New Film Explores the Cultural Effects of Mobile Technology
Mobile is entering adulthood. More than 60% of US adults own smartphones, and virtually everyone connects to the Internet daily. iPhone app developers launch around 1,000 apps every day. Everyone from grandmothers to children use smartphones to communicate and network. So, it’s a fitting time for a film by renowned documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog to […]
How to Guess Startup Success Without Knowing What They Do
Yahoo’s $4.8 billion sale to Verizon in recent months has drawn the eyes of the tech community. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is bearing the brunt of that attention, but you’d never know it from a recent Bloomberg Businessweek interview. In conversation, Mayer seemed confident and relaxed about the huge changes to the company, and the […]
The Best Apps to Accelerate Your Startup
The startup life has never been easy. More than 90% of mobile apps fold within a year of launch. Even fewer move on to become commercially viable. At the same time, startup profits are higher now than they’ve ever been before, with mobile app developer revenues from the Apple App Store and Google Play rising […]
How to Meet Investors Who Will Fund Your Startup Idea
You have a great startup or iPhone app idea. Maybe you’ve even assembled a small team or developed a prototype. The next step is ripe for the taking — but first you need funding to make hires, grow the product, and market it to relevant users. The question is, where do you look? The answer […]
How to Pitch Your Startup and Get Investment Capital
In a recent episode of This American Life, first-time startup founder Alex Blumberg found himself in a situation most iPhone app developers would kill for: meeting one-on-one with investor Chris Sacca (of Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to pitch his app idea. Unfortunately, the meeting didn’t go as planned — to put it lightly, Blumberg crashed and […]
Entrepreneurs vs Appreneurs: What Makes Startups Different
If you keep up with the tech scene, chances are you’ve heard the term “appreneur.” While it’s often used interchangeably with “entrepreneur,” mobile businesses are actually radically different from other entrepreneurial endeavors. That isn’t to say it’s easy. In fact, mobile startups have never faced tougher odds. For those who have the right mix of […]
Material Design Levels the Field for Android App Developers
When most mobile app developers think of cutting-edge design, we think of one brand: Apple. For years, the company’s iconic flat UI has been the touchstone for great interface design. Thanks to Google’s heavy involvement with the Android operating system, however, that association may see a challenge over the next few years. Android Lollipop has […]
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 […]
3 Design Challenges Faced by UI-free Chat App Developers
For many mobile app developers, designing simple chat bots is just a step on the path to mastering your programming language of choice. Base-level “artificial intelligence” in the form of task-oriented bots has been a feature of computer science since the beginning. (Just take a look at Twitter, where over 23 million user accounts are […]