inspiredworlds.com

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Update (14 Feb 2013)

Some additional followup points from the mobile marketing meetup.

1. Storyberg

Slideshare presentation:

http://www.slideshare.net/storyberg/release-cohorts-mobile-marketing-meetup-feb-2013

Storyberg helps app developers understand the impact of every release by aligning product development with user engagement.

They’re currently working on an iOS SDK and would like to invite you to sign up to be notified when it’s released!

Signup here to be notified 

2. Crashlytics update

One of the crash reporting tools mentioned was crashlytics. This is an update that came out yesterday:”You may know that a couple weeks ago, Twitter acquired Crashlytics, a mobile crash reporting solution. Today, we thought mobile developers would like to know that Crashlytics is folding its Enterprise features into its main product. This means that developers can now use Crashlytics with no usage costs or limits.Here at Twitter, we love using Crashlytics for mobile crash reporting, and we think that you will too. You can read more about their announcement on their blog [1]

[1] http://www.crashlytics.com/blog/crashlytics-enterprise-is-now-free

Thanks to one of our attendees Matthieu Fyot, Twitonomy for the update.

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We had our third meetup for Mobile Marketing Meetup on “mobile analytics“. About 25 people came to our event at Fishburners, Sydney to hear from 3 talks on analytics. I’ve written a short summary and included the relevant links mentioned in the talks.

1. Crash reporting – Giovanni from WeSync

From the demo, it showed that iTunes crash reports doesn’t seem to work very well, if at all. Hence tools like Crittercism look really useful and you can track where the app crashed, get reports and fix the issue. It looks very similar to the Crashlytics tool (which was bought by Twitter recently). Also check out Crashlog made by Aussie developer Ivan Vanderbyl (and friend of ours!).

https://www.crittercism.com
http://try.crashlytics.com
https://crashlog.io

It was interesting to see that only 2/25 people were using crash reporting tools.

2. Google Analytics – Alwin Chin from Stampii

I thought this was a really good talk. Alwin discussed why they were tracking metrics, use of google analytics for web/mobile and creating custom charts. Stampii were inspired by geckoboard to create a real time dashboard for businesses, and created custom charts using the same technology which was HighCharts / JQuery.  Also some interesting discussion in the end on NFC vs Passbook vs Paywave (creditcard tap system) vs QR codes.

3. Release cohorts – Michael from Storyberg

Cohort analysis is something I’ve come across last year, where you track segments of people from when they sign up. Whereas Storyberg are looking to track users based on feature releases (i.e. release cohorts). Its aimed to be a better tool if you are using lean startup methodology. It does makes sense to be tracking based on feature releases.

At Native Tongue, we’re currently using Flurry and you can set milestones, so we can track if features are being used. I’m not sure if we do a feature release, if we can track the usage in an updated feature though.

Final notes

I got something out of each of these talks and I’m starting to see how different startups are using analytics. I think that analytics is really underrated & underutilised in startups. How can you measure progress if you are not using analytics? You need to be able to track progress, analyse the data and adjust accordingly.

The best thing is that we’re building up knowledge in the mobile & startup community. None of us profess to be experts, since the industry in Australia is fairly young. By sharing what we are doing and the latest things that we’re trying from practitioners in the field, we’ll learn from each other and grow stronger as a group. There’s strength in numbers!

Cheers,

Matt Ho

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A startup has several advantages which it needs to realise to be successful.  I think a startup’s advantage really boils down to three things.

The inspiration for this title comes from the Sydney international tennis tournament which is on now and the Australian open starts next week. If its deuce (40-40), and you win the next point, its your advantage

1. Ability to move faster and innovate

Startups can out-innovate larger companies. This is not to say that large companies do not have innovative people or the ability to innovate. But the very nature of these larger companies mean that there are more processes in place. There are more “Yes” men and women you have to get permission from. You need a business case. You need to present it to upper management. You need to get it reviewed. You need to ensure that it fits within the brand. You have to consider what other products you have and whether it will cannibalise them.

Asking for permission slows you down

I remember when I was working at Deloitte and I was holding a event with Apple about innovation. I wanted to give out some prizes which were ipods which would fit within the theme of the event. To make the prizes even more “special”, I wanted to have the Deloitte logo and a short message about the event engraved on the back. It was physically possible to do but the question was whether Deloitte would let me do it.

So I asked the BD manager if I could do it, who then referred it to some branding people. I was initially told that it was unlikely because we couldn’t put the Deloitte brand on something that was a stronger brand (Apple’s brand on their own ipod). I argued that that it was better than no association at all and it would make the item even more unique to the recipient.

I waited and waited for permission for several weeks. I told them that I had to know within a few days as the event was coming up. On the day of the event, I recieved word that my request had been approved. By then, it was too late.

