Tob.in

How Does Path 2.0’s iPhone App Implement Their Expandable Menu?

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:36:00 -0500

Source Code

The full source code for the project can be found on github.com at https://github.com/tobins/PathMenuExample. Feel free to use the code provided in the example as you wish. Just say hi on twitter (@tobins) if you found this post useful.

Problem

The Path 2.0 iPhone app (http://path.com) uses an expandable menu to free up some extra real estate. The Path app places a button in the lower left corner of the screen. When the user presses the button, menu items expand out from behind the button in a circular pattern at a fixed distance from the main button. To close the menu the user either selects one of the options presented or presses the main button again.

The following is a quick overview of how I implemented a navigation system similar to the Path iPhone App.

Setup

To keep things simple I set up a single class named ExpandableNavigation that will handle all the work. It has an init method that takes in an array of menu item buttons (UIViews), a main button, and distance the menu item buttons should travel from the center of the main button when expanded. I did this because I wanted developers to set up and configure buttons either programmatically or using interface builder.

For example here is the code for ViewController.m’s viewDidLoad method:

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    
    // initialize ExpandableNavigation object with an array of buttons.
    NSArray* buttons = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:button1, button2, button3, button4, button5, nil];
    
    self.navigation = [[[ExpandableNavigation alloc] initWithMenuItems:buttons
                                                            mainButton:self.main
                                                                radius:120.0] autorelease];
}

The menu item buttons (1-5) were all added to the ViewController.xib and wired to UIButtons defined in ViewController.h. The main button is wired to the “main” UIButton. Passing in the array & the main button to the init method sets up the initial positioning of the menu item buttons and attaches a touch event to the main UIButton for handling the menu expanding/collapsing.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure the main menu button is in front of all of the menu items you want controlled by the class.

As you can see below, the init method is pretty basic. It sets up some variables, aligns the menu items buttons to the center of the main button, and attaches a touch event to the main button.

- (id)initWithMenuItems:(NSArray*) menuItems mainButton:(UIButton*) mainButton radius:(CGFloat) radius {

    if( self = [super init] ) {
        self.menuItems = menuItems;
        self.mainButton = mainButton;
        self.radius = radius;
        self.speed = 0.15;
        self.bounce = 0.225;
        self.bounceSpeed = 0.1;
        expanded = NO;
        transition = NO;
        
        if( self.mainButton != nil ) {
            for (UIView* view in self.menuItems) {

                view.center = self.mainButton.center;
            }
            
            [self.mainButton addTarget:self action:@selector(press:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
        }
    }
    
    return self;
}

Expanding

When the main button is pressed the menu item buttons associated to it will expand from the center of the main button to the distance given in the init method. The menu items will be animated to bounce out and be equally spaced along the 90 degree edge of a circle.

The expand method uses block-based UIView animations and CGAffineTransformMakeRotation to handle the expanding of the menu.

- (void) expand {
    transition = YES;
    
    [UIView animateWithDuration:self.speed animations:^{
        self.mainButton.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( 45.0 * M_PI/180 );
    }];
    
    for (UIView* view in self.menuItems) {
        int index = [self.menuItems indexOfObject:view];
        CGFloat oneOverCount = self.menuItems.count<=1?1.0:(1.0/(self.menuItems.count-1));
        CGFloat indexOverCount = index * oneOverCount;
        CGFloat rad =(1.0 - indexOverCount) * 90.0 * M_PI/180;
        CGAffineTransform rotation = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( rad );
        CGFloat x = (self.radius + self.bounce * self.radius) * rotation.a;
        CGFloat y = (self.radius + self.bounce * self.radius) * rotation.c;
        CGPoint center = CGPointMake( view.center.x + x , view.center.y + y);
        [UIView animateWithDuration: self.speed
                              delay: self.speed * indexOverCount
                            options: UIViewAnimationOptionCurveEaseIn
                         animations:^{
                             view.center = center;
                         } 
                         completion:^(BOOL finished){
                             [UIView animateWithDuration:self.bounceSpeed
                                              animations:^{
                                                  CGFloat x = self.bounce * self.radius * rotation.a;
                                                  CGFloat y = self.bounce * self.radius * rotation.c;
                                                  CGPoint center = CGPointMake( view.center.x - x , view.center.y - y);
                                                  view.center = center;
                                              }];
                             if( view == self.menuItems.lastObject ) {
                                 expanded = YES;
                                 transition = NO;
                             }
                         }];                                                                        
    }
}

Note that the end point for the initial animation is farther than the radius specified in the init method. I did this so I could set up a second animation to do the “bounce” to the desired distance. You’ll see that in the completion block that I set up a second animation that returns the UIView back to the desired distance.

Collapse

The collapse method returns the menu item buttons back behind the main menu button.

