Category: Startups

flockdata

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Met one of the founders this week, Jeremy, for some coffee. Jeremy used to work at AWS Singapore and also did a local startup after that. Then he moved back to the USA to start flockdata with a partner from New Zealand.

http://www.flockdata.com/

There is so much going on in the data world. For guys like me I swear it takes a lot of work just to keep tabs on big data. My world now is keeping tabs on languages, advertising products (customer acquisition and revenue), web tech, mobile tech, streaming tech, analytics and now data. 

There are always lots of ways to skin something – you can roll your own, use the off the shelf stuff from AWS, grab lots of open source stuff or spend lots of cash on commercial products. I guess it all depends on money and time to market.

flcokdata has an interesting model and I plan on checking into it more.

Nice work RedMart

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I took a slight beating by some folks yesterday for this :: http://www.nokpis.com/2015/03/05/whither-redmart/

I don’t think I was doing anything but being honest. I love RedMart. Use it weekly or every other week. It has greatly enhanced my family’s life – we spend less time dealing with gathering items. I just open the app and presto – my wife lets me know they show up a few days later. Awesome sauce.

So when it all fell apart – I wrote about it. I was stunned to get this awesome reply on my blog :: http://www.nokpis.com/2015/03/05/whither-redmart/#comments

My premise was not bashing that things went wrong but they way they handled it.

I also think I discovered that they took care of the site, when things went haywire, but not the app – seems they corrected that. Cool.

So now they have also blasted this out :: http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=1df5711c06916e07a5b8832a9&id=7d6aaf3897&e=cb69f6516a

Congrats to them for being open, honest and clear in their resolve.

RedMart is a part, critical part, of people’s lives in Singapore. Congrats to them for getting to that point so quickly. It is telling that when things went wrong – people were affected. That means the service is a home run.

Hope the regular diaper deliveries resume soon!

Netflix launches in Australia & New Zealand on March 24

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/03/netflix-australian-launch-date-revealed-march-24/

We knew it was coming but now we know when. Will be interested to see if this finally buries Quickflix and how Stan will get going.

I guess we will start to see if having regional TV and newer Hollywood movies will help combat the sheer scale and tech of Netflix.

Will get this worked into the list :: http://www.nokpis.com/ott-asia/ 

Watching the Aussie market and thinking about SVOD

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

In our little part of the world the most advanced video advertising market and the market with lots of OTT competition is generally considered to be Australia and New Zealand.

For example :: http://www.nokpis.com/2015/03/02/quickflix-is-starting-to-fall-apart/

Some of the players :: http://www.nokpis.com/ott-asia/#australia – guessing more are coming as well.

So it is interesting to read an article like this :: http://mumbrella.com.au/svod-catalyst-tv-evolution-278126

For example this is a very good point:

Subscription video services have a monetization model devoid of creativity.
They rely on subscriptions and subscriptions alone to bring in the mullah. It makes it easy to balance the books and has the potential to be quite lucrative in a market like the US where there is a whopping 115 million households that will potentially buy the product.
In comparison, Australia will only have nine million households to market to by 2016.
This means that the maximum revenue potential for the entire SVOD market is roughly $1.1b (based on a $10p/m subscription) in Australia.

But I think this also points to the fact that a large regional player looking at ANZ region as just a piece of the puzzle probably doesn’t care too much about the economics. To me the guys that have to worry about these numbers are the one or two country services. Like Quickflix for example which is already hurdling towards going out of business.

This is the good part though:

I am glad that the TV industry is getting scared.
This invasion of innovation and technology will hopefully spur the industry to evolve.
The SVOD infrastructure seems like the perfect foundation for a new ad funded model that blends the programmatic, targeting and measurement benefits of digital advertising with traditional television.
With a web-augmented and data fueled TV and ad experience the TV industry could have something financially viable on their hands. They could give people the tailored and on-demand content that they desire.
They could banish the Nielsen family and create a robust and reliable TV measurement model.
They could continue to sell us that precious ad space.
If the networks use this opportunity to evolve, the arrival of SVOD services could be the best thing to happen to Australian TV since Kerri-Anne Kennerley.

