3. Idea
• No magic bullets here
• Get started and iterate
– You will start with A and end-up with B (always!)
• Browse top lists; look for apps after the top 25
– Why aren’t they in the top 25?
– Can you make them better?
• Less competitive categories
• Lifestyle or venture-backed business
• Consumer vs Enterprise
– Consumer GTM (go to market) is via the App Store but enterprise is now following
the same suit (bottoms-up sales)
– B2B (business to business) custom apps is a big business but not usually organic
• Mobile first or is mobile an extension
– If the latter, create the audience at the web and provide mobile to increase
stickiness
– Some use mobile the other way; mobile as their customer acquisition channel but
primary use is at the Web (eg Expensify)
• Ultimate goal is often high DAU (daily active use) which translates into high
revenue ($$$)
4. Product
• Dave McClure’s AARRR as a guideline
– Acquisition
– Activation
– Retention
– Referral
– Revenue
5. Product - Acquisition
• App store will represent the majority of your downloads
– Users may discover your app via the website or PR, but most will then open the
App Store, search for your product and download
– Direct search will represent 50%+ of your product (and thus why PR is important)
• SEO/SEM is now a science; ASO (App Store Optimization)
– A/B testing of keywords, icons, app title
– Descriptions and even sample images now have a format
• Different categories have different models of use
– Games tend to have high acquisition but high bounce / drop-off and lower MAUs
(monthly active users) but high revenue
– Business and Productivity categories (to contrast) have lower acquisition but
higher DAU
• Some apps can benefit from paid acquisition especially if you can calculate
the LTV (lifetime value) of your user
– Unfortunately, it is still difficult to track ads to actual app usage since cookies
can’t carry into apps
• Product UX is key
– High delight apps will have higher retention early-on
– Path users like the animation but don’t know what the app is for?
6. Product - Activation
• Activation is the on-boarding experiencing (the first time
use)
• Mobile users are fickle; the killer app is the App Store itself
(download, use and disappear)
• The activation experience needs to be finely tuned
– A/B tested to the extreme, from button placement, language
and more
– Count clicks
– Be transparent with the data you are collecting
• Social login (eg login via Facebook) vs registration vs no
registration
– Each have pros/cons
– Logging-in via Twitter/Facebook etc is no magic bullet for virality
7. Product - Retention
• Retention is always hard (mobile or not)
• If not gaming, are you a replacement app or a companion app (useful or
fun?)
– Replacement apps are hard but can have high reward
– Companion apps are new use cases or more vertical
• Combination of gaming-like mechanics, psychology, clever CRM, social
mechanics and other to keep retention high
– Game mechanics such as vanity, gamification of stats, social obligation and
other can get a user hooked
– CRM works well in-app; create a communication channel to your user like
Twitter is to your audience
• Can your app benefit with additional platforms (web or other devices);
benefits across platforms and a universal ID?
• Use push notifications to alert the user but don’t get too noisy (sensitivity
to noise has skyrocketed)
• Updates is a great way to get the user re-engaged
– Analysis around app updates; every 18 days?
8. Product - Referral
• How do you achieve unfair customer acquisition?
• Can you make your app viral?
– Virality = frequency X reach X yield (Sean Parker’s virality formula)
• Frequency = How often does the user perform a viral action
• Reach = How many people does that action reach
• Yield = What % of the reach converts to a new user
• Can you make your app social?
– Does it drive vanity?
– What is the benefit if my friends use this app?
• Paid acquisition only makes sense if you have a good understanding of
your user’s LTV
• Cross-promotion is very effective and more valuable then even advertising
revenue
– Heavily used in gaming (critical mass moved among games)
• WOM (Word of Mouth) can work but not often
– An experience that hasn’t been seen (usually from very delightful UI)
– Incredibly useful
– Games your buddies play
9. Product - Revenue
• 5 major business models in the App Store
– Free (just for fun or I don’t care about revenue)
– Paid (usually a life-style business since 1-time paid plateaus in
the few M / year range (max)
– Advertising (definitely a life-style business; ad revenue is not
substantial to the individual publisher unless you have 10s if not
100s of apps or are in search)
– In-app purchase (the model of choice within gaming; effective
but requires a lot of tuning)
– Subscription (often requires a multi-platform strategy since the
sub is converted at the desktop b/c of the mobile App Store tax;
usually self-selects certain categories like Productivity, Health or
Business)
• What do you want to be and what are your goals?
10. Product Defensibility (Esp. Mobile First)
• Software mobile apps have become too easy to develop
• Very successful apps often have 10s of copycats in a matter
of weeks (2 kids in a garage)
• Ways to increase defensibility
– Use custom UI/controls (as opposed to native controls/widgets)
although this will eventually also be copied (it will take more
time)
– Collect user data and create benefits in the app with user data
(is your app learning or personalized to the user)
– Create app benefits or capabilities with scale where being first-
to-market helps
– Unfair partnerships
– Unfair go to market (offline created brand etc)
11. Platform
• iOS or Android is the first debate
• No right answer; depends on your goals
• iOS makes more money
• Android has more users and it’s growing even
faster
• Android easier to develop on early-on; harder to
develop on later (b/c of emerging fragmentation)
• Blackberry or WinPhone7
12. Tools
• User analytics (Flurry, Google etc)
– Great for seeing what activities in your app drive
usage to A/B test
– Can perform basic cohort analysis and iterate
• Bug tracking (Crittercism, Crashlytics etc)
– Locating bugs can be tiring; these tools can help with
stack traces and more
• Customer service (Zendesk etc)
– Good comments go to the App Store and bad
comments go to you
– Channel feedback and respond to users directly
13. Partnerships
• Mobile ecosystem is wide and deep
• Handset manufacturers (OEMs), operators, 3rd party
app stores, chipset providers and many others
• Unfair go-to-market channels based on your app
category
– Enterprise apps can leverage MDM (mobile device
management) providers to penetrate large enterprise
– Game apps do well in 3rd party app stores as well as
operator app stores (because they are revenue generating
and operators want revenue)
– Replacement apps can often be pre-loaded with work to
the OEMs (eg Samsung wants an alternate mail app)
14. Summary
• Lots of stuff to think about
• Many will be answered as you go along
• Get started and start iterating; you will learn
along the way and you will zig-zag before figuring
it out
Raj Singh
CEO @ Tempo AI
raj@tempo.ai
@mobileraj