- (void) collapse {
    transition = YES;
    
    [UIView animateWithDuration:self.speed animations:^{
        self.mainButton.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation( 0 );
    }];
    
    for (UIView* view in self.menuItems) {
        int index = [self.menuItems indexOfObject:view];
        CGFloat oneOverCount = self.menuItems.count<=1?1.0:(1.0/(self.menuItems.count-1));
        CGFloat indexOverCount = index * oneOverCount;
        [UIView animateWithDuration:self.speed
                              delay:(1.0 - indexOverCount) * self.speed
                            options: UIViewAnimationOptionCurveEaseIn
                         animations:^{
                             view.center = self.mainButton.center;
                         } 
                         completion:^(BOOL finished){                            
                             if( view == self.menuItems.lastObject ) {
                                 expanded = NO;
                                 transition = NO;
                             }
                         }];                                                                         
    }
}

The collapse method is a little simpler than the expand as it doesn’t do a bounce when returning the menu items to behind the main button.

Extra Credit

I didn’t implement the Path 2.0 exactly as it is in the app, however this gives you a good starting point. Incase you’re interested, fork the repository and try your hand at one of the following:

* Calculate the ideal radius based on number of menu item buttons (and their sizes) passed to the init method and size of those buttons.

* Spin the menu items like the Path 2.0 App using UIView or Core Animation.

* Auto adjust the z-index of the views in the init method so that the main menu button is always on top.

Enjoy and don’t forget to say hi on twitter!

@tobins

"The Three Things" entrepreneurs do for our economy

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:27:00 -0500

Social Referral Coupons/Discounts

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:48:54 -0400

Introduction

Coupons are a great technique for driving customer acquisition by giving your potential new customer an incentive to purchase your product. Additionally coupons can also be used as part of loyalty program that increases retention and repeat purchases from existing customers.

However when it comes to referrals you often see coupons (or discounts) as an after thought. What if you added the incentive during the purchase process to reward the person for referring new leads? With the state of social networking and social media, we can now implement savvy techniques to make new customer acquisition through referrals more powerful than standard techniques used by most sites.

One technique I’m eager to see put to use is Social Referral Discounts/Coupons. It’s the idea of incentivizing sharing via a social network during the checkout process. That is, giving the customer a discount in exchange for letting the merchant post a message to the customers social network.

I’d even argue that the following technique for offering discounts is more valuable than any coupons or promotions you offer because it not only incentivizes a purchase, but it also promotes an action that leads to referrals. Traditional coupons become worthless to the issuer once they have been applied to the customers cart.

How does it work?

In this fictitious example the customer comes to Foodzie.com to purchase a 6 month Tasting Box. When the customer gets to the checkout cart, they are presented with an option to save 10% off their purchase by sharing their purchase with their friends. While this option can be used in addition to traditional promo/coupon codes, our example simply replaces the promo/coupon codes with the Social Referral Discount.

When the customer chooses to apply the discount to their cart they are presented information about how it works and instructions on how to apply the discount. Here the customer is presented with the option to share the details of their purchase their Twitter stream or Facebook wall. Choosing either of these options will lead the customer to the respective services authentication/permission page.

After connecting with the respective social network the customer is brought back to the cart. Here they are notified that the discount has been applied and the total price has been adjusted. The customer then proceeds to checkout and pay for their order. Upon payment the shop will share the customers purchase with the social network that was chosen.

Measurement

I’m a firm believer in MEASURE EVERYTHING and the beauty of this technique is that it’s highly measurable. You see how many people your message was presented to and you know when someone from that audience has clicked through on the link and whether or not a transaction was completed based on this referral channel. The one downside is that you don’t have a good idea of how many impressions your message received.

Additionally if you find a particular set of customers that performs well in terms of referrals, you can then focus on how to bring those customers back by offering them larger incentives.

Great share from Mark Birch. marksbirch: Interesting...

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 12:23:02 -0400

Great share from Mark Birch.

marksbirch:

Interesting infographic on digital textbooks and education, even if it is a bit obvious. No surprise that South Korea is ahead of this trend as it is clear digital readers are the future for education. The reality however is that big, old paper textbooks will be the standard in the US for awhile. While there are many other more fundamental issues that need to be addressed in schools first, I hope that this does not impede the progress of technology in the classrooms. We are only at the very beginning of a revolution in learning and education technology.

Note: if this image does not expand, click here for the larger image.

Now THIS is innovation…

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:18:06 -0400

Now THIS is innovation…

From Idea to Prototype in 7 Days: Day 1

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:32:00 -0400

I get frustrated seeing ideas come out of various accelerator programs and at least one or two of them are something I’ve “thought of.” It’s not that I am frustrated that another team is getting success/validation for their idea, I’m frustrated because I let my idea languish and spoil in my mind when I know I could have done something about it.

It takes commitment to make something from nothing, but I’ve been learning a lot lately from people in the NY Startup community on how to strategically build a product with as little waste as possible. I’ve benefited a lot from Skillshare and the people who’ve taught classes that I attended: Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Vin Vacanti, Spencer Fry, and Chris Dixon.

