Cristina was snapping some photos over the weekend — I love this one, and will work it into iSwirl somehow.
Legos happen to be of interest to us here at Swirl. Among other things. Like Pez. Berries and Cream Dr. Pepper. Philip Pullman. IPAs. Vanilla cake batter ice cream. Killer mobile software. Inconsequential lists.
Russell Buckley has an interesting post over at MobHappy, wherein he discusses a conversation he had with the folks at Openwave, makers of much of the middleware that supports messaging, WAP browsing, and LBS on mobile phones.
We’re obviously very interested in this market segment, as Swirl and Swirl Connect sit squarely in the middle of it. We’re firm believers in using LBS in innovative ways to 1) enable (ideally), or at least fit in with mobile lifestyles, 2) connect people in ways that cannot be achieved by sitting at a PC, 3) provide a highly personalized user experience, 4) and just flat out do some really cool things.
There are quite a few barriers to adoption, though, and we’re all chipping away at those barriers as best we can. Russell discusses one of those barriers, and some of the blog comments are also insightful.
It’s a quick and interesting read. LBS Coming of Age? via MobHappy.
We’ve begun working on a little treat for some of our early Swirl users on college campuses. Ever heard of a ramble? Well, picture one of those, combined with a scavenger hunt, combined with copious Swirl usage and clue sharing, and capped with some killer awards.
What, you don’t know what a ramble is? Well here’s how the Swirl Ramble will work:
Your team of four will be given a ramble sheet, consisting of pictures and obscure clues. Your job is to decipher the clues, and figure out to where they are pointing you. They will all lead you to temporary Swirl hotspots, where you will pick up a puzzle piece via Swirl Connect. If you’re good, you’ll be able to decipher all of the clues within your team. But maybe not.
You can also negotiate with other teams to see if they might want to share their puzzle pieces with you. During the ramble, all inter-team and intra-team communication will be done using Swirl Connect, because interactions will also earn you points.
Once the time period has expired, or you have completed the puzzle, head back to home base. The sooner you make it back to home base, the more points you take away from opposing teams. Or you can choose to complete bonus activities to earn points, in the hopes that you can earn more than other teams can take away.
The winner is the team with the most points, and will be announced at the closing award ceremony.
Sound like fun? Our most likely campus targets are going to be in the Triangle area of North Carolina, but we haven’t looked into which ones yet. If you’re a student at one of these campuses, and feel we should bring our hunt to you, let us know!
More details to come.
Tags: Swirl, Swirl Connect, mobile applications, mobile software, mobile development, mobile 2.0, ISV, software, J2ME
Wow, where have we been lately? Diligently working, and working on a pretty sophisticated data layer, to boot.
On a typical mobile device, there are very tight constraints on data storage and available processing power for mobile software. The end result can be sluggish interactions with the application. Everyone notices the sluggish response, but very few people notice its absence, because that would mean that things are working as expected.
With Swirl Connect, we have a much greater than average need for processing power and data storage, so it’s very important that our data layer — the parts of our code that will handle activities related to storing and retrieving data — is highly optimized. It’s not a sexy part of the process — at the end of the day, we can’t step back and admire our work — but it’s essential to your experience using the software, and therefore, very important to us. So we have devoted, and will continue to devote, considerable effort into making sure that we have it right.
We’ve worked on standard RMS solutions, completely custom solutions, and embedded solutions. In the end, the solution that you will be using on your phone will be determined by your phone’s capabilities, and will be optimized for your phone specifically. It’s a lot of work, but we think you’ll like the results!
Tags: Swirl, Swirl Connect, mobile applications, mobile software, mobile development, mobile 2.0, ISV, software
I am by no means an expert on this subject—just someone who has looked at many different types of funding and small business support—but I thought I’d pass on what we learned as we were going through this process with Swirl.