To be fair, Deloitte does do a lot of innovative things, and are seen as one of the more innovative accounting / professional service firms. But this example, is just to highlight some of the processes that are involved in a large company. These processes are necessary for a company like Deloitte.

Smaller companies like the 2 guys working out of garage can move incredibly fast. You can make decisions more autonomously, receive feedback on whether something is working, and adjust accordingly. You can make things and break things. You don’t have to ask for permission. Action-feedback-reaction loop is much tighter and incredibly faster.

2. A startup has no brand to protect

The reason that Deloitte has the above processes is to protect the brand which has built up over the past 100 years. Deloitte is a massive company that employs 120,000 people and is responsible for their livelihood. It has thousands of partners which have an equity stake in the business. They work with and sign off on the books of some of the largest companies in the world.

We can’t screw up

When I wanted to send something out to a client, there was a system of review. I was at the bottom of the food chain as an analyst. So I had to get approval from my senior analyst. Then they had to get approval from the manager or principal. Then there was sign off from a partner. It was a very regimented process to get approvals to provide client advice. You couldn’t give offhand opinion over the phone. It had to be throughly researched and the risk had to be understood and mitigated.

I remember one of my managers saying to me in more colourful words “We can’t screw up. We have a reputation to maintain“.

Don’t ask for permission, seek forgiveness

This is a sharp contrast to the startup world in which I now reside in. As a startup you have the exact opposite. You have no brand. You have no reputation to lose. You haven’t spent millions on your brand. You are allowed to take risks. In fact, this is the only way you can succeed.  The only way to get there is to do crazy things and think completely outside the box.

This allows them to operate in the grey zone where they can take advantage of the fact that they don’t have to ask for permission. Rather, you seek forgiveness if something goes wrong. The upside is much greater than the downside, because you have nothing to lose.

3. You need an unfair advantage 

So you can move fast, you have no brand, and you can take risks. You’re all set right? Unfortunately, these are advantages that ALL startups have. The cost of developing, hosting and launching a product has dramatically fallen so that anyone can create a website or an app, or can engage a developer to build it for them.

If you are working on something, it is likely that there are 10 other people working on it around the world. Business is a competition, and you have to realise that you are competing everyday.

May the odds be ever in your favour

If anyone can create a website/app, you need to stack the odds in your favour. You need to have an advantage that is defensible or unique that others can’t replicate easily. It could be a technical advantage, deep industry expertise, deep customer insight or a marketing channel that no one else is using. I will discuss the last one.

How startups have stacked the odds

1. Seek.com got an exclusive deal to advertise on the MSN homepage (Microsoft) for $7k/month. It was one of the first online advertising deals of its kind made in Australia. It gave them a huge leg up in terms of driving traffic and exposure.

2. Zynga owes a lot of its viral growth to Facebook. Zynga games  incentivized users to send invitations to their friends on the Facebook platform. However, these incentives were usually artificial and not directly tied to the value proposition of the product. Zynga’s customer acquisition was perceived as spam by Facebook and the new rules have tightened up on them. A lot of the things they did to become successful very quickly, you can’t do now.

3. Yelp used SEO by producing a ton of content which made them rank highly in organic search results. They were the first to leverage SEO in this space.

These startups were able to leverage marketing channels to their advantage. When the rest of the market caught up, that channel closed up quickly. But by then they were off and to the races. They had grown so big, the rest of the market could not catch up and they were able to leverage their size.

We haven’t figured out what our unfair advantage is at Native Tongue yet. But we know what we need to be looking for.

More thoughts on larger companies and advantages

For a large company, the advantage is that you have a brand, have customers that you have locked-in to long-term contracts, switching costs, customers can have inertia about changing suppliers, patents, and experience. You also have more resources and firepower.

Smaller companies can’t just push you around if they attack at the core of your business. A large companies has learnt over time how to defend their position at the top of the mountain. This is what they are designed to do and the people they employ are trained to do. They know how to grow market share and how to defend a product in a given category.

So you have to attack them where they are weak. You need to find market opportunities that you can hone in on, and have a significant and unfair advantage. Then its advantage: startup.

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As 2012 comes to a close, it’s time to briefly reflect on the year. This is my story of 2012.

I came across this memorable quote recently from an article about startups raising money:

Investors at the seed level are typically less concerned with the fact that a team has yet to pull off market or customer fit, and much more focused on whether it can weather the storm of running a startup.

My own startup journey has a lot of highs and lows in 2012. I can attest that its very stormy! Hence, the team has to be strong to withstand the bumps and bruises along the way.

You need to be able to fight your way out of a very dark hole and into the light. That’s why its called the trough of sorrow. The majority of startups will die in this phase as they attempt to find their way. This is reality. The majority of small businesses will fail within 2 years. This is where we are now with Native Tongue – in the trough of sorrow.

