back next week for an update on our struggle, including details on: stats, Mobclix ad campaign, promo stats, strategy…

-Brian

Last February we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about an app idea that would push us into local fame: a Husker football iPhone application.  At the time, there were only a few competitors and we were sure that our app could be the best.  In the first few weeks, our app enjoyed a few hundred downloads and we marveled at its success.  We thought, “If we replicate this for every team, we’ll be bootstrapped by next May.” So we did, and sales were good, at first… Along the way, hurdle after hurdle stifled our growth.  One of them was meeting deadlines.  Time after time, we released sports apps after that sport had already started.  Here’s the shakedown of why we missed the mark and what we’re doing to hit it now.

1) Scope: Our most inhibiting trait has always been scope.  We planned for simple projects, but kept adding new bells and whistles.  We’ve completely redesigned our fan apps to have an iphone-esque interface. Then we added more modules like videos, chat, and a live scoring ticker.  Each of these additions always created several new opportunities for error, and with each you must apply Murphy’s law: what can go wrong, usually does.

Lesson learned: dial back scope.  Half the project because you’ll always underestimate the time that a seemingly simple update will take.

2) Lack of Focus: Not only are we three part-time employees trying to bootstrap from our regular jobs, but we also pile on extra projects for no apparently good reason.  This is what happened with our Kloudspeak debacle.  After starting out with a Husker app focus, we decided to create a Twitter client for conferences.  This was a major sidetrack when we should have been focusing on getting out our money-making sports apps before their seasons began.

Lesson learned: if your goal is to bootstrap, then concentrate on what’s making you money. Perfect that as much as possible and then allow extra time for new projects.

3) Apples iPhone Wait Queue: Time and time again, Apple’s two week queue has cost us deadlines.  Whether it was a tiny bug or a miscommunication with the rating system, both will send you to the back of the queue.

Lesson learned: Test your apps thoroughly and plan to release a month ahead of your designated deadline.  This allots enough time for one/two errors to be caught by Apple during the approval process. And once again, Murphy’s law applies.

4) No room for error: With just three guys working part time, we don’t have enough resources to make extravagant apps or lose focus.  The good part about this, is that we don’t need to do either of those things to put out a good product. The bad part is that we don’t have any wiggle room for error when planning and executing.

Lesson learned: Simple, simple, simple. Keep things simple and release often. There are countless apps that do much less than ours that rank higher because they focus on just delivering sports news or scores and that’s it. They focus on simplicity.  We came out of the gates trying to kill ESPN with just three part-time employees. That’s a tough goal to achieve and that’s why, from now on, we’ll specialize on something simple, and do it better than all of the major players.

So how have we adjusted? With our newest March Madness release, Final Madness, we limited scope.  The app only does one major thing: displays and updates scores for all of the March Madness teams in an easy to navigate bracket interface. At times there was talk of adding a make-your-own bracket module to the app.  It was argued that we just wouldn’t have enough time to incorporate such a system without adding a slew of possible new bugs, back end services, and cluttering the simple design.  Corey (our mobile developer) fought to keep our app simple and it ended up being a great decision. Even though we’ve released the app, we’re still working out some of the kinks to deliver the best experience possible.  Corey was right, we didn’t have time to mess with extra bells and whistles, especially when March Madness is quickly approaching.

So learn from our mistakes and meet back next week when I discuss competitors and the new iPhone scene.

-Brian

I often take inspiration from entrepreneurs who have made it. I call these my entrepreneurial heroes. These men are masters of their craft and persistent until successful.

I present them to you in the order of influence on my life:

1. Jeff Atwood: Jeff created blog called Coding Horror. Since, I’m a software developer by trade, Jeff’s blog has influenced me in a number of positive ways. Most importantly though, is convincing me on the importance of design in software and how it affects the users. My favorite posts: Peanut Butter Theory of User Interface Design, The Sesame Street Presentation Rule, and Fail Early, Fail Often. He’s also responsible for creating StackOverflow.com - probably my favorite programming Q&A site. If you’re a software developer, you owe it to yourself to go back and dig in the CodingHorror’s archive. I promise it will change the way you think about your design.
2. Trent Hamm: Trent created a blog called The Simple Dollar. There was a time when I thought that using a credit card willy nilly was acceptable. Then I hit financial armageddon. I knew that I had to cut back on spending money that I didn’t have. I searched and searched online until I hit The Simple Dollar. Trent often writes about personal improvement, focusing on your passion, and frugality. A must read for any aspiring entrepreneur. Some of my favorite posts: The Path of Least Resistance is the Path Without Opportunities, Find and Work Towards Your Passion, and 10 Financial Reasons to Turn Off the TV.
3. Mark Cuban: Let’s see here… you probably know who Mark Cuban is. If you don’t, well he started out a small PC business repairing PCs, selling software, and focusing on small businesses. He sold that business. He then went on to found Broadcast.com. He sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for a little over 4 billion dollars. He is now the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks (NBA). Mark has a lot of great advice that any entrepreneur should heed. He often writes on his blog Blog Maverick. My favorite posts: How to Get Rich, Success & Motivation 1,2,3,4, and You Only Have to Be Right Once.
4. 37 Signals (Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson): These two guys own 37 Signals, a software company in Chicago that focuses on creating simple products that underdo their competition. They have a great blog called Signals vs Noise. The blog focuses on design of software, business of software, and other misc. silliness in the contemporary corporate business world. But, if you must read one piece of literature from them, then “Getting Real” is what it needs to be. Do yourself a favor and read it now. In fact, stop reading this, and just read the damn book. I promise you’ll be glad you did.
5. Gary Vaynerchuk: This post would not be complete without mentioning Gary. Gary took over his family’s wine business and took it from just a few million dollars in a revenue a year to over 50 million. He frequently posts small, easily digestible inspirational videos on his website. I first heard of him when I went to Big Omaha last year. Here is the video. His messages are simple: internet is killing traditional media, care and you’ll win, anyone can make a living off of their passion.

Who is your entrepreneurial hero?

-JP

“Inspiration is perishable” - Jason Fried

This is one quote that has resonated with me well after Big Omaha 2009. Inspiration is indeed perishable. I think this is something that affects all of us. I’m sure you’ve had an ‘aha’ moment when you think of a great idea - then you think: if only you had the time. But wait, you remember that in a few weeks your schedule will clear up. Then you can act upon your great idea! Weeks pass by. You didn’t act.

This is all too common. Personally, this happens to me all of the time. I own about 30 unused domains that represent ideas for web apps. “Only if I had more time.” The reality is, you will never have more time. Life throws so much at us: kids, spouses, divorces, deaths, sickness, day jobs, etc. You have to make more time.

You can start by decommitting. Do you really need to come home after work and watch Lost for an hour? Do you really need to go out on Friday night with your buddies and be hungover all day Saturday? Must you go to that basketball game? Do you need to spend an hour on Facebook?

The choice is yours. If those things make you happy, then do them. But, don’t be mad at yourself later in life because you didn’t act. The time is now. Act today.

What techniques do you use so that you can act upon your great ideas right away?

-JP