Android, Business

Android In App Payments

As we know, user like free applications. However, we need to make a living out of our application, right?
One of the most popular method these days is In-App Payments. You can see this in many examples: Clash of clans, Netflix, Spotify and many more.
In this post, we’ll see how to perform common In-appPayments operations from Android applications.

What is this service?

In-app billing is a service hosted on Google Play that lets you charge for digital content or for upgrades in your app. You can request product details from Google Play, issue orders for in-app products, and retrieve ownership information based on users’ purchase history. Google Play provides a checkout interface that makes user interactions with the In-app Billing service seamless and provides a more intuitive experience to your users. Continue reading →

Business

Crypto Currency 101 – #bitcoin

Is it important?

Bitcoin leverage a powerful and new technology. It is not controlled or issued by any one organization (e.g. bank or government). Instead, it is an open network which is managed by its users. In a similar way that email and WhatsApp improved communication by making it fast and cheap, bitcoin is an improvement on existing payment methods which were not designed for the internet era.

What is bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a decentralized, anonymous, digital-only currency that’s lately gotten a lot of public attention. It was originally developed in 2008 and like in any good mystery, someone using the alias “Satoshi Nakamoto” published a paper describing how Bitcoins could work. (There is a very interesting story about this guy too. He must be very smart but, has never come forward to claim ownership, or any part in revenue.) Just one year later, at 2009, they started being traded and mined. In short, bitcoin represents a way to transfer money anonymously and at almost no cost. And since it’s an arbitrary currency with no nationality attached to it, you’re free to exchange it with anyone in the world. Since Bitcoin’s core protocol is viewable by anyone, it has been vetted by thousands of security researchers around the world and has proven to be robust and reliable. Continue reading →

Business

Why Startups Succeed #StartupTips

How to know if a startup will succeed? Or in other words, when you coming to evaluate a new early stage startup what are the parameters you should consider?

Bill Gross from Idealab did a (limited) research and found out that timing is the most important aspect for startups to succeed. It’s a downer since it’s a factor that we (= entrepreneurs) can’t control. However, a talented team will know how to execute well and ‘buy’ more time. In order to extend the ‘time frame’ as long as we need it to be, a strong business model is another important aspect. It will ensure that we will get to a cash flow positive state. This will enable us to run for years and wait for the right timing.

IMO, a great execution by passionate co-founders is the best predictor.
After that, a solid business model and a good idea are critical success factors. Continue reading →

Business, webdev

3 Principals To Increase Revenue In Games

1. Focus on the users that love to play

You wish to promote certain items (e.g. gems, levels, arms etc’) at the right situation for the ‘heavy gamers’. It is these gamers that spend the big bucks, just have one look at the graph below to appreciate it. The challenge is to identify these players and to find the right situations. Check your analytic tools to find out segments of users that are out of the normal distribution curve. In the graph below you can see an illustration for what we wish. Focus on the all the Whales.

Continue reading →

Business

Valuation Vs Terms #startupTips

Young entrepreneurs (at age or at heart – It doesn’t matter) are very sensitive about valuation or in their eyes: “how much I’m going to get diluted”. After doing several deals both as co-founder and as investor, it became clear to me that it’s the wrong thing to focus on. Moreover, in such an early stage of a startup, no one can do a valuation. It’s all guesses. So the numbers and the arguments over them are ridiculous. What I do find important, are the terms. The ‘little’ details in the term sheet that will drive the future outcomes.

Terms matter

You need to understand what is the meaning of each basic concept like: liquidation, participation, ratchets and preferred shares.
Let’s have a quick look. Continue reading →

Business, Chrome

Auto Complete Attribute Will Improve Your Profit (And Forms)

Autofill in Chrome

Chrome has a great new Autofill feature that as a developer you’ll want to add to your websites for Chrome to use. Other browsers are sure to follow too. The first time you fill out a form, Chrome automatically saves the contact information that you enter, like your name, address, phone number, or email address, as an Autofill entry. You can store multiple addresses as separate entries. Moreover, Chrome can save your credit card information, with your explicit permission. When you enter credit card information on a form, Google Chrome asks you at the top of the page whether you’d like to save the information. Click “Save info” if you’d like the credit card to be saved as an Autofill entry.