In our first year, there has been a lot of rain, but more like meteorites that have been dropping down from the sky. But we have survived, we’re still intact and I have my sanity.

Buckle in

In the first week of launching our product, Mandarin Madness on iphone in February, we made over $1,000 AUD. It was making roughly $200/day. We were the #2 Australian education app and featured on the iTunes Australia home page. We were a top 10 grossing education app in Australia. We thought awesome!!

I quickly calculated that we would do $52k that year on this one product alone. Lets just bang out a few more products – then we would be self funded! Thats $52k x 3 products = $156k annual revenue. No need for raising seed investment. If it did well in Australia, then a similar Spanish product would “smash” it in the US. And the English product would “erupt” in Asia!

So we started beavering away and launched a whole array of new language products this year – Spanish Smash and English Eruption.

However, the sales in the app store started slowing down. We did our best to prop it up. But we learnt something critical about the app store – the first 2 weeks are critical as you are classified as a new app. You are featured as a new app and can also be in the “new and noteworthy” section. We were also beating a lot of the bigger branded apps (except for Spongebob) when we were featured.

When we launched the Spanish and English product it didn’t fare as well as the Chinese one. In fact, we botched the launches and it fell flat. Our dreams of making $1k/week vanished within several weeks.

If I look back, we should have focused on one product, Mandarin Madness. We should have kept polishing and refining it to get product market fit. We went too wide instead of focusing on one vertical and missed the mark. I’ll explain later on what we decided to focus on.

More meteorites

These were just some of the meteorites that rained down on us in the first year. We thought we were close to getting seed investment from some investors. However, that didn’t come through. We were also faced with dwindling cash flow and our runway fast disappearing.

James, one of our co-founders had to do some contracting work to get by. My personal runway was longer, so I kept focusing on the business, as we needed to keep moving forward. We knew that if all of us went to work, and worked on it part time or we came back to it within 6 months, we’d lose all the momentum we had.

We also parted ways with one of our original founders. It didn’t work out. We moved offices from York Butter Factory to South Melbourne. We pitched at several events but didn’t get much investor interest. A lot of things like this happened in the first half of the year.

Chaotic personal life

I also had my own personal situation to figure out. I had moved from Sydney to Melbourne last year, and I had been staying on airbnb and then living with a friend. But I had to find a more permanent and more cost-effective place to stay. I found a place in Northcote and was about to sign a lease.

I came back to Sydney for Christmas and NYE. I found out a few days later, that the landlord decided to kick us all out, citing that the property needed repairs. They gave us 3 months to vacate (in March 2012)*. I didn’t have time to deal with it, and it was only until the last two weeks that I started looking for a new place. It was hectic and we had only 8 days to find a place to live. So I banded together with one of the housemates and another friend, and we found a place within a week. We then signed a 12 months lease.

Up until this point, I also had no possessions in Melbourne other than 2 suitcases. I was sleeping on a mattress for 4 months on the floor. I had acquired the mattress from the previous tenant. I also acquired Anthony’s old desk and chair. I had clothes hangers from my friend Tyson. It was a very nomadic life style I was living but it was all I needed to get by.

So my own personal situation was somewhat chaotic whilst in Melbourne. I did my best to not let it bother me. I believe that if you can settle your personal life, it will be much easier to focus on your work. I watched a interview video by Steve Blank who believes that entrepreneurs make sense out of chaos and often had a dysfunctional personal life. When things are organised, they actually don’t do that well. So maybe there’s something in that.

The dark months

With our runway dwindling, I was on the path to going broke while paying rent and living expenses in Melbourne. So I decided to move back to Sydney and live with my folks. Both my brothers had moved out last year and we still had several empty rooms including my old room. I figured if I could cut down on my costs, I’d live to fight another day.

There was some adjustment period, but it was fine. My family had missed me while I was living in Melbourne, and I could also take care of my grandma during the day as she lives with us.

But that period between May & June was probably my darkest period this year. I had to move back to Sydney, slightly dejected and I wasn’t sure what I would do – even if I would continue with Native Tongue. Because the team was going to be separated in two different cities which would make things difficult.

In a way, I was also slightly relieved. I felt at times I was stuck in Melbourne, unable to see my family and friends. I flew back to Sydney several times for weddings and for Christmas, but it was always brief. However, money was tight, and I needed to save money. Paying $230/week for rent alone, plus expenses for bills, food + entertainment expenses was too much in an early stage startup.

Things start picking up again

But somehow we made it work.

I started hanging out with my friend Alvin at his place as he had just resigned from his job and was working on Pocketbook. Bosco then joined him, and the 3 of us started co-working together in his apartment. I couldn’t afford to go to a co-working space (even though they are great), but this was just as good. I had two guys that were working on another startup and it re-created that startup vibe. I was excited to work again on my own thing, and I felt like they were extra members who would give me ideas and inspiration, and feedback.

