Excited about a new beginning

[Visby]

Hello all,

I read MJ's book over the summer and it summarized my entire life's observations with incredible clarity. After being honest with myself, I realized I was sleep walking through the slowlane. It's too bad I wasted so much time and money on such a path.

But...better late than never. I just finished my MBA and instead of taking the consulting job I was working towards, I've decided to take the fastlane. Your real education starts once you graduate...so here goes.

I am looking forward to new challenges and hope to learn and share with the forum. I'm a very humble guy, so any advice will always be greatly appreciated.

Thanks (esp to MJ) and best of luck all.

V

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Welcome aboard ... any plan moving forward? A business? Idea?

 

[cliqflip]

Welcome and good luck

 

[Visby]

Welcome aboard ... any plan moving forward? A business? Idea?

Thanks, MJ.

Yes, I am definitely starting a business, but need to figure out what exactly. Most of my ideas are mobile app related, however I'm not really solving any problems or reducing any pain points. Nothing innovative, which makes me nervous because the barriers to entry for mobile is next to zero.

I'm hoping the forum can help me find some direction.

 

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[dknise]

Thanks, MJ.

Yes, I am definitely starting a business, but need to figure out what exactly. Most of my ideas are mobile app related, however I'm not really solving any problems or reducing any pain points. Nothing innovative, which makes me nervous because the barriers to entry for mobile is next to zero.

I'm hoping the forum can help me find some direction.

I just released my first mobile game and have already chosen to go a different route. I had a good chat with a big developer in an IRC chat Saturday night. His advice was to either "go big or go home."

As Steve Jobs said, trust your instincts and do what interests you. It may not make sense going forward until it's all happened and you can connect the dots looking back. The farther and farther I get, the more I realize how true it is.

Welcome to the forum!

 

[johnp]

Nothing innovative,

Money doesn't care if your product is innovative or not.

Welcome !

 

[Steele Concept]

As Steve Jobs said, trust your instincts and do what interests you. It may not make sense going forward until it's all happened and you can connect the dots looking back. The farther and farther I get, the more I realize how true it is.

Welcome to the forum!

Quoted for truth! Nicely said my man. I like that quote when he's talking about having passion for what you do, because if you don't you'll give up along that very rocky entrepreneur road.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
and that has made all the difference"

 

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[Visby]

I just released my first mobile game and have already chosen to go a different route. I had a good chat with a big developer in an IRC chat Saturday night. His advice was to either "go big or go home."

As Steve Jobs said, trust your instincts and do what interests you. It may not make sense going forward until it's all happened and you can connect the dots looking back. The farther and farther I get, the more I realize how true it is.

Welcome to the forum!

I was wondering for if you could expand on his advice a bit.

 

[dknise]

I was wondering for if you could expand on his advice a bit.

Ya of course.

The model we both started with was to produce free games quickly and efficiently with a target goal of releasing a game every 2-3 weeks. I just released my first one (and I am sure my games would improve over time), but he had released four before he changed his model. The idea was that you could generate small ad revenue that builds on prior apps. The more apps on the market, the more likely all of your apps will receive downloads, the more likely the whole system together is to make money.

What he learned after several game releases, is that getting on the app store in an area where users can access it from their mobile device is hard. If you go to Google Play and try to find my game, you'll never find it. You have to search for it. This leaves it up to your online marketing skills to get a user base.

Finally, he decided to go all out with one game, and it took him over a year to produce. He also had to take out loans to pay for employees to work on it as well. After all his hard work, the investment paid off and he ranked in a 7 figure profit from it. Much more than producing 20 small free games in a year would have produced.

As far as a "fast lane" business model, neither of the models really work for it. Once the products sold and saturated, continued revenue slows to a crawl. It doesn't have unlimited, continued potential, and it doesn't have a big sale value unless you are hindering the potential profits of another company. That would be events like Instagram and OMGPOP with Draw With Friends.

Draw With Friends was OMGPOP's 36th game I believe? And Angry Birds was Rovio's 51st. Both were on the edge of their seats until they had one big success. Since you're not solving someone's problem, your goal is to get them to give their money over for entertainment. You can go into the app store and see people complaining about how "overpriced" an app is that's $1.99. When you go to the developer's website, you see it cost nearly half a million to create and two years of dev time! Mobile consumer's have really high demands with very low expectations of what they have to pay.

Now I'm getting carried away... haha but I hope this helps.

Here's one last thing, a perfect example of this in play. There's a screenshot video app called "ScreenCast" with a demo version out. The full app is only $3.99, and I'm sure most of the people with a smartphone often pay $4.35 for their morning grande' white mocha from Starbucks. But check out the 2nd comment on the demo page:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ms.screencastfree

I use this a lot. I'd really love to buy this app, but I honestly find it rather pricey. I'd buy it if it were at least 50% off its original price. Guess I'll be waiting on a sale... Great app!

He gave the app a 5 star rating... but is going to WAIT to purchase it until it is $2 freaking dollars cheaper.:smx8:

Tough crowd to please!

 

[Visby]

Thanks for the input. Gaining visibility in the app store and having sustainable product value seem paramount with apps.

The life cycle of most games are short. The data I've read indicates that two-thirds of revenues come in the first three months. It's difficult to create organic growth with short development periods and short product lifcycles. Purchased users can be quite costly.

If an app has real value, you might get the time to acquire users

 

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[deepestblue]

Great choice, and now's the time to get to work. Anything to do with a job is such a colossal unspeakable waste of time when it's considered that we probably/possibly only live on this physical plane once. Time freedom is where it's at period.

Welcome & Godspeed.

To new beginnings....