There is room for some innovation. There is either subscription model or freemium or just free with ads. There are lots of other ideas but generally what happens is the folks that own the content don’t allow the OTT services or the OTT aggregators room to innovate. They are stuck doing the same old thing and having to kowtow to the owners of the content. To me the lack of innovation around the OTT space has to be blamed on the content owners who frown on doing things like download or experimentation around social or payment models. That leaves the content owners needing to be the ones to come up with something cool. Maybe they can use TV to do that or try to take advantage of the what OTT can offer by coming up with something truly innovative.

I am not really holding my breath waiting for it to happen though.

The app economy

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

As I browsed DF today I can across this :: http://vesperapp.co/blog/native-support-for-ipad-and-landscape/

I think I bought the vesper app when it was on sale for 2.99 and thought to myself that it was a decent price for the app. I didn’t think it was a steal or a huge bargain because I felt like that was about what I would pay for a notes app. I am sure others thought that it was a huge bargain, an app made by some semi-famous folks that was suddenly on sale.

So here we are today looking at a 9.99 price tag now that the app goes horizontal and works on an iPad. I find this slightly comical. Any of us in the app world normally won’t ship an iOS app that doesn’t work on an iPad from day one. At least I wouldn’t.

The app economy is bizarre since the whole notion of pricing has been eroded to the point where Gruber is almost using this move as a line in the sand. Hey indie devs – put your price up so people value the ecosystem more and truly respect the value of our craft.

I hope it works but somehow I doubt it will.

If Gruber and his tribe can’t survive on a reasonably priced app – 10 bucks is not reasonable, then I am not sure who can. Without a doubt vesper gets way more traffic flowing across it than most other apps just due to Gruber talking about it all the time. 

Unlike Marco with overcast, who has open sourced some of his financials, vesper is three guys who ship stuff pretty slowly. It’s nice stuff but I never have seen it as earth shattering or amazing. Just a good solid notes app that I use to supplement my Evernote addiction. Trip stuff, quick meeting notes and my grocery list type of things are in vesper. Everything else is in Evernote.

So if Gruber can’t make it on decently priced apps then who can?

I know lots of indie devs – http://www.mailtoself.com/ – but these guys have a day job. They are doing this to be able to craft stuff outside of work and see how they can dent the universe with apps. 

Then there is – http://www.cleanshavenapps.com/ . I use dispatch all the time and I have beta tested some new stuff they are working on. This team does well but I don’t know how well or what their view is when it comes to this pricing stuff. I do know that they realize it’s more about marketing than anything else now.

I can remember when I did one of my fist startups whike blowing through millions of dollars having to buy real hardware, databases and app servers – just to launch. Now one guy can rent hardware and use his own code with open source stacks to launch an empire.

However the issue still is about how does one get exposure? Some have to buy it thus increasing the need for capital. Some people are famous and use their fame to launch or propel an app. I am guessing with the vesper price move they didn’t get as big as they had hoped cause if they had millions of users even on 2.99 they would be doing okay.

When I chat with any indie dev it’s all about getting the word out, holding on to their users and the hope that if they build something new, their current users might be customers of their new product.

We all know the app gold rush is over. Done.

Users think everything should be free or cheap – it’s sad it got to this but it happened. I don’t know what the answer is since I have only built apps that come as part of a service versus building an app I needed to sell to make a living.

Will be interesting to see how vesper does with the new premium pricing.

The OTT tsunami has arrived

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

My OTT Asia tracking page :: http://www.nokpis.com/ott-asia/

Obviously I write this from the perspective of someone working in the OTT space but of course confined to a specific content niche – Indian video globally available to anyone who wants it. Fortunately it means that I have experience with building a global OTT platform given spuul has customers dotted around the globe.

If you are in developed regions you probably have had the choice of some sort of regional or global OTT network for years. Netflix is clearly the big one to contend with and it is very interesting to read their latest view of the market and their place in it :: http://ir.netflix.com/long-term-view.cfm .

I love how their business plan and goals for the product are clearly explained. It is also interesting how they directly discuss the competition. I think Netflix knows it will take serious money to stay on top since as the content leaders bifurcate and run their own services – Netflix will have to continue to ramp their original content to make up the gaps.

When it comes to developed markets I think Netflix is unstoppable but I always watch for HBO to do something but the problem is HBO is not a tech leader and this is their Achilles heel in competing with Netflix. However when it comes to content and marketing – HBO is a force to be reckoned with.