There were certain events that happened in the next few months which gave us a shot in the arm. I pitched at the Sydstart event and was awarded 6th place in September. In October, I made it into Tech23, one of Australia’s most prestigious technology conferences. The top 23 up and coming companies were selected. We made the short list and I got to present again. You can read my insiders perspective here. We were amongst the best tech companies in Australia.

We were able to get several great blog reviews of our products and formed a partnership with a language blogger for a competition. We also had interest from several schools for a trial. I was also featured in the BRW in an article on “How to make the perfect pitch“.

We also got around the distance factor, and I was speaking to my co-founder every day on the phone when we had to or communicated via email.

Renewed focus

We felt stretched with the number of products in our portfolio – we had over 10 products! So we decided in June 2012 to concentrate our effort on one product for one platform and in one market. We released a free version of Spanish Smash (Personalised) on iOS for the US market, as it has a large number of Spanish language learners (6 million).

It was initially only available in English and then we added Korean and Russian translations. Its now doing about 180 – 200 downloads a day. The upsell rate is 5% for in-app-purchase modules or to the full paid version. This app now represents roughly 35% of our total downloads. We still haven’t “cracked” the US market, but downloads are increasing month on month in the US. The app is also reguarly featured in Russia, Korea, Netherlands and now in China.

Our airbnb moment

I noticed there was a new word game called Letterpress which was simply brilliant. I showed my co-founder and he liked it too. I predicted that this new app would be popular. We had our “airbnb moment” where we thought we could fund the business with some crazy idea. I knew the story all too well as I had worked at airbnb.

Airbnb sold boxes of Obama cereal at Obama’s inaugruation. So we decided to make a cheat app for Letterpress and sell copies of our cheat app. We actually made it in one week, but decided to work on it for another week to polish it up. We submitted it to the app store with a free version and upsell for $0.99. It only sold a few copies and started dying. We kept iterating on it and recently rebranded it to LP strategy and have about 1,000 downloads to date and its one of the top ranked cheat apps for Letterpress. I believe that we have the best cheat app for Letterpress, however its quite crowded now as there about 20 of these apps now in the app store.

But the one thing it did was show that we could make mobile apps and we could do it fast. We could respond to market conditions and opportunities, and we had a strong resolve. We could figure out a way to survive.

We also applied for the Startmate incubator on the final day. Out of 220 applications from around the country, we were one of the 20 teams selected for interview. We ultimately didn’t get in, but meeting with 15 of Australia’s top investors in one afternoon and getting their feedback was worthwhile. It also validated our efforts to date to make it to the final round.

Backup plan

We had a back up plan in case we didn’t get into Startmate. We decided we could try consulting on behalf of the business rather than as individuals. We would make apps for other people. We’d already made roughly 10 apps in total. So we created a landing page on unbounce and prepared some keywords for google adwords.

As soon as we got word that we didn’t get in, we re-calibrated and our backup plan kicked into gear. We started running the google adwords campaigns. Within a few days, we started getting clicks and enquiries. We have a number of enquiries we are following up on, and this is how we are going to fund our business. Partly through growing and also by doing work for other people. When I spoke to a lot of startups, this is what a lot of them had to do to get by in the early days. If you’d like to build an app, check out our consulting page.

Snapshot

This is where we are now. We believe that we will lose nothing by revealing our figures, in fact it will help us measure our success.

- Revenues: $1k/month in revenue. Annual revenue approx $11k.
- Downloads: 90,000 downloads. This is across our 3 games. On iOS, Android, Amazon Kindle.
- Monthly Active Users (MAU): 18% iOS.

Ideally, we want to be doing 10x in terms of revenue ($10k/month) to be self sustaining.

What we need to do in 2013

1. Focus on a product and customer segment.
2. Improve the game mechanics
3. Increase user retention
4. Increase life time value (LTV)
5. Grow the consulting business

Final word

Thanks to everyone that has supported Native Tongue – friends, family, colleagues, our customers, and the startup community. If you are in startup, then don’t forget your hard hat and your raincoat, cause its going to get rocky in 2013! You have to learn how to withstand the meteorites

I’m out like 2012,

Matt Ho.
@inspiredworlds

*The landlord & agent took us to court over property damages, even though we were only there for a few months. We ended up getting most of our bond back and I invested my bond money into my housemate’s new startup. Double down ftw.

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Last night we held our 2nd event for Mobile Marketing Meetup. We had 30 people attend (and 40 people register). We grew from the 15 that came to the first meetup. That’s 100% month on month growth! Regardless of the numbers, its really great to find other people working in the mobile space and equally passionate about mobile.

