Attention iPad developers: today is your last chance to submit applications for the iPad launch on April 3rd. According to Apple's recent developer mailings and the iPhone Dev Center, applications must be received by March 31st to guarantee a spot in the "grand opening of the iPad App Store". Of course, for marketing and distribution purposes, this represents a huge promotional opportunity and first mover advantage.
More data out of the Freemium Summit and following the great insights from Evernote. Here are tidbits from Pandora and Dropbox about their freemium business models and results. More case studies and data are available on GigaOM.
Pandora Freemium product: Pandora One Premium features: higher quality streams, desktop app, no usage limits Results: 300,000 subscribers - 1.6-1.7% of monthly uniques Dropbox Premium features: Bandwidth Results: Dropbox has one of the best referral programs on the web (see my review here). The program increased signups by 60% and now drives 30% of all signups. Organization: 30% of the engineering is devoted to user acquisition
Evernote (see full write up here) Premium features: premium account, bandwidth Results: 1.8% of users (6% of active users) have converted to premium users. And Evernote has driven 50K premium subs in 28 months.
I have been delinquent in updating this blog with recent additions to Dogpatch Labs San Francisco... so here are five companies that have taken home at Dogpatch Labs over the last couple months (and I'll try to provide more frequent updates!)
Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world.
Cardpool is a gift card exchange service where anyone can buy, sell, or trade their gift cards in a safe and secure environment.
Formspring: Ask questions, give answers and learn more about your friends..
ProfessionL centralizes all your recruitment management needs into one unified web-based software application that can be used by any business that recruits (including recruitment specialists).
Rosepad is an education platform for secondary schools.
Attention freemium marketers: popular utility application Evernote gave a very detailed overview of their freemium business... and the data is both fascinating and within the typical band of freemium products. The major takeaway: 1.8% of users (6% of active users) have converted to premium users. And Evernote has driven 50K premium subs in 28 months. I appreciate Evernote's willingness to provide visibility into their model as it helps other freemium businesses learn and optimize accordingly; and as we know, freemium has become a productive, consumer-friendly way to monetize apps, services, social content, etc.
I encourage you to read the full article on Venturebeat... but high-level statistics are below. If you are a freemium business and are interested in analyzing your performance, KISSmetrics is a great solution (Polaris portfolio company).
- 2.7m users with 7,000 added daily - Premium accounts are $5.00 / month - Has product on iPhone, Android, Mac, PC, and web - 60% of audience is US - 50,000 paying subscribers which is 1.8% of users and 6% of actives - "The key to hanging on to older users is introducing new features." - Cost per active user is $0.09 (originally was $0.50) - Revenue per active user is $0.70 per month
"Some of the things you can do are just mind blowing," says Steve Pacheco, FedEx's director of advertising. "You are taking something that used to be flat on a page and making it interactive and have it jump off the page." This is just one glowing quote, among several, in the Wall Street Journal's "Magazines Use the iPad as Their New Barker". Yesterday, I wrote about how the iPad has the opportunity to transform traditional print and reading; today's WSJ talks about how the iPad has the potential to transform the advertisements (and therefore the revenues) for print publications like Conde Nast, Hearst and Time Inc. The model seems appealing to:
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are working with test iPads, according to people familiar with the matter. Six advertisers, including Coca-Cola and FedEx, have agreed to advertise with the Journal, and a four-month ad package costs $400,000, according to these people. Coke and FedEx declined to comment on terms. The Journal plans to charge subscribers $17.99 a month for iPad subscriptions, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ultimately it comes down to consumer appetite and distribution, but the cycle has the potential to create greater value from already-produced content:
- publishers can deliver content electronically ... and derive direct revenues from download - advertisers, who can create more compelling, engaging ads - and therefore the publishers can draw greater ad values (of course sell through is the major issue)
Whether or not the iPad transforms print, it has captured the attention and imagination of publishers and advertisers alike - and that is sparking innovation... which alone is valuable and exciting.
The next Dogpatch Labs San Francisco office hours will be Wednesday March 31st from 9:00 - 11:00am. Office hours are informal and a good opportunity to meet, tour Dogpatch and interact with other residents / entrepreneurs. If attending, please grab your free ticket on Eventbrite!
Where: Dogpatch Labs at Pier 38 in San Francisco (Townsend and Embarcadero) What: Office Hours When: March 31st at 9-11am Who: Ryan Spoon (Polaris Venture Partners) and various Dogpatch residents + office hours attendees
Apple's iPad arrives in ten days. It represents a new form of web consumption and, hopefully, a new form of content, digital media and reading. While the Kindle is able to deliver simple, elegant reading of books, the iPad allows for greater creativity and computing power. The results extend beyond text-based, book-like reading and become something much richer... think applications meet text, rich media, HTML5, and so on.
I initially got very excited about Wired Magazine's demonstration (see here), and after seeing Penguin's demo, have begun to think even bigger about the implications for:
- children's books - textbooks - magazines (editions and brands) Like the iPhone, I think we will see a slower uptake on create content and applications.... but based on consumer demand and developer experience with Apple, my hope is that the iPad app gallery gains depth and strength very quickly. After all, its the apps that ultimately sold the iPhone.
Yesterday, Formspring (http://www.formspring.me) announced a $2.5m Series A investment that was led by Baseline Ventures and FreeStyle Capital. Polaris is excited to also participate alongside a slew of terrific angel investors: Ron Conway’s SV Angels, Maples Investments, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Kevin Rose, Travis Kalanick, Dave Morin and Scott Dorsey.
Formspring is a social Q&A platform that makes it very simple to ask questions and receive answers from targeted users. Through Facebook Connect and Twitter , answers arrive almost instantly; and thanks to Formspring's large network, users and answers are highly targeted. The combination of:
- a simple user-experience - a clear consumer impulse (questions / answers) - that delivers immediate gratification - in a viral and social way
... has translated into significant growth. Since their November 25th launch, Formspring now reaches over 44m users and had over 300m questions answered. For a taste of their size, search for Formpsring.me on Twitter ... you will notice 100s of posts each minute:
Whether you are looking for creative direction or seeking input on a specific topic, I encourage you to give Formspring a spin.
More reading: VCMike: Why Polaris is Backing Formspring
SXSW 2010 was all about location. In fact, we could look back on 2010 as the year of location and geo... which would be a natural progression from 2009's mobile growth.
According to iTunes and its "What's Hot" category: the App Store is also all about location. While I do not know exactly how 'hotness' is defined, we know a couple things: - it seems to be a mix of curation + popularity - it is distinctly different from "new" apps and "top downloads" - it usually features a mix of free and paid apps... as it clearly behooves Apple to drive paid downloads - it usually features a mix of app types: games, sports, utilities, etc - for specific themes, Apple creates curated 'storefronts' (like "Baseball App Store Essentials" or "Independent Games Festivals") So it is unique that the six "hottest" apps are: Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, MyTown and Citysearch. All are free and location-based, check-in applications. In fact, only one of those applications (Booyah's MyTown) features in-app purchases; but while they are not direct revenue producers for Apple, these are all highly viral and sticky applications.
I would love to see another app category: "most active". Ultimately, I care far more about ongoing usage and adoption than the download. And ultimately, Apple should favor sticky, oft-used apps (like Pandora and Facebook... and these location apps) than those with very high churn. You can extrapolate usage through downloads and ratings... but that is flawed because 1) ratings are predominently negative due to Apple's implementation) and 2) we do not have great visibility into downloads. A barometer of activity - no matter how disguised it would be - would be powerful... and I imagine that, for the time being, these six apps would appear in that list:
I would love to see a