The Cult of Failure: Why Startup Culture Celebrates Mistakes
One failure is bad. Two is questionable. Three indicates persistence. Beyond that? Unstoppable. One of the most confusing things about startup culture, from an outsider’s perspective, is the tendency to celebrate failure. Just browse Medium, Twitter, or anywhere else where iPhone app developers and entrepreneurs air their opinions, and you’re sure to come across dozens […]
Bootstrapping vs Crowdfunding vs Venture Capital Firms
Virtually all businesses require some form of investment to get off the ground. It’s certainly true for iPhone app developers — although depending on the type of startup, the financial figure required can be anywhere from a few thousand to a few million. In this post we’ll walk through the three most common types of […]
How Much Equity Should Early Startup Team Members Get?
In a particularly emotional segment of the popular podcast Startup by Alex Blumberg, two co-founders discuss how much equity each party “deserves” based on their skills and contribution to the company — and the huge disparity in what each considers fair almost tears the team apart. The scene is particularly powerful because, rather than discussing […]
How to Turn Your Beta Users into Brand Evangelists
It helps to have user data when developing a high-quality mobile app, and one of the best ways to get that data is by launching a beta version to a small, understanding group of initial users. Whether the beta users are friends, associates, or simply interested consumers, beta launches provide iPhone app developers the perfect […]
Why Experience Is the Least Important Trait for Tech Teams
Building a team is no easy feat, especially for a scrappy startup with short industry traction and limited funding. Even at big companies like Facebook, hiring takes up an enormous part of leadership’s time. The reason for this is simple: startups are an emotional rollercoaster for early team members, so it’s critical that they are […]
It’s Not Just the Millenials: Voters Demand Digital Security
A recent study from Purple Insights on behalf of The App Association (ACT) shows that an overwhelming majority of voters support encryption and privacy — to the tune of a staggering 93%. Thanks in large part to NSA whistleblowing and the recent Apple vs. FBI case, consumers outside of tech have become more concerned than […]
Dogtown Media Talks Tech Economy and Open Government at Appcon 2016
To say that 2016 has been an exciting time for mobile app developers would be a dramatic understatement. On the one hand, top-down initiatives like 18F are making incredible strides towards a more digital-savvy government. It’s no surprise that politicians care about mobile tech — the mobile ecosystem is driving the American workforce like no […]
When It Comes to Freemium, the User Isn’t Always Right
That first wave of media attention when you launch a startup is always a gratifying feeling for first-time iPhone and Android app developers. Even if it’s a struggle to keep up with on the software side, the tidal wave of data from a spike in downloads can offer enormous value. As with every part of […]
3 Growth Hacking Tips to Grow Your Mobile App Startup
Growth hacking has quickly become a popular buzzword in the startup community. Unfortunately, it’s not necessarily become popular for all the right reasons. Before we get into our tips, let’s dispel the biggest myth many mobile app developers have about growth hacking: the idea that it’s “easy.” When an iPhone app developer hears the word […]
How to Leverage Customer Service to Bootstrap a Beta Product
Bootstrapping is hard. Ridiculously hard. (Trust us, we all worked on startup teams for years before going into iPhone app development full-time at Dogtown Media.) Even if your app idea is completely new and innovative, it’s bound to spawn competing iPad app developers the second you go public — and those competitors will have the […]