Top app monetisation tactics 

Marc Fine, head of marketing at InMobi gave a talk on “Top app monetisation tactics“. Its based on a webinar that inmobi did recently and the full presentation is here. I thought it was quite good to see what the leaders in this space are doing – Walmart, Zynga, etc.. The presentation was very relevant to me since I’ve been knee deep in metrics all week.My key takeaways are summarised below.

1. What is the value of your customer?

The formula is cost of acquisition < LTV. It might cost you $80 to get a customer but they could be worth $300 via in-app-purchases + ads, then the cost is worth it. The key is understanding the total value of that customer worth.

2. What are the key drivers for your business?

He spoke about metrics such as DAU (daily active users), MAU (monthly active users), ARPU, conversion rates, stickiness. These are the key drivers for Zynga who watch these numbers like a hawk. When they acquired Draw Something, it had DAU of 25 million. The problem was retention of those users which has since dropped to 8 million.

3. Segment your users

A more sophisticated way to do this is to segment your users by identifying patterns of behaviour and use rules to present them offers/ads/incentives.

Examples could be:

• Segmenting your users in China and giving them a Chinese welcome message after 5 opens
• US users may give you more of a viral uplift. So after they spend 300 hours, incentivise virality.
• Identifying hardcore users and treating them like your VIP’s and giving them more things to buy

Its about understanding the consumer behaviour and adapting the experience for them. This is where the web was moving towards when I was working at Next Digital. In the last few years, I’ve been hearing more about personalisation, real time, dynamic content, and click streams. We see it already with companies like Amazon, who understand your behaviour and what similar people do. They “chase” you through the website and with followup offers.

3. ARM cycle – Acquisition, Retention and Monetisation.

Its understanding the cycle of that customer. How you get them in the door, how to keep them coming back and how to make money from them. It make sense but its hard to do.

I spoke to Dan and Joe from rushfaster.com.au and they said its a similar principle to what they do for their eCommerce business. Understanding how the customer churns through the cycle and the throughput. I’ve also come across Dave McClure’s AARRR metrics presentation again and it has a similar idea – Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue.

What game companies are doing

I also spoke to Matt Farnell from Appsperse, a mobile ad analytics company based in the Valley a few weeks ago.  They’re currently working with Super Cell on “Clash of The Clans” which is estimated to be doing $700k per day in revenue. He told me that game companies will test out their game in a small Western market, optimise it and then start pumping money into it to advertise it. After it gets high in the app charts from paid advertising, then scale back advertising as the organic downloads come through.

For these techniques to be really interesting, you generally need to have millions of impressions/users to understand the data and create all these rules. At Zynga they have data analysts, customer acquisition teams and tons of data to use. However, Matt believes that startups can replicate some of these techniques that larger game companies are using and use some of the same tools as well.

Bonus – Buzzy.io demo

We had a bonus demo from Mike Gardiner of Buzzy.io. Buzzy is a multi-player, multi-screen game platform. It turns your mobile device into a game controller and you can play it on another screen, against other people. You have to watch the demo to fully appreciate how it works. They’re currently looking for game developers to build games on their platform. It can be used at music festivals, cafes, outdoor events, pubs.

Future

We will take a break over Christmas. We’re looking at holding the next event at the end of January and will most likely talk about “mobile metrics”. I’d like to have a case study with some in-depth analysis as a follow on to this talk. If you know of anyone that may be a good speaker particularly from a startup perspective, please get in touch with me via the contact section of my website.

I’m out like single player games,

Matt Ho

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Building an app is half the battle. The other missing piece of the puzzle is distribution and marketing.

So we decided to organise a mobile marketing meetup with some startups in this space to discuss these issues. It was inspired by this discussion on From Little Things. We decided the first meetup would cover the topic of “How to get PR for mobile apps”. You can check out our event here on eventbrite.

For our first meetup, we had a pretty good turnout with 15 people. The crowd was mainly comprised of app developers, product managers for apps, app marketers, and people with web apps looking to go mobile. It was scheduled to go for 1 hour, but it ended up being 2.5 hours. People just wanted to talk about mobile!

There was actually a lot of self-taught marketing experience in the room – people with some of the top apps in the Australian charts. So I’ve written a summary of some of the key learnings from the meetup. Its mostly about PR, and then we started covering other topics organically.

1. A targeted approach to each journalist

How you approach a journalist is important. Alison from ChillWithMe said that sending targeted emails with specific information for each journalist was critical. Networking with people at the SXSW conference before they launched and letting them be the first to know about it. That’s how they were able to get into PandoDaily.

2. Develop a knowledge base of relevant industry articles

Daniel from Parking Made Easy kept a spreadsheet of articles about his industry with notes on each article. He did this prior to launching his website. When he was ready to launch, he then personalised the email using the notes about the articles.

3. Contact regional media

Chris from Buuna shared that contacting smaller regional papers was a great way to get writeups. They have more time available and may be easier to get in touch with them. Dain Hedgepeth also mentioned that local newspapers are interested in the “local boy done proud” angle as well.

