Jack Holmes

• 2012-06-24 0 notes

  2:30am, writing code. You can take the person out of a startup, but not the startup out the person.

  — Me, finishing off traintweeter.com.

• 2012-05-09 0 notes

  

  Finalising wireframes for tomorrow :) Working on some cool business features! (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-02-10 0 notes

  App Signup

  Our app is nearing completion, we’re pretty much just a few days away from wrapping it up and sending it off to Apple. As with many apps, it automatically logs into your account when you launch - so I haven’t actually seen our signup / login page for months. 

  

  Initially, when we designed the app it was just a simple two box form. As we’ve developed more features, added Facebook connect and other things the ‘stuff’ on the first page has grown and grown. I was in for a shock when I looked at it today. It’s turned into some hideously confusing mix of forms, buttons and text. Even I’m not exactly sure what all the buttons do or how I sign up. If I don’t get it, I can’t expect users to figure it out for themselves. Although we are trying not to add any new features, so we can just get shipped, this needs sorting in my opinion. We’ve opted to remove a few features because they don’t work as well as they should rather than take the time to improve them.

  Back to the drawing board, this afternoon I’ve been working out how to best organise the page. After looking at multiple other app signup processes I’ve decided Twitter probably has the most intuative. Facebook is shockingly bad whereas Path has done a pretty nice job including a great introduction to the product.

  Adding a tour is something we’ve been working on for a while, but it’s not going to be making an appearance in the first app release. All I needed was an idiot proof signup page. 

  The majority will be signing up for the first time unless they’ve registered online first. Ideally all users with register with Facebook because it’s simpler and we don’t have a connect with Facebook option after signup. (For reasons I wont go into).

  I’m thinking a massive blue ‘Log In with facebook’ button in the middle, followed by ‘signup with email’ and then a ‘Log In’ button at the bottom. The big blue button will work regardless of the user setting up a new account or if they are logging into an already created account. 

  Lesson learnt, don’t just give your developers tasks to add stuff. Always ensure everything has been developed with the user in mind. 

• 2012-01-16 8 notes

  

  Tonight I teach myself InDesign (Taken with instagram)

• 2012-01-13 13 notes

  

  Oh that’s coming soon…. (Taken with instagram)

• 2011-12-18 23 notes

  Start-Up Business: Why Your Startup Doesn’t Need a COO

  This is an interesting read. Working for a company which may be getting a COO in the new year I have to agree with the majority of points. I’m unsure in the early stages of a startup exactly what a COO would do all day. In my view it’s of paramount importance that the CEO is focused on product. We all know a startup which puts its business case before the product might make a small profit but is inevitably doomed. Having a person who is just focussed on running day to day activities would take some peruser off the CEO. Allowing them to focus more on product. Someone to focus on accounting, HR, marketing, PR could well be valuable.  In a small company though is there really that much to do? 

  You have to consider whether the money would be better spend on more designers or developers. People who can actually help us ship product more quickly.

  When it comes to scaling the business having a person who has been there are done it all before would be invaluable. In the beginning stages however, I’m not so sure it’s completely necessary. Of course this is all dependant on the company and skills which other team members have.

  startupadviser:

  by MARK SUSTER on SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

  It’s very common for startup companies to have COO’s. So I know I’m getting myself into a bit of trouble by writing this. But …

  

  Startups don’t need – shouldn’t have – COOs. I have this conversation with every startup that comes to see me and has…

  Source: themarketandtheentrepreneur

• 2011-12-17 10 notes

  What can people do before registering?

  We had this debate in the office a few weeks ago, trying to determine between letting people see the benefits our site will give them, but not letting them get too much without giving us their email address to make them a proper user. We came up with a few options:

  • Lock the site down - people must register before they can get past the home page
  • Let anyone and everyone in to do as they please - hope at some point they decide it’s worth registering
  • Something else

  Here’s why I argued against the top two points

  First off lock the site down. This just seems bonkers. When you’re launching something new, especially when you’re bringing a new way of doing something, what’s the best way of telling people what you’re doing. Well yes you can make a video and create a jazzy ‘learn more’ page and I’m not saying don’t do those things. I believe though the best way to tell people what your product does is to show them real people using the site. To lock potential users out with only access to a few screenshots and some words just doesn’t cut it.

  I’m no big fan of the second either, although it is probably better than the first. This works great because users can navigate the entire site, take all the advantages that your site can offer but you get no relationship with them. You hope to high heven that they like the site enough to sign up. I’m always up for a gamble but this just seems to much of a risk. You could well have many people using your site but only a small percent of people are actually registered users. With my business hat on, that’s a bad situation to get yourself into. 

  My view and what we will be doing is a mix of the both. It’s important to show people the value of the site, but don’t let them get too much before signing up. That sounds perfect but how are we actually doing that? 

  First off if a user posts a link to their social network streams linking to a post they left on our site - we want all their friends to be able to see the content which the user has left. People coming from links into the site can see the content their friend has left, but that’s it. If they want to do anything else a big box pops up saying ‘hey buddy, you need to sign up before doing that’.