After attending a few classes, I wanted to take some new thoughts and put them to practice. As David Cancel would say, Just Fuck’n Do It (#JFDI).

The next few posts chronicle how I went from a simple idea to a fully functioning (be it rough around the edges) product in 7 days.

Day 1

The Idea

Yumalicious (http://yumalicio.us)

It’s show and tell for people who love to cook. I love FoodSpotting.com, but it’s about the extraordinary food that you can buy and consume. I also love Dribbble.com, it’s show and tell for designers. I wanted to merge the two and make them about something I’m passionate about, cooking!

User Flows

Before I started trying to figure out what sort of functionally I wanted to implement, I needed to think about how a user interacts with the site. I gave myself an hour to sketch it out and think about how someone would interact with the site I wanted to create. I knew the tasks I wanted them to do and they were as follows:

Upload a dish with a photo, title and description.
View the dish and be able to comment/discuss it.
View a chef’s profile and the dishes they’ve submitted.
View the newest dishes submitted to the site.
Follow a chef
Favorite a dish.
Register for an account, login, edit profile, reset/forgot password.

Data Modeling

I love thinking about how to represent ideas as bits of information. Looked at my user flows and began defining pieces of data that represented the information. I started from a high level view and thought about the distinct “objects” of information:

User
Dish
Comment

From there I looked at how these objects were related and then started filling them out with details. It’s a simple exercise that only took a few minutes to do.

Wireframing

I will be honest; I love the idea of wireframing tools, but I don’t find them practical.

I sketch out the general layout of my pages in a notepad, but I do all my detailed wireframing within my project. After playing with Balsamiq, Visio, Omni Graffle, etc in the past I found that the best tool for me to plan out the structure of a page is using basic HTML and a smidge of CSS. It’s not that that these tools are bad, I just find I save time since I don’t have to do the work twice (once in Balsamiq and once during implementation.)

This also allows me to touch and feel my application as it evolves and limit having to maintain two versions of the same thing.

Scrum Time!

I love agile, but I’m also very informal and unconventional in how I do things. However a little structure goes a LONG way. I set up a scrum styled task board that only has 4 columns:

Product Backlog
On Deck
In Progress
Completed

Each task that goes into one of these columns is a simple User Story. A User Story is a short description that defines a piece of functionality. I took the list of flows and broke them down into atomic descriptions of functionality. Here are some examples:

Allow a new user to create a user profile and attach an image.
Allow a user to log in to the site.
Allow a user to upload a photo with a title and description.
Allow a user to view a submitted photo.
Allow submitting user to edit a photos title and description.
Log a view count for a unique visitor to each photo viewed.

After I created a list of user stories, I then prioritized them. They were prioritized by how important the functionality was and their dependencies. For example I would prioritize “allow a user to upload a photo”, but also prioritize “create a user profile” and “log in to the site” as user profiles were required to post a photo.

This prioritized list would then go into the Product Backlog. The product backlog is the prioritized list of ALL user stories you come up with for your product. Even stuff you want to implement 3 months from now. One thing to note is that while I prioritized the Product Backlog I also made note to prioritize in order of what I felt would make a “complete” first product. I drew a mental line in the sand in which I determine which things are “nice to have” vs. “must have”. The “must have” stories always were moved up the list.

Once everything was prioritized I then started moving tasks into the On Deck column. This column represented a small set of tasks I would like to get accomplished before the day ended. User stories would only make their way into the “On Deck” column when I was highly confident if it was something I could accomplish within a given period of time. Typically this limited me to only have 6-8 items in the On Deck column at any given time.

I would move something out of the On Deck to the “In Progress” column once I was ready to commence work on those stories. Most of the time there was only one task in this column at any given time, but sometimes there were two or three if they were connected.

Once a story from the “In Progress” column has been completed, I move it over into the “Completed” column. Typically if there were more people involved I would have another column that included a “Review” of the story, however since I am the only one working on this project I would bundle reviews into the “In Progress” column.

After something was moved from “In Progress” to “Completed”, I would then promote a story from the “Product Backlog” into the “On Deck” column.

Any scrum/agile purists may cringe at this, but I deviated from a lot of parts because I knew they would only get in the way. My goal was not to make a process, but to make a product. I stripped down the process and threw out things that didn’t need to be there because I knew my limitations of working on this independently.

Technology

I love exploring new technologies, but I’m also a proponent of “go with what you know.” As a developer I feel confident that I can build what is required, so my goal was to flex more about the things I wanted to learn. Specifically I want to learn more about Product Management, Usability, and Online Marketing.

The goal for me was to “Just Fuck’n Do It”. I didn’t want to create excuses for myself by giving myself time to explore interesting technologies. This project was more about the idea than it was about the nuts and bolts.