4. A journalist will write about a group of apps 

It is unlikely that a journalist in a major publication will write an article that will only cover your app. I have previously spoken to Will Glasgow from BRW who suggested that journalists prefer to group similar types of apps together and write about segments. So its critical to understand what industry that reporter covers and if they have reviewed similar apps in the past. You can also reach out to them and introduce yourself if you have a similar app.

This recent article about taxi industry is an example – its about the industry and not one particular app. Personally, I have found positive responses from journalists if they write about our industry (language learning) and I’ll introduce our app to them as a follow on to that article and suggest that I can provide an industry point of view or about mobile apps.

5. Have a press kit available

This was something that I shared. We’ve had over 50 articles written about Native Tongue, and we make it easy for the journalists to find all the assets that they need from our press kit. Michael Fox from 22Michaels blogged that they missed a PR opportunity with MX when they didn’t have images of their products available. Check out the press kit for Shoes Of Prey – I used this for inspiration.

Ben Hamey of Bonobo Labs previously suggested you should have the following available in your media pack: app screenshots, app icon, pictures of people using the app in an everyday setting, FAQ, and press release. You also don’t have to panic to get these assets to them in time and miss potential opportunities. The media kit for Zilla App by Bonobo Labs is pretty impressive.

6. PR for your target audience

I’ve started becoming a big believer of “blog to your audience”, a concept I picked up from Mark Suster. I think the same applies for “getting PR to your audience”. Many people in the room agreed that most PR had a limited effect on downloads. There might be a spike but it wasn’t sustaining and started to taper off as the article became less recent. Sometimes that much hyped spike never came. In the group’s experience, those users that signed up from major news articles also weren’t as sticky (i.e. they didn’t keep coming back). I believe its because they weren’t the target audience for the product.

One of the biggest download days for our app Mandarin Madness came from an education article written in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s largest English print newspaper. It appeared in the education section and was written by an author that covers education and technology. This result made sense given that parents living in Hong Kong would read it, download it and love our app. It was our target audience.

7. Virality

Yose from Jormy Games had a simple, yet fun iphone app which involves replicating the reaction of shaking a softdrink bottle and having it fizz up and burst. It was one of the early apps on iPhone and topped the charts. At its peak, it was doing 70,000 free downloads a day. He believes it went viral when kids started uploading videos onto Youtube of them shaking their iphones and playing the app.

8. Partnerships

ScribblePics has a white label app to turn your photos into postcards. They  were able to get partnerships with QANTAS, Jetstar, Perisher, and Contiki Tours. How did they do it? Well Peter Bradd simply got on the phone and called them up. A direct sales approach worked. A few people in the room also had examples of how partnerships benefited them to get more distribution.

There are only some of the tips and experiences that were shared. If you want to know more, you’ll just have to come to the next meetup!

Its on Monday, 3 December, 2012 and the main topic is “mobile advertising”. RSVP here.

I’m out like kids shaking Coke bottles,

Matt Ho.

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The purpose of this blog post is to sum up my experience at the Tech23 event, which I have been planning to write for the past few weeks. It is a long read, but it describes what I did to prepare, what is involved in pitching, and everything I went through. It is a perspective that most people won’t see, so I wanted to share that experience with my readers.

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As we were applying for the Sydstart event, I heard that the Tech23 applications were closing in mid-August. By way of background, Tech23 is an event for up and coming Australian tech companies. It is probably the best startup technology conference in Australia. So it was definitely on my radar, but I wasn’t sure that we would get in. As you always hear about other companies that get into these kind of events.

Approximately 150 companies applied and Native Tongue was one of the 23 companies to be chosen. Our team was pretty stoked to be amongst this group. It was a great accomplishment to be chosen, but I knew that the hard work was just beginning.

A tagline

Leading up to the day, we had one briefing session and two pitch rehearsals. At the briefing session, we were required to synthesise our business into 6 words. I chose to go with “We make language learning fun, fast and effective“. This is our normal tagline and most people in the room understood it, even though it was longer than the suggested 6 words.

Some of the other startups struggled as its really difficult to summarise what you do into one line. Especially one that is punchy, concise, and clear to a wide audience. I have to admit that the whole exercise did seem kind of lame, and it looked like some people zoned out or weren’t interested. But I didn’t care. I was here for the experience and was amongst some of the best up and coming startups in Australia, and I soaked it all in.

First rehearsal

In our next rehearsal, we had coaches help us out with our presentations. I jokingly referred to them in my head as the “pitch doctors”. I was slightly skeptical about the coaching sessions before they began given the previous “tagline” exercise. But I have to admit that it helped us to refine our pitch. I listened to each of our allocated advisers intently and adjusted my presentation slightly. I think its very important to accept feedback and to act on it. It doesn’t mean you have to always accept feedback, but you do need to listen to it and take what you need.