Rather than breaking everything down by category of funding, I’m going to break it down by stage, if for no other reason then because that’s how this information applies to us. Please also note that this article applies to start-ups, not small businesses. There are far fewer start-ups than small businesses, as start-ups are generally product-focused.
Just Getting Started
I’m considering this to encompass groups that have a vision for a product, identified some key players, identified some milestones, have begun work, but don’t yet have a prototype.
Savings
This one is obvious. Everyone should have some skin in the game. You are able to keep ownership and control 100 percent within your grasp, and having your savings on the line looks good to potential investors later in the funding process.
Bootstrapping
Bootstrapping is really not a source of funding, but is such a common practice in early stage start-ups that it deserves mention. When you hear someone talk about bootstrapping, it usually refers to any combination of techniques that can be used to get as much done as possible, for as little money as possible. It means making due with the bare essentials, fighting for every discount you can receive, printing on both sides of the paper, taking paid consulting gigs while your product is in development, or signing up an early customer or two.
Friends and Family
Many start-ups (somewhere around 80 percent, but I don’t recall the source for that) raise money from friends and family. The money is usually easy to find, but adding investment risk to any relationship is undesirable to many people. Another factor, though incredibly unlikely to ever affect you or me, is that your friends and family might not be considered “accredited investors” by the SEC. Should you achieve enormous success, and decide to issue an Initial Public Offering (IPO), the SEC might look at these funding sources as securities violations that will need to be rectified.
One option that you might find attractive is using a third-party intermediary to administer loans from friends and family. The intermediary can provide the loan documentation, structure a payment schedule, and provide statements to you and your lender. Loans are just as binding as bank loans, providing protection for your investors, but funding is easier to obtain at favorable rates, benefiting you. Circle Lending is a large, popular intermediary.
Debt
You can always borrow money, of course. Many people use credit cards or personal loans to make ends meet. Home equity loans are another source of funds, though it’s generally recommended that you have at least 50 percent equity in your home before you even consider this option.
The U.S Small Business Administration (SBA) is a great resource. The SBA works with banks and lenders to promote financing for small businesses. They have several programs, including an Express program, LowDoc program, and a loan guaranty program, whereby they will guarantee a portion of a loan made from a traditional lending institution.
Commercial banks, S&L’s, non-bank lenders, credit unions, and so on are potential sources of loans. Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, they are very unlikely to lend money to your business. Instead, they might lend to you.
I’d recommend starting with the SBA, and then looking at any local business development or entrepreneurial councils that that you might have near you. They will probably be the best resources to put you in touch with suitable lenders.
Early Stage Start-up
In an early-stage start-up, you might have been operating for some time, and you generally have a product prototype prepared. Your product might be finished or unfinished, and you might or might not be ready for a big push to market. Yes, that does cover a lot of ground. For larger operations, early stage start-up is likely to start sooner, perhaps when a prototype is completed, and you’re beginning product development. For smaller operations, even late-stage operations, like rolling out a technical support desk or marketing your product might still be classified as early stage start-up funding due to small size of the investment being sought.
Angel Investors
Angels are individual, rich investors, and are referred to as angels because they generally have lower, and more flexible, potential payback and rate of return expectations. Another benefit of using angels is that they typically have a lot of experience funding early stage companies, so they might have a good amount of contacts or advice that can be helpful. Some angels invest as individuals, and others as part of a syndicate.
When you head down this road, you’re now talking about determining a valuation for your company, agreeing on participation terms, and giving up a certain amount of control of your operation.
Angels can be difficult to find, as most are found via personal introductions. A good way to meet angels is through business capital brokers, or through any local incubators. Business capital brokers might also be able to structure private placements.
Incubators
Incubators are so named because they traditionally house early stage companies, but there are quite a few organizations that offer incubation services without being traditional incubators.
Incubators typically provide you with a low-cost, temporary place of operations. Office space in our area, for example, runs from $400 to $800 per office, per month, and provides access to shared facilities and personnel like a break room, conference facilities, printing facilities, administrative assistants, telephone and Ethernet connections, etc. Many universities have incubation services where they also offer access to faculty, students, and campus facilities (think legal advice from the legal department, library access).
