5 Years Ago, the iPhone Changed Everything June 29, 2012
Posted by justincaldbeck in communication, culture, discovery, iphone.add a comment
While it almost seems hard to believe, it was just five years ago today that the first iPhones were sold. I remember the enormous amount of people lined up outside of Apple Stores eagerly waiting for their new device. It was easy to understand the hype of the device, but what many did not predict would be the way it would shape our behaviors and give birth to an entire industry.
The iPhone itself is a game changer, few could deny that, but much like iTunes was the real power behind the iPod, the App Store has been the big game changer for our industry.
We didn’t all immediate realize the power of the App Store, in fact my partners wrote an interesting post in 2009 about how little revenue Apple was making from apps. But today, we have seen companies emerge as App providers and other that have started as popular Apps and then expand to other platforms. Rovio, makers of Angry Birds, Pulse*, Instagram, Uber and Foursquare are just a few examples of companies that have seen incredible success as mobile apps.
In addition, the iPhone has played a big role in reducing the friction for consumers to use products from businesses that were previously web-centric such as TaskRabbit*, LivingSocial* and GrubHub* as well as retailers like Gilt. These companies not only built better customer engagement through the iPhone but also attracted new users who discovered the brand for the first time on a mobile device.
Despite all of these early successes, the market is still in its infancy in many ways. While it may seem that everyone we know has an iPhone or Android device, Nielson recently reported that only about 50 percent of US consumers have a smartphone today. As that number grows, the audience and demand for new applications and types of mobile solutions will grow too.
For my part, I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to watch the market emerge and evolve and help companies take advantage of this amazing platform.
*Lightspeed portfolio companies
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Startup CEO New Years Resolutions January 6, 2011
Posted by jeremyliew in 2011, culture, growth, HR, new years resolutions, product management.2 comments
I asked the CEO’s of the companies that I work with, “What are your company related new years resolutions?”. Each had a different spin, but they mostly fell into a few themes of:
- Great people
- Improve the product
- Stay Lean
- Grow fast
- Internalize culture and values
Lisa Marino of RockYou, a leading developer of social games and advertising solutions for social media, is focused on building a great team with more gaming DNA to improve the quality of the games it publishes:
Make RockYou the place talent wants to be.
Many of the companies had resolutions focused on their product management and development. From the social gaming companies, Will Harbin of Casual Collective, which publishers the popular game Backyard Monsters, said simply:
Mo’ money, mo’ fun
As games like CityVille have shown, mo’ fun usually leads to mo’ money! [And congrats to Alex Le, cofounder of a prior investment, Serious Business, whose first game since the Zynga acquisition is CityVille.]
Scott Albro of Focus, a knowledge sharing community for business people, has fully embraced the idea of constant iteration for 2011, taking the best practices of social media to the business media world.
Plan big, increment small. Meaning: set big, audacious goals for the year, but understand how the little things you do every day link together so you can achieve those big goals.
Encourage more product suggestions from our engineering team. Our engineers often come up with great ideas, and they are the most productive when they work on these ideas. in 2011, I’d like to encourage a culture where this happens as much as possible.
Shawn Gupta of OhLife, a personal journaling tool over email, has similar sentiments in using metrics to drive product innovation:
Make metrics a core part of our product development. It will be a lot easier for us to make improvements to our product when we have data-driven discussions and decisions.
Although the industry is in much better shape than the dark days of 2008 and 2009, many CEOs have fully embraced the continue to internalize the lean startup principles that came out of those years. Joe Greenstein of Flixster, the leading movies app on all social and mobile platforms, wants to take big risks with small dollars.
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Pursue our passion, build lasting strategic relationships and most importantly use our cash wisely.
Put the pedal through the floor.
Traffic,traffic,traffic! For media sites like ours you are either growing traffic or or you are dying. Our whole focus this year will be on finding new users, improving the user experience and increasing their engagement with our sites.
Two ecommerce companies that have seen tremendous growth are paying attention to their core values and culture to keep their organizations coherent as they dramatically increase in size. Andy Dunn of Bonobos, a vertical web retailer, will be driving attention to one of their core values in 2011:
Focus on self-awareness, the core trait of leaders, both people and firms.
We will measure our traction in three ways:
1. Knowing we are becoming self-aware as a team. Measure of success: 360 degree reviews done smartly (meaning efficiently and not dreaded by all involved).
2. Marketing who we are, not who we may want to be one day. Measure of success: more than doubling our customer base without doubling our cost per acquisition.
3. Developing products based on knowledge of our strengths and curating products based on knowledge of our weaknesses. Measure of success: sales growth and gross margin return on investment.
Brian Lee of Shoedazzle, a personalized fashion etailer for women, is also focused on one of their core values, great customer service:
Treat every client like they are part of your family.
Simplify – Challenge ourselves to simplify, we can strive for perfection in the next version.Celebrate – Take the time to celebrate small wins in all areas of the company, and do it every day as they happen.Feedback – Continue to foster an environment where everybody on the team communicates feedback, good and bad, in an open and honest way.
Using a virtual world newspaper to enhance in-world community September 1, 2008
Posted by jeremyliew in culture, mmorpg, newspapers, virtual worlds.4 comments
The LA Times notes the popularity of the Club Penguin Times:
The Club Penguin Times … is more widely read than New York’s Daily News, the Chicago Tribune or the Dallas Morning News. And it’s not even 3 years old.
But this weekly “newspaper” isn’t tossed onto driveways or sold at newsstands.
Rather, it’s an online publication distributed to the estimated 6.7 million monthly users of Club Penguin, a snow-covered virtual world visited by more than 12 million kids, who adopt a colorful penguin persona and waddle around, playing games and meeting new friends.
Though no one would suggest that the Club Penguin Times provides Pulitzer Prize-worthy coverage, it nonetheless attracts 30,000 daily submissions from children, who pose questions to Dear Abby-inspired “Aunt Arctic,” compose verse for the poetry corner, tell a joke or review a party or event…
As the main source of information about events within Disney’s icy, penguin-populated virtual world, it boasts the kind of reader penetration that mainstream newspapers would envy. At least two-thirds of the players turn to the Times each week to find out what’s happening, Merrifield estimates.
Club Penguin’s CEO., Lane Merrifield, notes:
…he was looking for ways to incorporate learning — what he called educational “fiber” — in the game. Publishing a “newspaper” seemed an obvious way to encourage reading by offering information that users care about, such as the latest igloo upgrades.
In addition, the Club Penguin Times helps create social norms and shared experiences for players – an important facet to creating and shaping a culture in the world. Most online worlds develop discussion boards where the world’s creators have limited ability to shape the discussion. By creating a user generated (but company edited) newspaper for the world, the world’s creators give themselves a powerful tool for controlling and shaping the conversation. People building MMOGs and virtual worlds should read the whole thing.
(Found via via Paid Content.)