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I’ve just spent the majority of my afternoon playing games on my iPhone and iPad. Luckily, I can say its for work =)

Its about attention

As a mobile app development company we need to test the latest apps and learn from the best of what is out there. In terms of attention span, playing games on my iPad and iPhone is incredibly addictive. I’ve just spent over an hour playing Tower Defense and upgraded to the paid version because of the gorgeous graphics and excellent gameplay.

I also downloaded Tiny Wings which two different people told me about, but I didn’t get past the first stage. I might need to try it again, but if its difficult to get past the first stage then it doesn’t build confidence in the user to keep playing with it.

I then paid for Street Fighter 4 Volt. Street Fighter is easily my favourite game of all time and the iPhone version is an excellent translation. Though the controlpad is not exact – you really do need those fireballs and dragon punches to work! My last download was Tapamatic, made by Dinoroar a local Aussie developer which I wasn’t able to understand how it worked.

Mobile competes with PC’s and gaming devices

Its clear that mobile is here to stay and smart phone usage is only going to increase. Its increasingly replacing the other devices that I need to use such as my laptop or PC.

At the E3 conference, the World’s biggest gaming conference held in June, Nintendo stated that their biggest threat was not XBOX or PS3, but the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices. They are competing for attention span inside the household and outside. People don’t want to carry around a Nintendo DS, iPhone and a Kindle. Granted they all serve different purposes, but consumers want ease of use. Give them one device that can do it all.

Mobile development to become a core skill set

Increasingly, I hear from startups that they need mobile development skills, which suggest that it is in high demand. There is currently a gap in the marketplace between web development skills and mobile skills. There are a lot of desktop crew out there but not a lot of mobile experience.

My brother, a developer who’s created several iPhone apps as an experiment, stated that designing for the mobile web should be easily translatable for web developers. This is distinct from mobile app development skills (iOS and Android) which is a more specialised skillset.

Fred Wilson, a VC based in New York had this to say last year:

“A common thing we’ve been seeing recently is outsourcing the development of a blackbbery app or some other kind of mobile app. Right now, that is still a fairly nascent skill set but we are also advising most of our portfolio companies to bring individuals in house to do that work because it appears that mobile app development will be a key skill set for our portfolio companies for some time to come.”

There is a gap that exists now because of the limited experience out there. If you read the tea leaves, I expect that this gap will close in the next few years as mobile development skills become more critical for startups and part of their core skill set for developers.

I’m currently learning python. As soon as I’ve finished with that, and if I’m motivated enough, I want to learn mobile.

BRICI will cause a surge in mobile web

Its clear that the future is mobile and I’ve written about it here for the Next Digital blog. I read a report from the Boston Consulting Group that BRICI countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Russia, Indonesia), are jumping straight from having no internet to mobile web. As one of my ex-colleagues, Vincent Yuhico commented, there is pent up demand for smart phones. There will be a surge in mobile web adoption as more BRICI users come on board.

I have no doubt that entrepreneurs will be there to catch them =)

I’m out like the Nokia 5110,

Matt Ho
@inspiredworlds

The last 5 months have been quite an interesting journey and I wanted to update you with what I am up to.

One thing I’ve learnt in the past few months is to go with the flow.

I’ve recently finished up at Airbnb. It was a really cool experience working for a startup on the rise. I joined them before they became valued at a billion dollars =p.

As a fellow traveller myself, I really loved the idea and I used it whenever I travelled. I really believed in what they were trying to do and their mission. It combined several things that I liked – startups, travel and online. I have no doubt the Airbnb team will continue to do amazing things in the collaborative consumption industry and pave the way for new startups to emerge.

So what’s next for me?

I’ve decided to focus on becoming an entrepreneur. There’s never been a better time to have an online startup. My idea won Australia’s first startup weekend competition. Native Tongue’s mission is to create “the easiest and most fun way to learn language vocabulary”. If you would like to find out more, please sign up here and read our blog here.

