Thursday, April 30, 2015

We Do READMEs Wrong

Started changing some marketing stuff  so that I get more of a conversation through all of my design an development outputs. We tend to do READMEs wrong in that we target our tech development or tech design audience rather than the other buyers of the product, at least I do.

Thus, I came up with a new README template for my android projects, GWSAndroidReadmeTemplate.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Marketing insights

Some parts of the new marketing plan are taking off. Still about 30 days before I do slide deck about it though. I can state even a channel where the overwhelming noise is non-leads can be made to eventually provide better leads and less noise.  Yes, I am talking about LinkedIN.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Linkedin Assylum


So LinkedIN unrestricted my account finally. But it was very Dilbert-esque drama, in that I had to send a one sentence acknowledging following LinekdIN's TOS.

The majority of problems is not with Internal recruiters. In fact I have never had problems with internal recruiters as they follow the professional best practices and do not contact people who are marked freelance in their LinkedIn profiles.

The problem is two-fold. One, you have all these independent recruiters in a hurry so they do what is called a spam-drive-by in that they never fully read a LinkedIN profile and resume attached to it but instead just send out their opportunity posting en-mass. I say recruiter, but that really is not correct. The one's abusing the LinkedIN system are the lower-level sourcers hired by the independent recruiters to produce a lead-stream. Yes, confusing because they use the same exact recruiter title.

Two, LinkedIN users have no way to fine-tune which leads to receive in that its either all-on receive messages from everyone and THE LINKEDIN USER spending all the manual time sorting through messages. Even worse is the solution of recruiter spam to tell each LinkedIN user to mark the messages spam as unless it is very blatant such as an ad in the message, LinkedIN staff will never restrict the recruiter account based on a user pressing the mark as spam message action choice.

So what is the solution? One, I signed up with XING. But even than will probably be the same set of problems.  So I am creating a Mail List for that purpose as it will indicate when I finish a gig/project and be listed as the main interaction way in my LinkedIN and XING profiles.  That way it will filter out rest of the recruiter scum while at the same time still allow me to funnel any LinkedIN and XING leads to the platform I control and thus I can enforce what interactions are allowed and be somewhat not spammed and allow me to reduce the manual work at sorting leads from LinkedIn and XING.





Thursday, April 16, 2015

Bootstrapping WeEat and WeFit II

Part of the challenge in funding a portion of the seed capital round of a mini-start-up is that what to do in obtaining revenue before the product is out the door. In my case, I developed some product ideas that due the data-sets they require have about 650 hours development time including data of the data-sets.

Thus, I need smaller products or service items that bring in different revenue mixes until those products are in the app stores. What I found was some firms that would allow me to produce some small service items and get paid in commissions of sales on big ticket items on their websites. And, without giving too much away, the service items indirectly integrate with the process of raising my freelancer gig cred and so its something that gets me multiple layers of leverage.


Tuesday, April 14, 2015

LinkedIN has surrendered to Spam Recrutiers

Apparently, you can no longer respond to a recruiter using LinekdIn Messages to spam(drive by spamming..you know the technique..they read your profile see you do nto have that skill but than spam you will job posting for that skill) you via Linkedin messages...yeah that much Dilbert-ness. Just got my LinkedIn account temporary restricted.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

The Story of the WeEat Mobile Application

I loss some family members due medical condtions brought on indirectly and directly by wrong or poor diet choices. The most recent was my cousin Tony due to diabetes and he was only 42 years old when he died this past April.

At first I wanted to do a diabetes mobile application that would hook into the REST api that most stomach insulin pumps have to better facilitate the monitoring of diabetes.  But, that would require some resources that I currently do not have an abundance of thus I searched for another product to create that would overlap areas  such as diabetes, etc.

And so I started reading franchise restaurant and grocery industry periodicals and every trending story was about more Americans eating out at franchise restaurants and grocery stores responding by putting franchise restaurants in grocery stores. And so the thinking was is there a fragmented data-set attached to that trend?

So I found one fragmented data-set, the nutirtiional menu item information. And than I started visualizing how that data could be re-organized and re-visualized for choosing better menu items according to a user's diet preferences which they would set in the application. And I started to see that it was possible to do that in such a way to totally transform the act of franchise restaurant menu food item choices activity into something somewhat fun for all dieters.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

WeEat-Funding Challenges

A lot of startup people make the mistake of planning funding with the outlook that they are the 10% or the 1% at the top. But, with that no-limits outlook you make too many mistakes in planning for
what cannot be predicted. It is much easier to plan like you are the bottom 10% and come up with a winning strategy as far as funding.

Thus, I am at the bottom 10% of startup nobodies and what funding options do I have?

The background information is that there is enough empirical information out there on what the download count was when a mobile application startup got either a seed round or a
round beyond seed to indication that trigger is 250 Million downloads. We also know that using the right SEO approach in the application description in the app stores and the individual mobile app web page will produce 1 Million to 2 Million downloads.

My first funding option, would be to get accepted in a StartUp incubator. Specifically, the NWI Tech Foundry which is held in the Fall here in Northwest Indiana right at the city next to me
with an application deadline of between June and July of this year.  But, to be blunt honest the only thing that would count on the application is the condition of the app demo and the particular organization that puts on this incubator does not look at app demos as part of the application process and thus this is probably not a successful option.

My second funding option, would be if some Angel Investor decides to provide a seed round.  While my WeEat mobile application is slightly in the Fitness and Healthcare areas; it is not enough
of a direct correlation to produce some Angel Investor interest in those areas. I say those areas as they are trending right now as far as both VC and Angle Investor interests.

My third funding option, would be to grab some consulting service fee revenues. While that is possible as I am getting asked more frequently; I certainly count on that to provide everything.

My fourth funding option, would be to grab a startup remote gig that allows me to 1099 the service revenue and allows me to eventually have that 1099 income registered under a company name.
Why?  Has to do with marketing and branding as just working for some place does not have any positive impact on marketing or branding and having that under a company name which can be branded and marketed with those marketing efforts under my control seems like a better setup.

Thus, at least for my own startup I was lucky in that the startupproduct I came up with has some beginning stages where seed capital required is at a minimum level to allow me to be able to use the
3rd and 4th funding options. Well, not luck as I am using some advice that was given to me and several startup fans sometime ago by the co-founders of 37Signals.

Specifically, the co-founders of 37Signals had recommended to those who wanted to create a startup to choose those product ideas that can be market validated and require extremely low amounts of
seed capital. It seems like common sense, right?

So that is my funding options for the WeEat mobile application as far as the immediate short-term funding.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

StartUP IP Challenges

One of the fun challenges of startups is the IP laws.  For example, in the WeEat application marketing wise he have all these copyrighted images that could help in the IN-App purchase triggers. At first, yes I cannot use them as they are not my copyrights.

But, what if I vector-ize the image and add some splash of color as that would be derivative image. So now I have that type of question fro my lawyer friends, can vector-ize a copyrighted image and thus will the derivative by thus under my copyright instead of the original image copyright.

If true than I have a way to make a creative header for all my lists in the application and the individual cards.