For the technology I went with a fairly simple stack:

Java
Apache
MySQL
Tomcat

I like Java and I’ve been using Java for a majority of my career building technology for companies with large-scale websites (e.g. MLB.com, Nick.com, FoxSports.com, etc.). I know it and I feel confident in how to scale it.

Cassandra & MongoDB are great products. I really find them interesting, but I found that there were some things I didn’t want to deal with now. Either way I’ve architected the data access of the site in such a way that I can quickly migrate to another data store when the time comes.

For an MVC framework I went with Spring Frameworks as it’s fairly simple and VERY robust.

Implementation

After the “Product Backlog” and “On Deck” had stories in it, I began to get to work. The first items On Deck were:

Create a unique user account
Allow the user to log in
Upload a photo
View photo

These were items that I had determine were “vital” to getting the project going. The main purpose of the idea is to share what you’ve cooked. In order to do that you need to be able to create an account and upload a photo. After you create an account you may want to come back and upload more photos, this required me to let the user log in. When a photo is uploaded there needs to be a way to view it. That was what I wanted to get done after a days worth of work.

Instead I was able to move through those relatively quickly because I kept everything simple. I then moved a few more items from the Product Backlog to the On Deck column:

Comment on a photo
View user profile
View newest photos
View users photos

One downside of using the stack I was using was that I was repetitively creating similar objects over and over:

Bean/Pojo
Data Access Object
Service Layer
Controllers

Setting this up isn’t very complicated, but it was a task I was repetitively doing over and over. I talked about that with a friend and he told me to check out the Spring Data and I started using it for new Data Access Objects I wanted to create.

Conclusion

Day 1 was by far the most important day as it’s where everything is done to pave the way for the next few days. The planning and laying out the idea was time well spent. I may even argue that the planning was more important than the coding because it made the direction all that more clearer.

Next Steps

In the next posts I’ll talk about some of the more interesting UX and Technical challenges I ran into.

"Fake it until you make it." to "Make it so you don't have to fake it!"

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:38:00 -0400

There’s a phrase I hear at entrepreneur events in NYC that makes me cringe:

“Fake it until you make it.”

It’s not so much what it means that gets to me. It’s the fact that it’s often misused or misunderstood. Not always, but a lot of times I see/hear it misused. The phrase comes from a psychology technique to build ones own confidence to overcome something that they are having difficulty with. A good example is visualizing and becoming extroverted to overcome shyness in social situations.

Instead I see would be entrepreneurs taking this advice to portray them or their companies as something they are not. “Fake it until you make it” is not a way to rationalize lying, when it’s time to act on the misrepresentation of the truth you will run into problems. Be it about the size of your team, how much traffic you get, or how many clients you have. You don’t want to misrepresent quantifiable data because at some point false data will come back to bite you in the ass.

To me it makes more sense to acknowledge your limitations and position you are in. If you are a solo founder or a small team working on something, the best thing you can do is act within your means. There’s a fine art in managing expectations when you are aiming high and your resources are limited.

If you’re a team of 3 but your output is that of 8, then praise those accomplishments to show how good your team is. Don’t do your team a disservice by hiding their abilities behind a fake team.

If you are focused on how much traffic you are getting and aren’t where you would like to be, then focus on creative ways to get there and be proud of it. Saying you are already there means you have to make up for it and work double to get there.

If you don’t have many clients and inflate the number in hopes that it increases social proof, then consider that a client may prefer to work with a team that can focus more on their needs. You’ll be better able to establish trust and maybe learn more about your business by providing more hands on experience with a client that wants be a part of your success.

Building something from nothing is not easy, but lying about it won’t make you feel any better about your struggles. Wear those bruises as a badge of honor because you are going to be much prouder when you say “I made it so I didn’t have to fake it.”

Knowing When to Quit

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 10:19:00 -0400

You’ve spent a lot of time and energy on starting a business - using your own savings, convincing others to work with you, and pouring your heart into it. Even though you’ve been at it a long time already, you’re still going at it…convinced that this is the next big thing! Or is it? At what point do you ask yourself if you should keep persevering? When do you call it quits?

I suggest that you should know before you even start. Let’s consider a simple version of raising funds to illustrate the point.

When you’re seeking investment capital from an Angel or VC, you are selling a specific vision. Included in that is a set of expectations of how you plan on executing that vision with the funds you’re seeking to acquire. Since the investors will hold you accountable for those expectations, if you can’t execute, you can be certain that they won’t invest in your business again.

In this scenario, it’s pretty easy to understand when it’s time to shut down your business. The funds will eventually run out. And when you run out of money to cover operations, it’s game over.

However, during the early stages - before funding - the rules of the game may not seem as clear since you’re not operating a business with investment capital. Instead, you and your team are putting in sweat equity by working nights and weekends, and I’ll argue that the blood, sweat and tears you are putting into your idea pre-funding are much more valuable than any amount of money an investor will put into your business.

