Companies like Spotify and Dropbox Are Changing the I.P.O. Landscape
Companies like Dropbox and Spotify are changing what initial public offerings (IPOs) mean for Silicon Valley and the U.S. economy. With Snapchat and Blue Apron hitting IPO status and seeing quickly-dropped share prices, startups who find success with private funding are no longer guaranteed the same results when it comes time for a public investment. […]
Tech Companies Stamp Out Neo-Nazis After Charlottesville
The events this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, shocked the nation, and Trump’s equivocating response threw salt in the wound. For many years now, the trend of political polarization has made common ground harder and harder to find, but it used to be that denouncing Nazis was as American as hot dogs, sparklers, and apple pie. […]
Airbnb Kicks Alt-Right Extremists to the Curb Before Protest
One of the recurring themes in the tech world during the Trump era so far is startups’ need to align their actions with their professed values. Twitter has had to find ways to fight trolling and abuse without completely squashing free speech. Facebook and Google are attempting to fight the fake news that propagated on […]
Is Airbnb Going Public After Its Massive Funding Round?
In the wake of Snapchat’s IPO earlier this month, the big question for mobile app developers is what unicorn will go public next. Airbnb always seems to come up in these conversations, and after a SEC filing last week revealed that the company raised $1 billion in a funding round that began last summer, many […]
Value & Monetization: A Tricky Balance for App Developers
It goes without saying that when it comes to providing a service, more value equals more money. It’s an equation that has held true since the very first financial transaction — that is, until the mobile economy began turning everything on its head. These days, iPhone and Android app developers find themselves in a much […]
3 Rules for Success with On-demand & Sharing Economy Apps
On-demand and “sharing economy” services are some of the hottest trends in the startup world this year, with companies all over the US scrambling to become the next Uber or Postmates. Naturally, competition is getting stiff as the scene gets more crowded — leaving many a failed on-demand iPhone app developer wondering what they could […]
Ninety-Nine Problems: the Psychology of Mobile App Pricing
Scroll through the Apple App Store or Google Play and you’ll quickly notice that 99% of the top apps have something very conspicuous in common; they’re all priced in 99 cent increments. You don’t have to be a mathematician or iPhone app developer to notice that something’s afoot. While freemium pricing is undeniably on the […]
Airbnb Launches Host Mentor Program and Host Tools
With Proposition F left in the dust, Airbnb has launched an all-fronts engagement campaign with the public face of their company: the Airbnb hosts who open their homes to travelers and make the company possible. The company is putting its worldwide offices to work, with their London mobile app developers and San Francisco operations team […]