I originally entered the competition as I wanted to test myself against Australia’s best entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts. I flew down to Melbourne to take on the best and my team ended up coming out on top.

Our first product will be Mandarin Madness, which is for the Chinese language. Mandarin is a language that I have struggled to learn ever since I was a kid. My background is Chinese and when I learn Chinese it reveals who I am, and who I am supposed to be.

I discovered that learning a language is difficult and time consuming. We aim to change that by adding gaming elements to make it fun and easy to learn. Our products will be built for mobile. I wanted to focus on Chinese because that’s the biggest market. China is the biggest exporter and second biggest importer in the world. Its also a great showcase for our platform.

Startups based in Asia

I’ll be aiming to launch my first product, Mandarin Madness in a few months.

I was recently talking to Kit McGillivray who confirmed my thinking and inspired me by saying that there are huge opportunities for startups focused on mobile in Asia. Everyone in Asia has a smart phone. All the startups in Silicon Valley and New York are focused on the western market. However, Asia is actually a bigger market segment.

China has 1.4 billion population. India also has the same number. Chinese clones of foursquare and twitter are actually bigger than the original websites! So a localised Asian product can get a significant foothold in the global market.

Education is ripe for disruption

I believe that the education market is ripe for disruption. Elon Musk, one of the co-founders of Paypal and Tesla Motors was recently interviewed at Techcrunch Disrupt San Francisco and had this to say:

“Musk also shared his vision for the future of education, painting a picture of a future where teachers don’t lecture in front of the classroom, like a “boring vaudeville act,” but where education itself is “more like an interactive game.” Teachers’ role should be to help you when you get stuck,”

Startups like Khan Academy, Udemy, Learnable, Skillshare, WeTeachMe are part of this new movement in disrupting the education market with new business models and ways to learn.

Online just changes the game with education. It makes it easier to distribute information, lowers costs and reaches out to more people. Adding in mobile, means that it is accessible anywhere, anytime.

Taking risks

I recently saw this tweet from a successful Australian entrepreneur, Bardia Housman who’s sold several businesses and I met recently in Silicon Valley:

“The best way to get ahead is to take risks. And the safest risk is to bet on you. And the fastest way there is to start a [tech] business.”

So I’m betting on Matt Ho. I’m going to back myself and see how far I can go.

I’m under no illusions. Something like 99% of startups fail. Everyone dreams of starting their own business and living a fairy tale. However, its going to be a daily grind. I’m at that point in my life where I can take a risk, however I don’t see it as a risk because I have a great team and product and I believe in myself. If you want to startup a company you have to do it full time. You can’t be a part time entrepreneur. Its all about focus.

In the time that I have available, I’m also going to continuing to teach myself to program in python. I will also take up a role as an advisor to rentwant, a peer to peer location based rental marketplace, which was recently accepted into Angelcube, Melbourne’s first incubator.

I’ll be continuing to live in Melbourne, in Fitzroy til the end of October. So if you are in the area please drop me a line.

It’s going to be an adventure so hop along for the ride!

I’m out like school,

Matt Ho

Too often entrepreneurs feel compelled to engineer a complex answer to a complex problem as opposed to creating an elegant answer to a simple problem. As YC cofounder Paul Graham likes to say, “make something people want.”

For more, read here

I’m out like complex answers,

Matt Ho

This video by reigning champion Dominic Cruz is relevant and motivating for startups. Cruz mentions that “little guys can scrap” and what he means is fight. I hear the word scrappy in relation to startups as well.

I’ve been called that a few times. So I just wanted to clarify to everyone what that means. Whilst it doesn’t sound like an endearing term normally, it is for people that work in startups.

It means you are willing to get down and dirty, to be creative and resourceful, and to make the most of what you have. Some people might call it “guerilla marketing”, and it encompasses that and more. When I spoke to Tom Howard of Adioso, he described his class at Y Combinator as the “cockroach class”.

