Awesome Web Innovators Event tonight!
@Wayne founder of Crashlytics kicked it off with a slick deck highlighting why he believes they have been so successful.
Point #1: Focus attention on distribution.
Little tip for anyone following him: he judges his decisions based on how fast you can grow. What do you think? Did he make the right choices in building non-core functionality early on? Read on for the details.
Point #2: Build your product for humans.
Wayne Chang describes his process for engineering emotions:
1. Recognize what your users are feeling
2. Envision the goal
3. Engineer the delta of “WOW”
I loved how Crashlytics used the opportunity of the rare Forgot password? case to show off their playful side. Delightful! And now I just tried to grab their logo for this post! So fun! Go right click on their logo in their webpage right now to see for yourself!!
The story I’m taking home with me though is the story of engineering Surprise. Wayne spoke about what it must feel like to have a knock on the door and receive an unexpected package, artfully wrapped with a lovely handwritten note, signed from entire team, containing homemade cookies baked fresh that morning and delivered to you. Talk about WOW.
I’ll post an update based on how my planned reinterpretation of this story goes!!
Next up Micah Adler, Fiksu founder laid down his mobile app marketing best practices
Because growth in mobile is so staggering he began by reminding us some facts about the multi-billion dollar app economy:
- In 2012 we had $19 billion revenue in a space that didn’t exist 5 years prior and is anticipated to reach $74 billion in 2016
- With 1.7 million apps and growing by 15k released per week it is insanely crowded and challenging to get noticed.
The options for acquiring users is complex with 200 mobile ad networks alone. Micah described Fiksu as a way of abstracting away this complexity, calling Fiksu an aggregation layer for mobile ecosystem.
Their value is two fold:
- Offering an easier way for developers to integrate they provide access to 90% of mobile ad space inventory in the US and 95% internationally though a single SDK vs. ~20
- The efficiencies Fiksu provides to optimize ad spend and overcome the challenge of attribution in the mobile channel. (I’m curious to understand this in deeper detail. Anyone have some insight/counter-point?)
Oh, by the way, they are hiring. BBJ ranked Fiksu the #1 best company to work for so that’s awesome.
How are you gonna prepare for that interview? By reading up on…
Micah’s Best practices for Mobile advertising:
- Set Strategic goals
- Tie your objective to primary business goals (revenue not store rank)
- all downloads are not created equal.
- Target loyal users
- Loyalty based on KPIs
- Design campaign goal around these goals
- Know cost per loyal user acquisition -$1,50
- Optimize your campaign
- inter-network
- Allocating spend across channels
- intra-network
- Ideal timing to leverage impact /rankings
- Choose the right partner
Of course Fiksu says “pick me! pick me!” but they want to educate you and let you choose for yourself. So go read up on more details of these best practices in their free e-books
Lastly there were the 2 demos.
FlightCar
Flight car is P2P car-sharing at the airport.
Where car owners let provide their car for rental in exchange for free parking at the airport. The founder said signing up is Super simple. Almost too simple.
As a car owner with RelayRides I know first hand the upfront challenges of getting a car into a platform’s inventory, so I love this decision.
And their move makes sense:
– Take a $11 billion airport rental market
– Combine it with the $5 billion airport parking market
And you have room for a service oriented brand offering concierge service with the opportunity for higher asset utilization per parking space of other p2p models.
Flight Car is Available now at SFO and BOS so check it out and let me know what you think!
Sold
Sold is bringing 1 click selling to P2P commerce.
They looked at the selling process and are trying to handle everything between taking a photograph and getting paid.
How? Think Gazelle – Prepaid package with centralized shipping & receiving. As a seller you know you are getting the right price because Sold brings expert knowledge, Like iPhones with screen on in the photo sell for $20 more, and are Crawling marketplaces eBay and Craigslist for pricing knowledge.
Might work for someone who needs to quickly rid themselves of items to go live the Buddhist life. Or someone who is sick of crappy transaction experiences on Craigslist.
Me though? I’m not quite sold.
What do you think? Hit me up. Drop me a line. Start a conversation.