Later, when you start filling out a form, the Autofill entries that match what you’re typing will appear in a menu. Select an entry to automatically complete the form with information from the entry. Chrome also saves the text you’ve typed in specific form fields. The next time you fill out the same field, text that you’ve typed in the past appears in a menu. Just select the text you want to use from the menu to insert it directly into the field.

Improving your checkout flow

In Chrome, you get a full support for the autocomplete attributes . All we need to do is to make sure we are leveraging them. You will improve your checkout process and make your users 6.73 times happier. Since autocomplete is part of the standard (WHATWG HTML) you know that other browsers will support it as well.

The autocomplete attributes can be accompanied with a section name, such as:

shipping given-name
billing street-address

This is recommended because it will make your form easier to understand and fill. The browser will auto complete different sections separately, and not as a continuous form.
Continue reading →

Business, webdev

Pick the Right Tool #StartupTips

What is the best tool to do X?

Over the years, I’ve learn that if you are using the right tools and really master them – You become 10x better at what you do. This post is a short list of tools that entrepreneurs, developers, designers and ‘startups people’ might find useful. It base on my personal experience, so (of crouse) there are many other good options out there. The best advice is to try few tools and see what is working for you.

Cloud Platforms

It doesn’t matter if you are building for the web or for mobile platforms (Android, iOS). In the end of the day, you will need a ‘server side’ and hopefully it will be on an infrastructure you can trust for: performance, scale, redundancy, security, easy of usage etc’. I’ve used the first three cloud providers in the list. I really like the power of App Engine. Although, you will need to work in the ‘app engine way’ and not your own. If you need certain capabilities that app engine is not supporting, I suggest trying one of the IAAS options.

Google App Engine – I recommend this option because it gives you great ways to focus on your product and not administrative server tasks. Another good option is Google’s infrastructure as a service in the name of Compute Engine that will give you the freedom to have a clean server to work with.
Rackspace – Got nice sets of options for hosting and deployments. I’ve used them in my last startup (HighGearMedia) and they had a good value proposition.
Amazon Web Services – The current leader of cloud computing.
Microsoft Azure – If you like MS technology stack.
Pivotal – Cloud Foundry is the result of an industry efforts to build an open platform as a service.
Heroku – Supports Ruby, Node.js, Python, Java, and PHP so you can use the languages you know.

In the diagram below you can gain a good view of all the options on Google Cloud Platform. Continue reading →

Business

Entrepreneurs And Investors – Funny And Sad #StartupTips

A list of the common sentences you will hear after a pitch. It meant to give you a heads up to detect the BS when it’s coming your way.

Common nonsense from Entrepreneurs Continue reading →

Business

How To Build An Amazing Product? #StartupTips

The path to success

Every startup should create the WOW effect for its new product. You wish to build, such an amazing product, that your users will want to use it every day more than once. After starting six startups and mentoring hundreds of entrepreneurs in the past 18 years. I got to sit down and think what are the common themes that I saw in great products. The list below is not ‘everything’ but rather the main pitfalls that (too) many developers are falling into. I hope it will help you build the next amazing product. Continue reading →

Business, Chrome, JavaScript, webdev

In-App Payments On The Web

There are many examples of applications that are free but let you add features with in-app payments. Think of a game that is free to play, but offers additional levels or virtual goods for a certain price (a low one in most cases). It’s very common to see applications that are free at the ‘trial period’ and later gives premium users the option to buy a specific level that match their needs. It’s a good practice to give users your product or service without any barriers (e.g credit card information). If they find it useful, they will pay for it with a smile.

Few examples

A designing web app that give the options to buy more projects (or more shapes, tools, features).
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application, that offer certain capabilities for a price.
The basic options to collect and manage your contacts will be free, but if you wish to send emails they will charge you.
A game that let you advances more quickly if you buy certain improvements. For example a ‘magic’ power that give you the ability to pass a difficult stage (e.g. the mighty eagle in Angry Birds).

Continue reading →

Ido Green

Thoughts To Remember

Category Archives: Business