  Another idea which I’m not sure if we’ll actually end up doing is to put links to popular posts onto our homepage. As a person who’s maybe read an article about the site they can see the content left by others without signing up. They will then be stopped if they try doing anything else with a signup box. This hopefully means they get the idea of the site and can see how some real people are using it. For the user to get any real value however they must signup.

  The trick is showing them enough to get them excited and signed up. Exactly what that level is I’m still to work out. 

  Post inspired by a question asked by Startupdreamer.

• 2011-12-13 2 notes

  App Marketing

  I’ve been working at this company for 5 months now. So far I’ve been doing user experience stuff, user interface design, product design, troubleshooting, copy writing, video making, social media, user growth, business case, product planning and generally as the CEO put it the other week ‘throwing grenades at everything we’re doing’. I’m sure there’s a bunch of other stuff too, but that’s all that came off the top of my head.

  Tonights topic however is App Marketing

  We’ve pretty much built a kick-ass app, with a great website to go with it and have the video. What the hell do we do next? Thank God for Google and Quora. 

  Having read quite a bit my conclusion is that app marketing is a bit of skill and quite a bit of luck. The general conscientious seems to be mixed:

  • Start building hype early. Get a splash page and gather some emails. Go to big blogs and give them a pre-release version. Exclusive screen shots and content apparently gets them excited. 
  • On the other hand some people say go to smal blogs first, if you buy some add space they tend to be more willing to write stuff about your app. Get their readers to download the app and use it. Then a few weeks later go to big blogs and show them. In theory this means when Big Blog will write their article it should get plenty of comments like ‘I’ve been using this for weeks, it’s great’. Encouraging more people to go download.
  • But how are you suposed to build hype without going to the big blogs first?
  • Then some other people say if you go to small blogs before the big blogs, the big blogs get a bit pissed. (Understandably) We don’t want to be peeing anyone off, especially the big boys. 
  • But which big blog do you go to first, what do you say to them?
  • I’ve concluded, I’m not sure.

  That’s the blog dilema right there, any help would be appreciated at this point.

  Some things which everyone does seem to agree on are:

  • Get featured by Apple = sorted (for now)
  • Buying add space wont always increase downloads directly, instead it helps build brand / app awareness. I guess if people are talking about you, that’s a step in the right direction. 
  • Have a lovely splash page with a picture of your app and a video.
  • Get in at least the top 50 for your category. Being here will ensure you a good stream of downloads, aslong as you stay there. 
  • Create a little story around your product / business. Must be easy to sell and less than 200 characters. 
  • Submit your app early, you can hold off before releasing to the store but make sure its approved in plenty of time for your launch.   

  Things to avoid - getting your twitter account suspended. Yeah that happened. Not a good start.

  Seriously though if anyone has any tips / has done this before please message me, if you’re in London I’ll happily buy you lunch v66jack@gmail.com It will be much appreciated. 

• 2011-12-11 25 notes

  OK, where are we now?

  Clearly this isn’t everything but in the last few weeks:

  • Big shinny “Your Nan will wet herself when she see’s this landing page”
  • Promotional Video
  • As jazzy as it’s going to get UI
  • and UX
  • Developed a cool way to load data onto a map
  • Beta testers organised and waiting
  • User generation plan
  •  Website
  • Made app icon Christmas Tree Bauble 
  • App (apart from a couple of things which aren’t quite done but seem to be taking an age.)
  • I’m sure we’ve done a load more but that’s all I can think of right now
  • Investment

  Still on track to get this in the App Store sometime in January.

  Not exactly sure what we do after that… Only one way to find out I guess

• 2011-12-03 41 notes

  Disclaimer - yeah I’ve forgot about this. [Again]

  I promise to try harder next year. Maybe I’ll make it one of my resolutions - blog more. Yeah, that’s a pretty cool 21st century kind of resolution. Just in case anyone actually wants to know about the startup here’s the latest scoop:

  We now have a video which explains the product. It’s pretty good actually, maybe a bit detailed but I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out. Will be premiered on our site when the app hits the app store. We’ve got our new ‘look at us we’re building something so amazing your nan will wet herself when she she’s it’ landing page. So people hitting that page sort of get what we’re up to. Before you would have been forgiven for thinking we were building a game.

  The online product direction has sort of gone back to where it was originally in an attempt to build a user base. Although I’m new to all this, I get we sort of need one of those. So there’s been a bit of back pedalling in that department. 

  We’ve moved offices to a building with one of those really posh boiling water taps. I’m pretty sure that’s why we chose it.

  Still waiting for the app to be finished, we’re expecting next week, so we’ll be going out to all of our beautiful beta testers and I’m sure they’ll rip it to shreds. On a serious note though I think it’s pretty good.

  If you’re interested in my lame excuse for not blogging it’s that it’s coming up to coursework deadlines so been busy with uni work and preparing for a trip to India that never happened. But that’s a story for another day. Which in all honesty I’ll probably never get around to writing.