Time is your most valuable resource because you can never get it back once you have used (or not used) it. You are basically an investor of your own time. So, before you embark on a project, make sure to sell yourself on your own vision; if you can’t do this, then stop here. Progress will be slow, and you will never be able to sell it to potential team members and future investors.

Once you’ve bought into your own vision, set up reasonable expectations on how to execute that you and your team can agree on and, most importantly, commit to. The best way to do this, so that you can track your progress, is to form milestones. (This is with the understanding that the process used to reach these milestones may change.) Here’s an example of a simple set of milestones:

Finding essential members of your team within 2 weeks
Building a prototype within 4 weeks
Get 5 early customers into your business within 8 weeks
Establish partnerships for distribution/acquisition within 10 weeks
Get commitments from investors within 12 weeks

If you’re not meeting these milestones within a reasonable margin of error, then you should consider whether or not to continue investing more of your time and energy.

Success may be around the corner, but if you’re still struggling to get out of the gate six months after starting your business, then you need to have an honest discussion as to why. Identify the roadblocks and either figure out how to get around them or stop where you are. There’s no shame in folding a hand you know won’t win. You can always play another round.

Mark Birch. Strong Opinions.: Outsourcing the Startup

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:06:29 -0400

Mark Birch. Strong Opinions.: Outsourcing the Startup:

I can’t say it any better myself regarding outsourcing!

marksbirch:

When I hear someone espouse the evils of outsourcing and startups, I just laugh. This mostly comes up in conversations about outsourcing one’s tech and product development to outsourcing companies (check out Vivek Wadhwa and Mark Suster respective posts). The arguments are compelling and…

Antonio Garcia-Martinez: Why founding a three-person startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs.

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:24:39 -0400

Antonio Garcia-Martinez: Why founding a three-person startup with zero revenue is better than working for Goldman Sachs.:

Antonio Garcia-Martinez’s awesomely written piece on going from a very cush 6 figure job at Goldman Sachs to founding a startup. His biggest regret?

I’ve had apocalyptic fights with the other founders that almost ended in fisticuffs. I’m watching my four-month-old daughter grow up via Skype. These jeans I’m wearing will likely fuse with my skin at some point if I don’t take them off. I haven’t seen a paycheck or a loving woman in much too long.

You know what I regret most though, going from Goldman to this?

Not having made the switch earlier.

I really liked this post, but I wish there was more detail on transitioning from the being a Quant Analyst to a founder of a tech startup.

Jason Freedman: Pivots are for the lucky.

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 08:12:40 -0400

Jason Freedman: Pivots are for the lucky.:

My favorite part of Jason’s thoughts on pivoting:

Even if you manage your cash flow well, you risk the loss of momentum that is so vital to a startup’s life. Engineers that were recruited under some awesome, bold vision get antsy when the company can’t find direction. Once a company decides to pivot, it becomes a ticking time bomb ready to implode.

He makes a great argument as to why a “full” pivot is a very risky proposition and why doing an incremental shift (he likes to call it a “veer”) is much more manageable and (hopefully) more successful approach to rescuing a flailing product.

What does Product/Market Fit look like?

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:30:00 -0500

Last year I posted the Compete.com graphs of a few companies that were early stage. I noted one graph in particular was a company in the progress of trying to figure out their product and market. Back then it looked like this:

This graph represents the unique visits between 2009 and 2010.

Anyone who is trying to build a web based application is familiar with this sort of graph. It’s an up and down ride trying to find out a sustainable means of growth with very little cash. It’s not the most meaningful graph to an early stage company, but it identifies an important trend.

During this time I watched this team figure out how to take an idea, find the angles, identify the problems that exist around that idea, and determine whether or not the market needs solutions to those problems.

They took lessons learned from the Lean Startup methodology to validate their assumptions by iterating quickly and most importantly talking (and listened) to customers.

When talking to the founders of this company I would hear themes about focus on product, simplifying their concept, and isolating the types of customers they were initially targeting. I watched them switch between ideas and try various concepts. With each change I imagined them meticulously analyzing the impact the changes made on their growth.

Without question they worked extremely hard and focused intensely on building the best application for their users.

It’s a year later. How does this company’s growth look now?

You hear of companies that stumble upon something great. They have an idea so simple and they just crush it; all the while making it seem so easy that anyone can do it. The guys I’ve mentioned above are in the process of crushing it by working really hard and continually trying out variations on their idea learning more and more about their product and market.

It’s inspiring to see their jagged traffic patterns early on and watching them work hard to find the right fit.

UPDATE

As Vin Vacanti of Yipit.com just tweeted:

Thanks for the post! You can mention the company if you want. We’re proud of our struggle!

Last night I had the opportunity to attend and film a fireside...

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:20:00 -0500

Last night I had the opportunity to attend and film a fireside chat between David Lerner and Mark Suster. The discussion was very insightful and it’s worth the time to listen as Mark talks about fundraising, angels, incubators, entrepreneurial challenges, and technology. I must say I particularly enjoyed his candor and enthusiasm to share his thoughts.