The background is that this was at the height of the GFC (the lowest point) and only the cockroaches would survive. YC looked for the teams that had been together for a long time, the ones that had the motivation and instincts to fight for survival. Only the scrappiest would survive.

Entrepreneurs by their very nature are scrappy. You have limited resources and time, and you need to maximise output with that. The way to do that is to be creative, resourceful and scrappy. Do your logo on 99 designs, hire a developer on odesk, maximise the discounts you have, pay your expenses using your credit card so you get extra 60 days credit.

So if someone calls you scrappy, don’t take it the wrong way! Wear it as badge (could we get a foursquare badge for that?).

Yours in scrappiness,

Matt Ho

This may also provide some additional insight into our team operated,
particularly for those not familiar with web development.

1. We began by setting the structure of what we needed to do through
out the weekend. Brainstorm, Wireframes, Backlog of tasks,
Development, Testing, Deployment, Presentation. Marketing would happen
in parallel with wireframing.

2. Brainstorm – In the first two hours, we worked out what our idea
was and our direction. We had a general brainstorm, then a targeted
brainstorm.

2. Wireframes: By the next 1-2 hours, we had our wireframes (layout)
done and the developers had already started grabbing all the tools we
needed. The wireframes were initally drawn up on the white board by
hand by myself and Allen. Once we agreed, I drew them up on the large
butchers paper, in a story board fashion and put them up on the wall
for everyone to see. My role was more of a product manager, as I sat
between the developers and the business guys.

3. The wireframe/story board also helped to explain it to anyone new
coming in, so they were quickly able to jump in and help. Whenever
anyone new came into the room, I took on that responsibility as “front
of house” and answered any questions they had. I then walked them
through our wireframes.

4. Development – It was amazing to have two dedicated and hardworking
developers, including James who had gaming experience. We went and
found existing tools we could use so we didn’t have to do stuff from
scratch. We also developed it in Ruby, which is great for rapid
prototyping. I focused everyone on creating a good product first, then
we focused on monetisation. I used to think the other way around but I
kinda had the sense that there was a business model around it, that if
I created something useful, people would pay for it.

5. By 2am, we had it done and deployed.

6. Testing – The next morning, the business guys tested it while our
developers kept working. We wrote our consolidated feedback on the
whiteboard. Then everyone debated which features we would prioritise,
sorting them to P1 / P2 / P3 (P = Priority). The Devs then addressed
P1 & P2, and covered all of them. Some of them, we did on the fly
(e.g. make this pic smaller).

7. MVP – I knew that we didn’t need to develop everything for an MVP
(Minimum Viable Product) to win. We made screen grabs / photoshopped
the other sections as needed.

8. While this was happening, the business guys started debating
monetisation models. There was a lot of vigorous debate happening
across the room, so I made them get into a corner and discuss it so it
didnt affect our developers. I trusted them to work it out, while I
started doing the presentation with the vision and opportunities.

9. By approx 4pm, development pretty much stopped. We all focused on
doing the presentation and giving feedback.

10. One final thing, I kept hearing about the other teams and I pretty
much blocked it out. I needed to focus on our project. But
ocassionally, someone would say “Feel@Home has this killer idea,
they’ll give us a run for our money! Or Group X has a 3D
presentation”. That just made me double down and work harder.

Cheers,

Matt

Wow. Sometimes you watch a video and you are blown away. I’m in the startup space now and everything I’ve read about Y Combinator suggest that they are leading the way for startups and innovation. Watch this video.

Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y Combinator has a candid 6 minute session with 5 startups randomly chosen from a pool at Techcrunch Disrupt. Here he assesses and evaluates startups on the fly, based on his years of experience and intuition.

Any startup or business will get valuable advice from this video. Here he defines the product, the target market, when to monetise (now!), if they should pivot, etc.. The most valuable advice I got was to focus on a niche customer group, that hardcore group that will use your service the most and leverage that.

