Andrew Chen

Without trying your app (not available to US users) or knowing if it's a freemium or ad model, I can't really provide too much insight.

KISS and Mixpanel are nice, but there's little to no point in using them if you don't have your KPIs prioritized, and they may be overkill. I've found it just as effective to track growth via Google Analytics and a series of SQL queries, in conjunction with a dashboarding service like chart.io. I also used Flurry for a while, but it frustrated me quite a bit (Mixpanel offers a lot of the same features, btw). And if your app is HTML5, GA event-tracking is just as effective.

Since mobile is the primary interface, month-over-month growth rate is your live-or-die 'macro' metric, calculated as simply ('users_at_end_of_last_month' - 'users_at_end_of_prior_month') / 'users_at_end_of_last_month'. As of Apr 10, users_at_end_of_last_month would be Mar 31 and prior_month would be Feb 28. Many contextualize this metric as 'churn,' for which there are numerous calculations. Shopify gives a good example. [1]

Of course, it's way more complicated than this. And other KPIs include iTMS downloads/ratings/reviews, average time-to-subscribe, average time per session, number of events per session, DAU/WAU/MAU, e-mail conversion (assuming you manage lists/campaigns), etc.

There was also a pretty good overview of how to set up cohort analysis via SQL queries on HN today [2]. Here's where you may want to start using Mixpanel, but only if you're running targeted…

Many developers love Apple and their products and they create apps that makes Apple smile to the bank.

Apple does not return the love, hence they commoditize apps and make building a business off apps, a race to the bottom for $1.99 or free as a result, many indie developer are getting broke right now. Very sadly, the same commoditize apps, help make iphone and ipad appealing to consumers, which in turn gives Apple the leverage to sell them for $500
or more because it is a hardware or device company and software or your app is only a complement to the hardware.

Where is the returned love from Apple. Be pragmatic, even while you choose to love an entity like Apple, that lacks capacity to return the love and will always act in self interest. Always search to see if your love is reciprocated by the person or organization you are in love with, because that is your self interest. Self love gives us the capacity to love others. Self love encompasses self interest among other things.

If Apple acts only in self interest, why do developers choose to act out of love aka blind fan boy-ism that is detrimental to their business (indie app development)?

http://andrewchen.co/2012/08/15/mobile-app-startups-are-failing-like-its-1999/

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/going-broke-with-success-how-an-app-with-200000-downloads-led-to-devel

The article in The Verge and Andrew's post[0] do a good job of explaining that

With the amount of money they had raised, the expectation from investors was that their flywheel would already be setup and working and new funding would accelerate it (Series A being the new Series B).

Media coverage of startups is all at the pointy end - companies that have raised money and are successful, most startups don't raise continuing rounds and the "Series A crunch" is real. The question should be inverted, why should Everpix get funded.

Despite having a product that was loved, was free, had good word of mouth and coverage etc. they still didn't get funded. Not a unique or unusual situation, and only covered in this case (as opposed to the startups that die out quietly) since the founder was willing to speak to a journalist about it.

Could it have worked with no funding, a leaner startup and as a paid product? Who knows, but I wouldn't use their freemium numbers to make that case.

[0] http://andrewchen.co/2013/11/05/when-a-great-product-hits-the-funding-crunch/

I think the term he's struggling toward is something like "user experience debt" [1] or "product design debt" [2], an area that has been discussed for years.

I think "conceptual debt" is a poor choice of phrase here, as one important kind of technical debt is the sort of software design debt where your domain model ends up being a poor fit for your domain, often because the domain concepts themselves shift. (For those interested, "Domain-Driven Design" is a great book relating to this [3].)

I also find the "worse than technical debt" headline irritating. It's the sort of, "the thing I specialize in is way more important than the thing you specialize in" thinking that is poisonous in a team environment. Which one is actually worse depends a lot on your product and your business conditions.

[1] https://medium.com/@vijayssundaram/user-experience-debt-c9bd265d521b#.ap1dujn8g

[2] http://andrewchen.co/product-design-debt-versus-technical-debt/

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Domain-Driven-Design-Tackling-Complexity-Software/dp/0321125215

Unfortunately blogs are missing a strong feedback loop. If RSS was the notification mechanism, then what was it that closed the loop so the blogger got great info on what was being read, liked, disliked? Chen gets this right here:
https://andrewchen.co/the-death-of-rss-in-a-single-graph/

The internet is full of people with incredible ideas, many of which are writing them down, but the problem is discovery. How to connect them. If you can unify blogs with a feedback mechanism, with the immediacy of social media then that would be progress.

Unfortunately most mechanisms for discovery are hopelessly low SnR or totally contaminated with advertising or articles gaming some search algorithm. Funnily enough I write a little about it here within the context of one platform which could have been good, but wasn’t.
https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/

Looks great! I've had the same issue as you with many projects - so many people leave the marketing till the end so don't beat yourself up about it now. (Hopefully you will have learned a lesson haha!)

Lets look at what you could do:

- Start in one local area - ideally one near you or one that you know. Make it work there and then expand.

- See if you can engage any local groups which might engage with the idea - I could see local city/town facebook groups liking this. Or maybe on nextdoor.com.

- Check out the book "The cold start problem" by Andrew Chen. He goes into many examples of lots of companies that had this issue and how they over came the issue and got their first customers - http://andrewchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ColdStartProb_9780062969743_AS0928_cc20_Final.pdf