The emerging markets though are a totally different story with the excess of regional content to be mopped up and the strength of the telcos to be reckoned with.

I can only really discuss Asia with the caveat that I will leave China, Korea and Japan out of it since they are unique markets. Netflix already as their sights set on Japan and China has enough of it’s own players to contend with.

If one looks at the ANZ region it will be a market to watch the evolution play out since quickflix is on the way down while Stan takes a shot it before Netflix comes to town. Stan does have a chance given they will have a lot of local TV content bottled up but maybe that is not enough to combat Netflix technology and their huge swath of original content.

The rest of Asia though appears to be up for grabs. India may or may not look like China with local incumbents winning but given English as a dominant language, the local market may be open to large international players. I think apart from niche players, spuul for example, India will likely have Amazon and Netflix giving it a go. It also seems that the large local telcos will try to own the market as well as regional players like the newly formed HOOQ. India is big enough to support all this competition – it is after all the next China. In general the south Asian market will be lead by and grouped in with India.

Southeast Asia though is almost another region in and of itself. Already each country is home to some country based players but my take is that they will not survive a regional play since the economics of a regional player will allow for larger catalogs and better technology. HOOQ appears to be the first to really go after this market but they will not be the last.

I reckon that there are lots of players sitting on the sidelines waiting to dip their toes in due to the market size and the complexities that will allow for specific innovation in payments, tech and telco partnerships that could easily allow a competitor to sprint past another. I have no way of validating this list apart from my own gut and the rumor mill but this is my guess for other companies that will either start or partner to create another SEA OTT service – Astro, Starhub, and Catcha Group come to mind but just look at any media company or telco not yet in the game or partnering with someone as a possible entrant.

The potential market with the growth of mobile and Internet is just too big to ignore. Problem is that this market doesn’t look like the developed markets so freemium models, telco payments and multi language support will prevail. Not exactly a good fit for Netflix or Amazon.

Of course apart from Asia there is also the Middle East and Africa to think about. In theory one could argue there is the total set of emergent markets for an OTT player to try and win over with the right mix of Hollywood content, global TV content, regional TV and movie content all buttoned up with a focus on mobile, payments and tech that rivals piracy and YouTube. What many forget is the main competitor in all these markets is piracy – not incumbent services.

I have been patiently waiting for the deep pocketed Rakuten to take their Waiku.tv property and the tech and audience behind Viki to build a more focused emerging markets premium video play but doesn’t look like it is in the cards. Or maybe with Razmig exiting Viki, he is actually working on just this?

It’s 2015 – the next 3-5 years in the OTT space is going to be pretty insane.

I am sure consumers are in for a lot to benefits as the competition slugs it out.

Stunning trainwreck

~ michael_msft ~ 4 Comments

When I read about Line working on grocery deliveries. Or wechat shutting out alibaba apps, I am constantly dismayed with how Yahoo had an amazing assortment of platforms – payments, games, content, locals and chat, that it could have used together to form a new platform.

I guess innovation like this is too hard to manage from the inside but someone, someday will write about the dominance of chat as a platform and how Yahoo choked on the enormous opportunity.

Online Video post from A16z blog

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

http://a16z.com/2015/01/22/online-video/

This read is a doozy. Pretty much agree with all of it and it will be interesting to see some of the predictions play out.

— There will be new business models for video beyond traditional advertising. The reality is that without the scale of a YouTube or Facebook, platforms will have to find more creative ways to make money, whether it’s through subscriptions, micropayments, exclusive previews, community benefits, or other methods.

Full agree on this one. Tough to build a big ad business unless you are huge and in regions where monetization is very advanced. YouTube has massive scale but I know lots of other players with big scale and it still isn’t enough for the ad play. I think micro TX are very interesting and models like daily subs with telco billing.

— The age of platforms not taking care of makers may come to an end. YouTube “stars” generate tons of views for YouTube, but those views don’t translate into meaningful earnings for most of them. As the size of the entire pie grows bigger, there needs to be a piece for everyone. In most media businesses, rents typically acrue to the creators. And this is critical to the long-term success of any two-sided marketplace that connects providers and consumers.