Here is the blurb from Y Combinator’s blog.

“In 2005, Y Combinator developed a new model of startup funding. Twice a year we invest a small amount of money (average $18k) in a large number of startups (currently 60). The startups move to Silicon Valley for 3 months, during which we work intensively with them to get the company into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors…

Since 2005 we’ve funded over 300 startups, including Loopt, Reddit, Clustrix, Wufoo, Scribd, Xobni, Weebly, Songkick, Disqus, Dropbox, ZumoDrive, Justin.tv, Heroku, Posterous, Airbnb, Heyzap, Cloudkick, DailyBooth, WePay, and Bump.”

Y Combinator also funded Adioso.com, an Australian startup. It was the first Aussie startup to get through the program. In fact, I’m using them now to buy a flight!

I’m out like Office Hours,

Matt Ho.

This is cross posted from the Startup Weekend Melbourne Google Groups Forum.
————–
Hey its Matt from Native Tongue.

Most of you know I flew down from Sydney for this event. I was here for work as well, but stayed the extra few days for the first startup weekend.

My motivation for participating was to take on the best entrepreneurs from Melbourne. My idea took the title. Admittedly, my team is all from Melbourne, but the idea is from Sydney =).

I thought that everyone was supposed to pitch an idea, and was worried that I didn’t have one. So I came up with the idea the night before the competition. But I knew it had to be tested and feedback was needed, ala customer development (see Steve Blank).

When I got on the plane to Melbourne, I pitched it to the people sitting next to me. It was the first time I pitched it, and I knew I had to make the vision simple: “Making language easy to learn”. They liked it. When I was at work on Thursday in our Melbourne office, I pitched it to as many people as I could, and used that feedback to refine my pitch. About 50% liked it.

I was staying at an Airbnb place, and I pitched it to one of the housemates on Friday night just before I came to the event. That’s why I was 30mins late. She liked it as well. That’s when I knew it was good.

I never stopped pitching the idea and believing in it. Allen and I actually never did a full practice together – we were the two people pitching to the judging panel. We did a few rough practices towards the last 1 hour, mostly separately and put the slides together like 5 mins before the deadline. But I had pitched it so many times, at least 40 times that weekend that I didn’t need the slides. I knew what the vision was and how to sell it.

I also knew what was possible and what was not possible in 2 days, given my background in web design. I’m actually not a developer, but I have worked at a web development agency for 3 years and knew what to do and the process.

This is actually the first startup event I’ve entered. I didn’t mention this (in my winning speech), but I went to SXSW in March and went to a bunch of lean startup sessions called “Battle of The Apps” with a judging panel of Eric Ries, Dave McClure and Robert Scoble. That’s when I found out about the lean startup model. I also attended the StartupBus finals, and I knew what it took to win. I saw what the best entrepreneurs were doing from the Valley, New York, and around the world.

I think what is really underrated are the mentors. Although they kept interrupting us, I listened to each one of them and I took the best parts out of each one’s advice. To be successful, you need to surround yourself with smart people. The presentation I gave, had elements of Leni, Humprey, Glen and a few other mentor’s in there.

So I’m laying down the challenge to everyone in Melbourne. I took the title back to Sydney. Come up to Sydney for the next one, because we want the best hackers / entrepreneurs up here. We want to go up against the best.

Sydney 1, Melbourne 0.

Come and get it =p

Cheers,

Matt
p.s. My team is going to keep working on our product.

It is important before any website development or design begins, that wireframes are drawn up. Think first, then code. This is considered as best practice for designing websites. After the wireframes are finished and signed off, then designs and backend functionality are added.

What are wireframes?

So to my non-technical audience, I’m sure you are thinking, “what is a wireframe?”. My definition is that it is the layout of the fundamental elements of the website. It is the visual representation without the graphics.

