The One Man App Startup

Colm McMullan presentation at SyncNorwich july 5th

Transcript

1. colm@totalfootballapps.com @colm / @TotalFootballFC
2. Search for “Stats Zone” in the App Store
3. DEMO!
4. STATS ZONE • Only app that offers access to stats & chalkboards for every kick of the ball • Every pass, shot, tackle, interception, clearance • Compare team v team, player v player and filter to view specific match times (eg. 1st vs 2nd half) • All data and chalkboard infographics update live during every match
5. 2011/12 • Three apps, four competitions • Hundreds of thousands of downloads • Peaks of tens of thousands of matchday users • Mix of paid & free content • Also involved Puma & Coral sponsorships for ACN/Euro apps
7. RECOGNITION colm@totalfootballapps.com
9. JOURNEY SO FAR • Two years of work • Two ground up builds of the app • Started as an expensive ‘passion project’ • Now a sustainable business? Successful entrepreneurship? colm@totalfootballapps.com
10. THE BACKGROUND colm@totalfootballapps.com
11. BACKGROUND 1/2 • Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin • Joined Multimap as a Software Engineer late 2005 • Design & implementation of REST API (maps, geocoding, routing and POI search) • Redesign & launch of new Multimap.com website with draggable maps • Multimap Twitterbot • Wikipedia Parser colm@totalfootballapps.com
12. BACKGROUND 2/2 • Multimap acquired by Microsoft December 2007 • 2008 mostly focused on afternoon coffee breaks • 2009 Bing Maps Transport Features: • nearby stations • clickable station icons • London tube map layer colm@totalfootballapps.com
14. A COMPARISON
15. A COMPARISON • Wikipedia Article POI • Write script to parse 17GB Wikipedia article dump file • Store articles with geo data or coordinates in MySQL • Configure new Multimap API datasource • Step 4: Profit! Accessible via REST API or in draggable map • Used on Multimap.com & also available for B2B clients The Good
16. A COMPARISON • Bing Maps Transport POI • Extract transport POI from multiple sources • Website App Server profile has no DB access & there’s no useable webservice available.... • So hack together an in memory SQLServer DB & webservice to run on Website App Server (while trying to adhere to MS security policies) to do nearest & bounding box POI queries The Bad
17. A COMPARISON • Bing Maps Transport POI (again) • Front end code for clickable icons, overlay map layer • Bing Maps team doesn’t write Javascript because it doesn’t play nice with Visual Studio - use Script# instead • “Script# lets you leverage the productivity of C# and the power Visual Studio IDE and standard .NET tools” • Speaking Italian to a friend through an interpreter even though you speak fluent Italian The Ugly
18. A COMPARISON • Bing Maps Transport POI (again!) • Releases took place once in a blue moon - still talked about ‘shipping’ Gold Master • If you want to do something well, you practice by doing it often • Google had teams of people working on similar features and products at least for the past 4 years • The result: Microsoft still have no transit layer maps in other cities The Stupid
20. “WHEN SOMETHING CAN’T GO ON FOREVER,
    IT WILL STOP” Herbert Stein (American economist) colm@totalfootballapps.com
21. GRABBING MY ATTENTION colm@totalfootballapps.com
22. zonalmarking.net @optajoe FOOTBALL 2009 colm@totalfootballapps.com
23. iPhone & App Store Webservices TECH 2009 colm@totalfootballapps.com
24. FOOTBALL & TECH Data Collection - http://www.optasports.com
25. TECH & ‘BUSINESS’ • Derek Sivers - http://sivers.org/ • Seth Godin’s books • Magnolia bookmarking service • Instapaper • Independent services, no outside investment • 37signals: “Getting Real” book
26. IMPACT OF APP STORE colm@totalfootballapps.com • Awesome technology platform • Got people paying for software again • Massive opportunity for developers • “App Store Millionaires”
27. ACTION colm@totalfootballapps.com • Quit Microsoft end of 2009 • Took a couple of months off • Worked on one week projects using interesting technology • Brief contracting • Rebuilt confidence...
28. ONE MAN STARTUP colm@totalfootballapps.com
29. WHAT THAT REALLY MEANS colm@totalfootballapps.com • Not as snazzy as it sounds • Can I be self sustainable by producing my own products? • Own product = self funded, conceived, designed, developed, launched, marketed, sold & maintained