I can honestly say that each of the coaches improved our presentation and I also listened to the feedback that the coaches publicly gave to other people. Niki from Startmate mentioned that we needed to say our tagline 3 times – at the start, in the middle and at the end. So I quickly added that into my powerpoint slides just before I got up and practiced. The pitch went well, and I got really positive feedback. I had a few followup questions at the end about voice recognition, our business model, etc… which I also added into the slides as well.

More practice and finalising slides

I had about a week to finalise my slides and send them in. I spent a lot of time that week practising and refining my pitch, particularly with the Pocketbook team since I was working out of Silicon Creek (Wolli Creek).

I pitched in front of some overseas visitors staying at our house, my brother, my parents and to a friend at church, in front of the mirror and in my room. I probably pitched it about 50 times that week. My dad also helped me out by timing me and ringing a bell at 4 minutes and then ringing continuously at 5 minutes to signal the end, to replicate the real life experience on the day.

Some of the best advice I got was my friend Bosco Tan (Pocketbook), who told me to personalise the story about why we started Native Tongue and my frustration with language learning. He’d seen me pitch that at Sydstart and wanted to hear that side of it. The other advice he gave me was that even if the slides didn’t work on the day and all else failed, the one thing I could control was  my energy and emotions and knowing our story. I knew our story back to front, and that always gave me confidence.

Good artists copy, great artists steal

I studied a lot of other pitches and presentation styles leading up to the event. I’d been to many startup demo days in the past – Startmate, AngelCube, Founders Institute, and PushStart. I also watched all the Tech23 pitches on YouTube from the previous two years. I also took presentation ideas from BugHerd and Happy Inspector which I found online.

I further watched videos for tips on presentation and public speaking. I discovered techniques like verbal punctuation, where you breakdown the content so people can follow it and if they zone out, they can zone back in easily. For example, you say “Our 3 key advantages. #1, we are a game experience. #2 – a multi sensory experience, etc…”. If you line them up, its easier for people to follow. See the video below (at 1 min 40):

Finding your presentation style

Some people said my practice pitches were a little flat, other people like my casual style. When I watched myself on tape, I could see that I was a bit monotone and tried to convey my passion and enthusiasm more.

I spoke to people that I trusted and they all had differing but useful advice for me. My friend Humphrey suggested that I shouldn’t change my style that much, but find someone that had a similar style to me and see how they did it. So again, I went to Youtube and watched the Steve Jobs speech at Stanford for inspiration. Jamie Andrei also suggested that it was like a song, some bits got faster and more excited and other parts you need to slow down.

I think you just have to find your own style and see what works for you. You want to sound authentic, and upbeat as well.

On the day

The day started with me waking up at 3am as I was excited about the day. Did some work for an hour or two and then went back to sleep. I had to go to the city early because there was a breakfast for the event at 7.30am.

The event kicked off at 9am and l’ll have to admit that I was nervous beforehand sitting amongst the audience. I have previously pitched at Sydstart, Innovation Bay, Aurelius Digital, Startup Weekend, but it seemed to be a step up in terms of expectations.

I got to sit on the education panel in front of everyone, and saw that there were 400 people staring back at me. I was tempted to take a picture on my iPhone to post it later on twitter, but decided that didn’t look very professional!

The pitch started off well and I made sure that I was looking around the room to ensure that I could connect with everyone. When the 4 minute bell rang, I was halfway through a sentence. I lost my train of thought for a split second and just started on the next point. Even though I had practiced many times for it, nothing replicates the real life experience of speaking in front of a large audience.

As I’ve pitched it so many times, I knew exactly where I needed to be when I heard the 4 min bell and I had sufficient time. When I got to the team section, I also accidentally repeated one sentence twice. I decided to slow down on the last slide and I made sure they heard the tagline correctly, because it was the last thing I was going to say and the audience needed to walk away knowing that.

The question time came around from our industry judging panel – there was 4 of them sitting on a table parallel to ours. Its not easy when you are in the hot seat and being drilled in front of 400 people. Looking back, I should have taken my time to answer them by thinking of the response first. Also, some of the questions posed to me were opinions, and what I should have done is answer back with facts. When you answer an opinion with another opinion as I did, it becomes an endless debate. I also could have answered some of the questions more succinctly.

The general feedback was that most liked it, while others said I could have had more “pop” and “energy”. After watching some of the other presentations, I definitely felt that I could improve in this area as well as being funny with the responses and more interactive with the audience. I think it comes with experience and being comfortable presenting in public.

Overrall

The experience was really good, from start to end. I also got to catchup with some of my friends that have spent time in Silicon Valley and are further along the startup track. We spoke about raising money, pricing models, and hiring staff. Its really good to have these guys around to help out newer guys like myself. They are bringing the Silicon Valley experience back home.