Think about a new property development. You wouldn’t just build straight away. You would consult an architect, draw up a blueprint, thinking about the structure and where to put certain things like walls, windows, etc… I consider a wireframe as something similar. It is the skeleton of the website. Wireframes are also used for product design (i.e. real world products).

In an optimal process, we would produce one wireframe for each template. Some people like to also produce wireframes to show interactions on the page as well.

The developer will typically work off this “blueprint” along with documentation known as a functional specification (func spec). The func spec will describe in detail how the functions work on every page of the wireframe. E.g. How the interaction of a button on the website works.

Learning by doing

I’ve usually been involved with high level reviews of wireframes for websites in my role as an account manager. I believe that to be able to review wireframes properly and design a website, you need to have the skillset of being able to build a wireframe and understand what is good wireframing.

So I have decided to learn how to wireframe and to seek to learn what is good wireframing, interaction design, and user experience.

As someone that is non-technical (not a developer, designer or BA), I believe that the best way for me to learn is by doing.

Why you should wireframe

Here are the key reasons that you should start with wireframes:

• It saves time and money. As it is less costly to update a wireframe than a design
• Fairly easy to build a wireframe. There is software out there where you can easily drag in shapes, move boxes and fields around, add icons for function, construct a simple form, etc..
• As it is the bare bones, people don’t get caught up in things like “this is the wrong colour”, which can easily be added later.
• Can use this to build a clickable prototype to test.

Wireframing Software

At the most basic level, you could start by sketching it on a blank piece of paper or a whiteboard. It is about visualising the layout and the interaction. I would start with this (and I love sketching my ideas). I need to draw and it helps communicate my ideas.

There is also a lot of software products out there that you can use. Options include:

• Microsoft Visio
• Omnigraffle
• Axure
• Protoshare

We use Visio at work and I’ve had a quick look at the other tools on this list. I’ve decided to try Omnigraffle, using the 14 day trial for the standard version. It looked fairly easy to use and had a large 3rd party community called Graffletopia which provides stencils. The stencils are wireframes you can build on top of.

As I’m interested in mobile and tablet apps, I downloaded a bunch of stencils for iPhone and iPad. It includes the Apple hardware elements, outline of the devices, keyboard, the UI (user interface), buttons. The examples I found look like this:

If you have any thoughts about wireframing, tips or good resources I should check out, please put them in the comments section.

I’m like sketching on paper,

Matt Ho.

I noticed that a few of the startups I’ve been talking to at SXSW and in Silicon Valley were using signup pages powered by LaunchRock.

I was sharing a co-working space with Josh, the co founder of FlyByMiles. He was a finalist in the StartupBus challenge on the Silicon Valley Bus, and was working on his new website. He had a Launchrock page.

The day before, I met Zombies In Real Life, a Sydney based startup that won the Startmate Challenge. They also had a Launchrock page for beta invites.

If you have a business idea, usually the first thing that most people will do is buy the URL. Well, the next thing you need to do is sign up to a LaunchRock page! So rather than have a domain registrar holding page like a boring godaddy page with affiliate links, or a holding page with “come back here later”, you should create a launchrock page and start signing people up for beta invites. It only take a couple of minutes to create a page and it appears that you can customise it as well.

Its a very simple idea but killer. So many new websites need it. I’ve noticed that you don’t need to have a very complex idea to be successful. Create something simple and intuitive to use – look at Dropbox. The technology stack might be complex in the backend, but for the user its so convenient to use. The LaunchRock or Dropbox idea is not new, its been around for a while. But they seem to make the experience easy to use and possibly do it better than anyone else. More on this later.

As more startups launch using LaunchRock, they’ll probably have the inside running on new companies and goss on what’s new! For now, check out the Discover LaunchRock page for what was hot at SXSW 2011. I’m sure they’ll soon have their own discovery page made up of new startups on LaunchRock.

For more on LaunchRock, check out their blog on how it works.

I’m out like GoDaddy pages,

Matt Ho.
@inspiredworlds