Details about the event:

The Columbia Venture Community welcomes Mark Suster, venture capitalist and active blogger, to campus for an evening of candid discussion about investing and entrepreneurship. Columbia Tech Ventures, the NYU Venture Community, the UPenn Venture Association, and the New York Venture Community are co-hosting the event.

Mark Suster is a two-time entrepreneur who has gone to the “Dark Side” of VC. He joined GRP Partners in Los Angeles in 2007 as a General Partner after selling his company to Salesforce.com. He focuses on helping early-stage technology companies. Read more about Mark at http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com

Many thanks to the guys who put this together!

Mark Peter Davis

David Lerner

Mike Katz

Real-Life Web 2.0 Experience Starring Twitter, Venmo, JWegener, and Yours Truly (with a guest appearance by FourSquare)

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:05:00 -0400

Gotta love Web 2.0 & Mobile Apps

A few days ago I was giving a presentation from my iPad on a projector, the only problem was I had lost the iPad-to-VGA out cable I purchased for my presentation. I had every intent of going to the Apple store during lunch, however as the day progressed it looked less and less likely that I was even going to be able to leave the building for more than 10 minutes.

I had Tweetie open when I see the following tweet come across my screen:

For those who don’t know, Tekserve is an alternative Apple retailer in NYC and Jonathan Wegener (@jwegener) is an awesome techie from the NYC Startup community (who was going to be attending the event).

I sent Jonathan a private tweet asking him if he could do me a favor and pick up the cable I needed. A few minutes later he responded with a confirmation that he purchased the cable and he’d charge me via Venmo.

Seconds later I receive a text from Venmo with a charge for the iPad Cable and I promptly confirm the charges.

End of story! (:

From Foursquare to Twitter to Venmo to Physical Hand Off. (: Gotta love it!

Feedback Forum: Plan.FM

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:42:59 -0400

Each month I organize and moderate an event called the Feedback Forum. Here is a blurb from the Eventbrite page:

The Feedback Forum is a monthly gathering of NYC entrepreneurs and technology-based startups or businesses in the NY metro area. We focus on a specific company and discuss critical operational challenges in an open environment that creates a learning opportunity which can benefit the broader NYC entrepreneur community.

What I do is find companies that want feedback on their business and then bring other entrepreneurs (seasoned, aspiring, curious, anyone really) to discuss the business we are focusing on. I limit the # of attendees to 20 people so that there is a productive discussion.

It’s a two hour event that’s broken up into segments. The first segment is a round of brief introductions of the attendees and then a round of discussion to get familiar with the business. The rest of the event is broken up into segments to discuss the challenges the business may be facing.

Last night I was a little self serving and held a Feedback Forum for Plan.FM. For the event Min and I put together a deck to help describe the service and highlight some items we wanted to discuss:

The discussion was very open. Here is some of what we discussed and what came out of it:

Usability - The online event space is fragmented with over 70 different event scheduling, personal calendars, and social calendar services. Our mission is to separate the signal from the noise within this fragmentation. What are some ways in which Plan.fm can be an indispensable compliment to a users preferred calendar/scheduling system?

There was a lot of focus on making the calendar simpler, but without replacing a users existing calendar. Users prefer Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook and there is no need to create an alternative calendaring system. The ability for Plan.FM to synchronize invites and rsvps to a users existing calendar is what people were most interested in discussing.

Simplifying the functionality was another area that the group had directed attention to. There’s a lot of long term vision on how a service like Plan.FM can be a social tool for attendees of events or even coordinating with other people within your social and professional networks, but a lot of that gets lost in the current offering.

Strategy – Does it make sense to focus on certain vertical networks as a growth strategy? Is there value in focusing on networks like Linked In that allows users to find events their colleagues, competitors, and potential clients are attending? Focusing on professionals may also opens up more possibilities for providing lead generation opportunities for industry conferences. Are there any other verticals that we should be thinking about?

“Do one thing, do it well” seemed to be the theme when there was a discussion about strategy. Reaching that 20k user mark will surface who the real target audience is and how they are using the product. This will then help define where to focus user acquisition initiatives.

Branding was briefly discussed on whether or not Plan.FM was the right name for the product. However a larger consensus was that the focus should be on the product right now, not the branding.

Revenue – The focus of revenue has been on sponsorships in emails, sponsored event listings, and affiliate programs (fandango, live nation, eventbrite, open table, stub hub). We’d love to hear the experiences other entrepreneurs had with various similar methods as well as discuss other opportunities.

There were clearly ideas an opportunities about how to generate revenue, however it really depends on the direction the strategy taken. I illustrated how focusing on larger and more expensive events would be more interesting than smaller ticket items like movie tickets.

In general the response to revenue was to focus on isolating the value and focusing on that before focusing on monetization.