This one also interesting and I think YouTube super stars are making bank but you have to be big again to really make it. I am keen to see how vessel does and what other production companies or talent management will do but yet many of them rely on YouTube for their stars.

None of this addresses what happens to the video landscape once new or newly popularized mediums (such as podcasts, animations, mashups) or entirely new platforms — VR, AR, and so on — become more popular and create new forms of content that live in different ways next to video.

Personally I do see the next thing for video. I have ideas but still work with the type of media that is quite traditional and still finds things like downloading a movie to be really pushing it. So a whole new format or medium? I can’t wrap my head around that but I am sure it will happen eventually.

What we do know is that online video is far from done… so it will be interesting to see what even a little competition will do here.

I guess he means things like vessel for example and I am sure others but for the moment I don’t see a lot of innovation but stuff is always evolving. Just not sure I see where the next thing is coming from.

From a developer POV

~ michael_msft

Clearly Ben is on a roll. I don’t agree with all his monologues and tweets but I think this one is pretty good :: http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/12/9/mobile-platforms-and-technical-debt

People tend to get too religious about their phones, OS’s and all things associated with them. The fanboy thing starts to take over, Xiaomi as an example, but this stuff boils down to pure business. There are ONLY two mobile ecosystems right now. 2. Apple and Google. The China thing is another topic in that the rules are very different. However Apple seems to be doing better with their model in China than Google is. Enter Xiaomi though to see what can happen when one combines some of the essence of both players to make a go. It’s magic and it is working. However it remains to be seen if this is only going to be big in China. For the record it is only happening in China right now. I think Xiaomi will struggle outside of China.

Let’s talk about the impact more once they make bigger waves outside of China.

Microsoft is trying their hardest. Still doesn’t seem to be working. This still applies :: http://www.nokpis.com/2014/10/26/microsoft-is-only-missing-the-apps/

So Ben gets to the essence of all of this. Apple had a vision and Google had another. Take away the marketing, the religious arguments, the open versus closed jargon and what you are left with is two very similar platforms:

One way to look at this is that iOS and Android have been converging – they arrived with more or less the same capabilities despite starting from opposite ends. Apple has given up control where Google has taken it. And of course Google has had to add lots to Android just as Apple had to add lots to iOS (and they’ve generally ‘inspired’ each other on the way), and just as Apple has added cloud services Google has redesigned the user interface (twice, so far). 

I am not purporting that the environments are the same or that they arrived at the same point using the same methods. It is just that if one looks closely at the model. Google started open and is starting to lock it down now. Apple started very locked down and is slowly opening. Both stances created some benefits and negatives in the early days and now the resultant evolution has created some benefits and negatives. Google is better at the old fragmentation issues and overall quality has improved. Tool wise I think Apple has a better product for developers though. Apple is making it easier to do some things but their software quality has slipped. That cannot be disputed. http://www.nokpis.com/2015/01/06/thanks-marco/

One could also discuss that Apple makes better hardware since they actually sell their own stuff. Google is still not really in the hardware business. However let’s not get into this.

The part I still find that NO ONE writes about is the difference in the view from the folks grinding out apps everyday and shipping them. How do we ship these apps? Via the App Store and the Play Store. This is where the huge differences are but there is also some evolution there. I would safely say, much to my dismay, that Google has evolved way more than Apple. Where Apple has made great strides for opening up iOS, there is literally no progress in the App Store when it comes to search, discovery or the App Store developer view. We still wait too long for app reviews, there are too many reviewer mistakes and too many features are tied to actually releases. We cannot modify pricing without releases or even update things like images or text without releases. So 3 years in with a stable app I still wait like everyone else to change some copy or update an image. Comical.

With Google a developer can update copy, bits, images and pricing at any point. Or just ship a new app whenever we want. Granted Google has issues with not policing apps enough or letting any app release (pirate or copy app) but they actually have improved some. I still think both Apple and Google should converge stances. Google needs approvals or review for first apps and Apple needs to let people update apps without approvals.