As you can gather from my experience, I spent a lot of time preparing for the pitch. However, it was well worth it to get the exposure, recognition and help from coaches/judges. Now, more people know about Native Tongue. The questions from the judges also helped us to refine our business strategy and positioning. I also believe it takes a series of events to happen for people to invest in you or partner with you and this is one of them. I’d definitely recommend it to other startups to apply for next year.

Finally, I’d like to thank Ned (GoCatch) who reviewed our pitch, Darcy Naughton (Adventure Capital) and Clive Lam (Style Tread) for being our references, and the SlatteryIt team for putting on a great day.

I’m out like pitch practice,

Matt Ho

Listen

Last week I was in the city at Martin Place. I had stopped at the City Bible Mission food stand to get a free hotdog (entrepreneurs have to capitalise on free food you see). As I was walking away and with my mouth full of food, a young girl interrupted me and asked if I could answer some questions. She had a clipboard and was in casual clothing, and had possibly interrupted me at the worst time possible.

After analysing her for a split second, I knew that she wasn’t the standard chugger (charity mugger) looking for donations. Nevertheless, I was being accosted on the street and I usually hate that. However, I decided to give her a chance and I asked if it was for a school project. She said no, but it was a trial for a job which required her to collect data from people on the street. She had to interview 5 people and complete a survey, as it was replicating what she would do if she got the actual job.

I quickly realised she must have “accosted” many people that morning to get those results. It shows a certain level of resilience to do that and requires you to put yourself out there, and not everyone can or is willing to do that. Let say she approaches 10 people in a busy area of the city, its probable that only 1 respond. She would have had to stop 50 people that morning to get 5 survey responses.

A few weeks earlier, I was at the EB Expo exhibiting our games. I must have been in a fantasy world thinking that people would just come to our stand. However, the reality was that many people were walking by our stand to go to the cyber games tournament or to look at the Comic stand nearby. I knew that I just had to approach people as they were walking past to do other things. It got a lot easier after the first one, and you have to muster up some courage to do that. I probably stopped about a dozen people that afternoon to demo our game and the responses were generally quite good. Not everyone liked it, but thats ok. Its all about getting the word out there and showcasing your product and getting relevant feedback.

I often look back to the experience when I use to work at my parents store during high school, and often we’d have a pop up stand in the middle of the shopping centre. We had to engage with people walking past or that were perusing our popup stand. I used that to help me at the expo.

Little did that young girl know, I had just finished pitch practice for Tech23 conference at Martin Place. I was the last presentation of the day and had to pitch in front of a room of strangers. That requires you to put yourself out there. Often, as entrepreneurs you have to do that. You need to sell in the face of people that aren’t willing to listen, that just want to walk by. You need to convince people. To persuade them to your point of view. You need the ability to persist.

After I finished the survey, my final words to that girl were “be persistent“. As that is what is required to succeed in life – whether you are an entrepreneur, sales person, athlete, or an inventor.

Listen

Great quote and so true via @onstartups

Listen

The other day I was at our local shopping centre car park. It has incredibly tight turns when you go up the ramp to the next level. The parking spaces are very narrow and there are huge concrete blocks next to some of the parking spaces. For additional difficulty points, it was a Saturday and there were a lot of cars inside also trying to find a space. We’ve all been in those car parks and in those situations.

I happen to see a car leaving, creating an ample opportunity to park. It was directly opposite the ramp and also the space right next to the wall. It required a lot of precision to park and I didn’t have a lot of time as there lots of cars backed up waiting for me. I just had to get the car into that space.

Product / market fit

One of the things that people in the startup industry talk a lot about is “product / market fit”. However, its hard to explain what that means and to visualise it. Its even harder to actually achieve.

“Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

Essentially, you have to find a product that fits what the market needs. According to Marc Andressen, for a startup, that’s all that matters. That’s your sole objective.

You may have to keep massaging the product to find that perfect fit. Its like Cinderella being the perfect fit for that particular slipper. I really like this explanation he uses in his blog:

The #1 company-killer is lack of market.

• When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.
• When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
• When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.

When you have product / market fit, thats when things go gangbusters. You don’t have enough supply to fulfil orders. Revenue just keeps pouring in. You can’t put on enough sales staff to take all the orders.

Naval Ravikant described it an interview as a key fitting a lock. The fit has to be clean, true and precise. It has to slide in and click open. The only way to do that is to keep refining and polishing that key and it is the only key that will open that lock. True product market fit has to be extremely precise.

At Native Tongue we’re still on that journey to find the right key for that lock. Or parking our car into that really tight car space*.

I’m out like tight car spaces,

Matthew Ho

p.s. I parked it in four moves. But I had parked too close to the wall, so it was difficult to open the door. I didn’t quite have car/car space fit.