Incubators will also provide business and management counseling, assist with plan development, and generally point you in the right direction. A big benefit to using an incubator is the contacts that can be obtained there, especially to the local investment community, including angels and seed funding firms, as well as other occupants of the incubator.
Seed Funding
Seed funding is similar to angel investing in that it usually involves smaller amounts of capital at early stages of operation, but similar to venture capital funding in that it is normally done through an organization that invests and advises as their primary source of revenue.
Seed funding firms are generally easier to find than angels; perhaps the easiest way to find them is through local business or entrepreneurial councils. Within a few minutes, I was able to compile a list of about 15 seed capital firms located in our region of North Carolina. Search for words or phrases like technology development, small business development, incubators, entrepreneurial council, and so on; or try finding your local Chamber of Commerce or your city’s web site.
I’ve found seed funding firms that offer to invest anywhere from $500,000 to $5 million, though near the high-end of this range is where the distinction between seed funding and venture capital seems to blur.
Start-up
Venture Capital
Almost everyone has heard of venture capital, and venture funding is a very broad topic, so I’ll just cover it by saying that VC firms generally invest a lot more money, but expect a higher stake in the company, a higher rate of return, an exit strategy, and some investment protection (e.g. payback ahead of other investors or partners). Information on VC funding is plentiful on the web.
Conclusion
So there you have it. A capsulized version of the research we at Swirl did on our funding options. Hopefully it served as a basic introduction to help you get oriented in the see of options that’s available to your start-up.
Tags: ISV, Swirl, start-up, funding, seed capital, venture capital, small business
Yahoo! released "Checkmates" last week, and I haven’t seen it get too much press as of yet. It’s actually a pretty slick application, with an ingenious navigation system.
It’s a mapping application, but its focus is on showing you where your friends are on the map, or more specifically, where your friends are, are coming from, or are going to. Install the application, sign in with your Flickr account, and you’re ready to go. Find your position on the map, and add a pushpin. All of your friends will be able to see your pushpin on their handsets.
We look at this as more validation for where we’re headed with Swirl. Swirl is about making connections, and fitting into your mobile lifestyle. As a glimpse into what we’re working on with Swirl, Yahoo! Checkmates is very similar in concept to a subset of our product. Picture the functionality of Checkmates, without the bandwidth-hogging mapping graphics, and add to it messaging capabilities (free, as in not via your carrier), group messaging and conversations, and summary presence information. That’s part of our "regional" connection service, but most of our product is focused on "local" connections.
Yahoo! Checkmates is available here
Tags: Swirl, ISV, mobile, Mobile 2.0, J2ME, mobile applications, Yahoo, Checkmates, mapping
I’ve been following with interest a new breed of mobile applications. They enable users to contextualize their mobile experiences in different ways. This interests me because these applications make up a small piece of Swirl’s competitive landscape. We’re all trying to solve similar problems, but approaching it from different directions.
Rabble enables you to place virtual sticky notes on a location. Snap pictures, create a post, and tag it with location-based information, and find what others had to say or share about the location.
Flaggr is similar in concept, although execution differs dramatically. Snap a picture, and MMS it to Flaggr with your tags. They will SMS you back with people and places near you. Online, this resembles a Google Maps and Social Networking mashup.
Bridging the gap between desktop and mobile messaging is the Mabber IM program, built on the open source Jabber platform. And moving to the desktop realm, we have Meetro and Jambo, which are both exceptionally powerful (desktop application, after all).
The approach we’re taking is a bit different, and my guess is that one of the biggest reasons others haven’t gone this route is the sheer technical complexity and significant development hurdles. But the rewards for success are substantial.