30. TOTAL FOOTBALL 2010 • Released for 2010 World Cup • First World Cup of Facebook, Twitter & the iPhone • Data licensed from Opta • 3-4 months development, 7 days a week • The most expensive thing I’ve ever bought is XML
31. TOTAL FOOTBALL 2010 colm@totalfootballapps.com
32. EXPENSIVE XML Pass (free kick, right footed, cross) then Shot (goal, right footed, volley, set piece, assisted)
35. DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES • Build the simplest thing that could actually work • Minimise the number of moving parts • ie. components that would have to scale - I had no idea what the usage would be • Version 1 is always a prototype
36. TOTAL FOOTBALL 2010 • It worked! • Great coverage, reviews • Self funded • Personally conceived, designed, developed • Released to the App Store • Priced at £2.99 to download initially • Kept cutting the price • Didn’t break even financially • Manual monitoring • Exhausting & unhealthy THE GOOD THE NOT SO GOOD
37. THE RESULT • Back to a day job • ‘Lead Mobile App Developer’ at Mendeley • iPhone & iPad app development • Total Football continued on the side (in partnership with Opta) with a new app for the 2010/11 UEFA Champions League...
38. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT • Early 2011 - FourFourTwo express interest in Premier League version of the app • Months of negotiation later... • Up front development fee, three year app licensing contract, ongoing revenue share • Leave Mendeley to build app in time for new season
39. B2B NEGOTIATION • Zero experience • Ask an expert • Figure out all the available variables • know your ranges • open extreme • MILE structure - Must, Intend, Like, Extra
40. STATS ZONE • Partnership with FourFourTwo • Rebuilt, rebranded app • Major UI improvements • Premier League & Champions League • Product dev & new features colm@totalfootballapps.com
41. • Displays all a player’s different actions in a single view • 19 different action types • Options to show only a player’s defensive actions or only their attacking actions PLAYER EVENT DASHBOARD
42. • Instead of posting images to twitter directly, hosted on branded page with links to download the app • Example of link on Twitter: http://j.mp/Km5hGP ‘INSTAGRAM’ STYLE SHARING
43. colm@totalfootballapps.com
44. • Live match updates: • Pre match lineups, goals & scorers, red cards, half time and full time scores • Push brand news: • New website content • Promotional offers PUSH NOTIFICATIONS
45. WEEKLY MATCH PREVIEW &
    ANALYSIS BLOG POSTS • Embed the images in blog posts, online content and magazine articles • See examples at http://www.fourfourtwo.com/blogs/statszone
46. USE IN PRINT • Both raw statistics and images exported from the app can be used alongside print articles
47. BEAUTY IS MORE
    THAN SKIN DEEP • Total Football used a patchwork of cron jobs & shell scripts • Very World Cup specific, not easy to reuse • Repurposing for the UCL involved a lot of hacks • Stats Zone ‘productised’ the server side • Can now roll out a new competition in a few minutes • All on AWS (EC2, SQS, S3) • Managed four competitions on one EC2 (small) instance
49. ASSESSMENT
50. STARTUP LIFECYCLE • Validate • Total Football apps • Pursue market fit • FourFourTwo partnership • Who is my customer? Consumers or Brands? • Scale • Growth to other competitions (La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 etc...) & platforms • New products?
51. WHAT’S WORKED SO FAR? • Approach to tech product development has proved successful • No downtime, no scaling issues • “If I don't understand something, I don't go near it. Stick to what you know." - Alan Sugar • Piggy back off existing businesses/audiences • See also - John McKerrell’s draggable maps for Multimap • Living off my own dime
52. WHAT’S BEEN DIFFICULT? • Resource constrained in every department • Product development & operations, business development, sales & marketing • Uncertainty of next income/revenue • Intense bursts of activity, very much an event driven industry
53. ENTREPRENEURSHIP? • “Most startups fail due to lack of customer demand, not product development problems” • “Entrepreneurship is your opportunity to create whatever you want” - including what failure means • Google: "changethis big enough company" • Perl motto: TMTOWTDI
54. 2012 allasFCB colm@totalfootballapps.com
55. colm@totalfootballapps.com @colm / @TotalFootballFC App downloads: Search for “Stats Zone” and “Total Football”