I really want to thank all the people who attended and gave feedback! We had a stellar mindshare attend and it was exciting getting a lot of thoughtful responses from what we are trying to accomplish! In alphabetical order we had Marc Alter, Dean Collins, Roman Fichman Esq., Jeanne Goulet, Jake Howerton, Wayne Mulligan, Saadiq Rodgers-King, Ray Schmitz, Ron Suarez, David Wang, Jonathan Wegener, and Vinicius Vacanti in attendance!

Lastly special thanks to New Work City (@nwc) for being our host for the Feedback Forum!

Plan.FM Infrastructure (Photo)

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:22:09 -0400

More detailed post to come, but I recently completed my migration from AWS to Rackspace Cloud. Here’s a quick overview of what I built out for Plan.FM. It’s a pretty basic setup, but I’d be interested in comments from others on architecting a scalable infrastructure.

Entrepreneur & VC Blogs I Read Regularly

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:43:00 -0400

One of my Founder Institute buddies sent out an email asking which blogs we read as it relates to entrepreneurship and VC. There is a much larger list, but these are the ones I learned the most from. I also probably don’t have some that I should be reading. What blogs do you read/recommend?

Entrepreneur Related Blogs

http://startup-marketing.com - Sean Ellis’s Blog

http://steveblank.com - Steve Blank

http://www.startuplessonslearned.com - Eric Ries

http://www.fabricegrinda.com - Fabrice Grinda

http://foundersblock.com

http://blog.asmartbear.com - Jason Cohen

http://mixergy.com

http://onstartups.com

http://giffconstable.com - Giff Constable

http://davidcancel.com - David Cancel

http://www.ashmaurya.com - Ash Maurya

http://viniciusvacanti.com - Vin Vacanti

http://adamrneary.com/ - Adam Neary

Entrepreneur/VC Hybrid

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com - Gabriel Weinberg

http://cdixon.org - Chris Dixon

http://www.earlystager.com

http://www.marketing.fm - Eric Friedman

http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com - Charlie O’Donnell

http://www.avc.com - Fred Wilson

http://feld.com - Brad Feld

http://500hats.typepad.com - Dave McClure

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com - Mark Suster

http://www.markpeterdavis.com - Mark Peter Davis

http://blog.simeonov.com - Sim Simeonov

http://www.adventurista.com - Sarah Tavel

http://bostonvcblog.typepad.com/ - Jeff Bussgang

http://vcmike.wordpress.com

http://venturehacks.com

Slowly rolling out the new Plan.FM!

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:09:11 -0400

Slowly rolling out the new Plan.FM!

"Negative Influence Metrics"

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:15:00 -0400

I like to group conversion funnels and cohort analysis into what I call “Positive Influence Metrics.” This is when we look at the reports generated from the data we collect about users to determine the whether they are taking the desired action we want them to. Hence we look for repeat positive signals showing users taking the actions we want them to. These metrics and reports show us whether or not our hypothesis is correct.

However there is something I call “Negative Influence Metrics.” I use it for measuring the actions I DO NOT want the users to take.

This isn’t the same as looking for negative trends in cohort analysis or conversion funnels. You may want to consider low conversions, lack of retention among cohorts, high churn, etc as “Negative Influence Metrics”, but what we really want to do is identify specific actions that a user should not take if they are happy using our product.

For example I want to know when a user disables an account, opts out of email notifications, or revokes permissions from facebook or twitter. Collecting these actions is important, but the real value comes from when you, as a company, take action on being alerted that someone has taken a negative action.

After being alerted that a user took an action I did not want them to, I want to know the reasons why they did. Was it because they were receiving too many emails, were they skeptical about how I am handling their personal data, or did they misunderstand the value proposition and realize that the service wasn’t for them?

It’s a step in opening a dialog with a customer who is heading for the door and gives me an opportunity to learn why and evaluate how to address the problems they encountered with the service. Early on I believe these are going to be some of the most valuable conversations I will have with my users.

My Startup Metrics

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:29:22 -0400

A fellow NYC-based entrepreneur, Vin Vacanti of Yipit.com, had asked twitter what others were doing in regards to metrics. The question was whether or not people had advice about using a mixture of Google Analytics, Mix Panel, KISS Metrics or built your own metrics solution. I sent him my response in private, but he suggested I share the info with others here. What follows is an edit of my response to both Vin and Hiten Shah of KISS Metrics.

I LOVE metrics, but I’ve realized while working on my various projects that it’s really easy to get lost in these metrics because there’s just so much to process. Dave McClure’s famous talk on Metrics For Pirates: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue (AARRR) is a great start for understanding what is best for the various stages.

Marketing Metrics 4 Pirates (July 2010) View more presentations from Dave McClure.

I’m at the early stage of a products life cycle. Specifically I am pre-product/market fit. This means that I have an idea I want to build a product around, but I have yet to validate whether or not my product meets the needs of the market (or any market) I am trying to address.