Where I think the big divide is though is around emerging markets. Apple is somewhat behind in that everything one must do around purchases is tied to Apple payments which need credit cards. I can’t use gift cards for subscriptions since everyone always mentions gift cards. I focus on India a lot and the big reason Apple is not as big as Android is about device cost but more importantly the payment problem. Google implements telco billing or at least does not stop us from putting in our own telco billing. With Apple I am stuck with Apple. This has to change for Apple to succeed. I personally think this is the biggest headwind Apple has in some regions – it just can’t function without a credit card backing. If Apple had some sort of regional telco billing I think the flood gates would open around the iOS ecosystem.

All that being said I think Ben ends on an interesting note that is also where emerging and non-emerging markets differ. Messaging:

But the underlying philosophies remain very different – for Apple the device is smart and the cloud is dumb storage, while for Google the cloud is smart and the device is dumb glass. Those assumptions and trade-offs remain very strongly entrenched.  Meanwhile, the next phases of smartphones (messaging apps as platforms and watches as a dominant interface?) will test all the assumptions again.

The canary in the coal mine

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Following up from my post yesterday :: http://www.nokpis.com/2015/01/06/thanks-marco/

Some people are acting like none of us can complain about Apple or that there is nothing wrong. So rather than harp on the sensationalist side of things I thought I would highlight where there is real commentary about the state of Apple from a real developer.

Gruber’s take on the Panic post :: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/01/07/panic-report

Look no further than Panic. I have been using their software for years and they are very open about the state of things.

Read their latest blog post first :: http://www.panic.com/blog/the-2014-panic-report/

If we could offer traditional discounted upgrades via the App Store, this paragraph wouldn’t exist. This is one area where the App Store feels like one of those novelty peanut cans with the snake inside.

This is so spot on. Hard to have the marketing and sales flexibility one desires when things like upgrades are not easily doable.

Coda was removed from the Mac App Store in mid-October, at the same time version 2.5 was released. Since new releases always generate a short-term sales spike and we wanted the numbers to be fairly representative of “typical sales”, we looked at one month on either side  — September and November.

The results were interesting. We sold a couple hundred fewer units of Coda post-App Store removal, but revenue from it went up by about 44%.

I am guessing they are only leaving the Mac App Store due to technical and pricing flexibility but of course not having to share 30% must be nice. All in all there are still too many issues with the Mac App Store – it is definitely not working out the way Apple intended.

The last couple of months of 2014 got classically “exciting” as Transmit iOS was suddenly flagged by the App Review team for a violation — a well-documented situation, both on our blog, and sites like Daring Fireball and MacStories. Thanks almost exclusively to these articles, we very quickly got a very nice call from a contact at Apple, and the situation reversed almost immediately. Everything ended up just fine.

But I can’t comfortably say “the system worked”. It’s still an awful and nerve-wracking feeling to know that, at any minute, we could get thrown into a quagmire of e-mails, phone calls, code removal, and sadness, just by trying to ship something cool.

I have written about the issue with the review process more than a few times. It really is horribly broken. Reviewers don’t read review notes, they make a lot of mistakes and there is too much time in getting through the issue for each cycle. I really don’t understand why Apple can’t apply some code and thinking to the way the process works. Panic is huge and well known so they have it easy. Folks like us, the mere mortals, have to sit and endure shitty reviewing for each appeal and subsequent follow up reviews. This is why I actually like the Play Store better.

Low iOS Revenue

This is the biggest problem we’ve been grappling with all year: we simply don’t make enough money from our iOS apps. We’re building apps that are, if I may say so, world-class and desktop-quality. They are packed with features, they look stunning, we offer excellent support for them, and development is constant. I’m deeply proud of our iOS apps. But… they’re hard to justify working on.

This one is tough, I don’t blame Apple but it is sad that apps can’t make enough money. People just don’t want to pay. What Panic doesn’t talk about is that the situation on Android is far, far worse. Unfortunately it means one has to come up with other models to make money. I am always stunned when I get customer emails from people who use Spuul complaining about using our free product and having to endure ads. They think there should be no ads but they don’t make any connection to the fact that the ads are how we support a free service. Then you tell them they can upgrade to remove all the ads and they reply that they simply don’t want to pay anything. Okay. Not much I can even say to that. This mentality is all over the app ecosystem.

Panic is just a reminder though that Apple cannot succeed with out developers and their fans but increasingly with the draconian and outdated App Store and the slippage in software quality – Apple risks losing some momentum. It won’t be instant or even easily spotted but these are the canaries – like it or not.