One thing I don’t like about Flaggr and Rabble is that they’re very active. Snap a picture, send an MMS, wait for a response, cross your fingers and hope you get some results. Our approach is to offer connections passively. That is, we push directly to you according to your preferences, rather than you being required to pull from us. Then again, some people like active – Flaggr and Rabble can be looked at as hobbies, and I think there is a big market for something like that – but I prefer to let my doorbell ring when company comes, rather than checking the front door every five minutes.
In addition to passive operation, some other drawbacks to many of these services are the limited number of potential connections (due to the active vs. passive nature), costs associated with data transfer, MMS, and SMS, cumbersome data entry. Of course, all mobile applications have to face considerable difficulties in device and carrier support, which Flaggr largely overcomes thanks to the fact that it is messaging-based. Rabble seems to be doing very well in this area.
Tags: Jambo, Meetro, Rabble, Flaggr, Swirl, Mabber, Mobile Applications, Mobile Development. Mobile 2.0
An update to the design dilemma that’s halted much of our work over the past two weeks:
Calmer heads prevailed, and we decided that we were getting too focused on what features to implement, rather than focusing on what problems we were trying to solve. Instead of discussing "how cool this would be," or "wouldn’t it be neat if we could," we revisited our original concept, and examined how we wanted to help Swirl users. The result of this was trimming back many of the gee whiz features that we became fixated on, and resulted in the inclusion of an entirely new chunk of functionality that aligns perfectly with the goals we have for the use of the software.
This new functionality chunk doesn’t have the geek appeal of all of the features we ditched, but it is a perfect fit for the product concept, solves a problem, and advances our original goal, which is to make it easier to connect with others.
Looking back on it, I’m sorry to have lost two weeks of coding time, but I’m more optimistic than ever about the direction we’re taking with the product. The product concept, and the product itself, is of the utmost importance at this time, but sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.
Lessons learned:
If you’ve had any similar experiences (or dissimilar for that matter), I’d love to hear about them.
Tags: product development, software design, software requirements
I’ve been using Opera Mini ever since it was first released. In a word, it is stunning. This is exactly the kind of user experience we’re trying to create with Swirl. Which ties in perfectly to a hurdle we’re presently trying to clear.
Swirl has been in development for nearly six months now. Much of that work has been focused on the frameworks being used in and by the application, rather than the features that are visible to you when using it.
All of the public-facing functions were designed before framework development began, using use cases and a persona-based design approach. Essentially, we’ve defined (very specifically) who will be using Swirl, and we design for that person. Instead of wondering what the “users might want” here or there, we ask what “Michelle wants” here. As we begin to identify with the personas we’ve defined, design decisions become easier and easier.
So one would expect that now is the time that we should be able to get rolling. But we find ourselves standing still, with competing forces tugging our decisions. We want to keep Swirl focused on what Swirl does best. But a truly engaging user experience requires, or at least suggests, that we should be tacking on features or integration with popular services. Personally, I think we can create an engaging experience by focusing tightly, and delivering beyond all expectations in our core areas. But a service like Swirl gets its value from the concentration of users in an area, and for that, a broader feature set might be in order.
So do we try to be exceptional, like Opera Mini, or throw in the leaky kitchen sink like TagWorld?
By way of an introduction to Swirl, I thought I’d quickly walk through a few questions to get you oriented. My name is Shaun Taylor, and I’ll be your tour guide in the upcoming months.
What is Swirl?
I’m glad you asked, but I’m afraid that I’ll have to be cryptic for now. We’ll be revealing details of our software / service over the next several months, but what I can tell you now is that Swirl is first and foremost a mobile application that will change how you meet, stay in touch with, and interact with other people.
Swirl will be community-driven. Through a group decision-making process, our community will determine how our budget is spent, what features will be added, improved, or removed, where our marketing dollars will be spent, and so on.
Who might like to read this blog?
Enough about that. Thanks for checking in with us, and please stop back anytime. Better yet, just subscribe to our feed, and laugh at us, or with us, over the coming months.
Technorati tags: ISV, mobile application, startup, cellphone