After doing rounds of Customer Discover & Validation I set out to build a simple product that can help me validate and better illustrate BOTH the problem and solution. Part of this was to lay the foundation of data collection to help dive my decision making process about the product. I learned early on that vanity metrics (unique visits, page views, time on site, etc.) are really just bullshit for a product that hasn’t achieved Product/Market fit. You need to dive down into data that illustrates the behavior of your users.

I’ve specifically been focusing on conversion funnels and cohort analysis.

For conversion funnels I’ve been evaluating Google Analytics, KISS Metrics, and Mix Panel. All of these tools are excellent, but I will say that KISS Metrics has the best visualization and gets you to what matters quickest. Mix Panel is good too, but I specifically like the API as it relates to “events”. Meaning it doesn’t have to rely on page views as Google Analytics does.

For cohort analysis I built a custom system that I’ll describe below. I know Mix Panel does cohort analysis as does RJ Metrics, but I wanted to be able to crunch the data myself for some custom reports that may prove to be useful.

Data I’m Collecting

I shouldn’t really be saying this, but I try to log as much information about a user as possible. I may not use it all, but at least I have it for when it may become useful. I try to not cross the line of creepiness as it relates to privacy, however I do have an idea of how a user came to my site and which features they are engaging with.

When a visitor first visits my site I make note of the channel they traveled to arrive here. If they click on a link from google, blog, email, or twitter I log the referral in the users session. If the user activates and becomes a registered, I log that information with that account. In the future I’m hoping to use this information to identify the channels that perform better as it relates to converting users.

Cohort Analysis

When it comes to the cohort analysis I built a very basic for my project. It’s mostly based off of what I’ve read/heard regarding metrics from Dave McClure, Fred Wilson, Tim Ferriss, Josh Porter, Hiten Shah, David Cancel, Ash Maurya, and a band of others.

At the core of this I track three primary objects: Entities, Actions, and Change Log.

Entities are unique objects that perform actions. Typically these are users. I can imagine they could be anything really, but for consumer web users are what I care about the most.

Actions are specific tasks an entity can perform. For example logging in, posting a comment, inviting a friend to the service, playing a game, etc. I set this up to be pretty amorphous since I knew I would want to focus on the usage of different functionality down the line.

Change Logs are basically annotations I enter into the system to note changes I’ve made to the site. This is so I can view if there’s a change in performance among a cohort or a set of cohorts I can get a quick view into what may have lead to that difference.

Reports are segmented into cohorts and specific action. The reports are generated on a timed interval and I can configure them to organize cohorts by when they are created (weekly, biweekly, monthly divisions). For now I’m focusing on time rather than other attributes (region, age, gender, etc) as I don’t believe I have enough users to really make cohorts based on other data meaningful.

When the reports are generated I break it down into trailing count of distinct actions users took for that period. As the cohorts age I record their historical stats. The results look like following:

Cohort: Weekly

Action: Login

Cohort 5 (220) | 26%|

Cohort 4 (190) | 19%| 10%|

Cohort 3 (200) | 15%| 7%| 2%|

Cohort 2 (140) | 10%| 3%| 1%| 0%|

Cohort 1 (100) | 8%| 2%| 0%| 0%| 0%|

I create historical views of previous weeks and calculate the current week on the fly. Once the week is over I will create a static snapshot to save on doing real time calculations.

The reason I set out to do this is that I want to test specific parts of my application. I felt I had a somewhat decent activation rate when I pushed users to my landing page, but I had a very low return rate. Once a user signed up, they would not come back. They were willing to spend the time with what I was offering, but they did not have an interest in repeating their visit on their own.

I already knew there were a lot of things I wasn’t doing to get users to come back. I wanted to test specific things such as sending out weekly summaries of their account via email or notifications, but more specifically I wanted to know the impact of those actions. I also wanted to know if I went from a weekly to a more frequent distribution would it change the repeat visits or provoke users to unsubscribe.

Right now I’m focusing on repeat logins, however I know once I see that improving I’ll want to determine how to increase referrals from within the application as well as content creation. That’s why I set up actions to be generic.

To create new entities and record actions I use a simple REST service. It can be called by javascript or server side scripting. The reporting is pretty barebones right now. I print out a very simple text based output of the data that I have as part of my application “dashboard”. I’ve integrated with Google Charts too, but only to show the graph of cohorts overlaid on top of each other. Most of the time I’ll just export data to excel from mysql if I want more detailed visualization, but largely I want to see the % increase. I haven’t spent too much time making it more robust as I want to focus on the product I’m building to test out my ideas on growth.

MUST READ

http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/09/startup-metrics.html

http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/09/08/how-to-measure-if-users-love-your-product-using-cohorts-and-revisit-rates/

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/10/the-cohort-analysis.html

http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/2010/understanding-metrics-that-matter-interview-with-hiten-shah/

http://www.ashmaurya.com/2009/11/how-i-am-measuring-productmarket-fit/

http://52weeksofux.com/post/646711369/cohort-analysis-measuring-engagement-over-time