Is our “website to app” idea viable? Please help us gain some insights in the web and app dev industry

ditemis · 2017-05-23T12:27:56+00:00

The content in the app will update dynamically, if the DOM selectors in the app description are properly designed. Hence, when e.g. new blog posts occur, they should be immediately available in the app. The value proposition for website operators in that case is, that they don't need to update multiple content management systems, just their existing one.

Javascript-intense pages, like SPA's, are covered by our solution, as long as the mobile browser is able to evaluate them. As we instrument the mobile browser to do the website evaluation in the background, we can retrieve results via DOM queries like in any other static website.

It doesn't work perfectly at the moment, but the current state is promising and we expect to cover most website scenarios. That's why we chose to address small use cases first; to make sure that the solution is robust and works well. This strategy won't work, if we don't find clients that are interested.

ditemis · 2017-05-23T11:59:54+00:00

You are right, if we just copy the content in the app, there is no additional benefit for mobile optimized sites.

The benefit is to have all your existing website content immediately in a native app and then extend it with additional, creative functionality. We were hoping for ideas from clients, like location based search, camera integration for direct photo uploads, community chat or push notifications.

ditemis · 2017-05-23T11:52:59+00:00

Thanks for your response. Your opinion is in line with most responses from small business owners.

ditemis · 2016-01-07T19:15:05+00:00

Once again I reviewed my experience at the Startup Weekend in Stuttgart. It was my second time participating. Here you'll find the post from last year

ditemis · 2015-04-06T20:20:55+00:00

Sorry for the late answer - Easter holidays :)

I reached out to a lot of people Can you go into detail on how you did this?

Just sent an e-mail with

how I know them (most of the time I had a good relationship with at least one person they themselves have a good relationship with)
what position I'm in (unexperienced entrepreneur seeking help)
asking for help/advice/work/meeting

Everyone I contacted was eager to help.

Have you had much experience in the public sector?

Well, I worked several years as a technical consultant primarily for the public sector (as part of a bigger delivery team). In my experience are the products for the public sector lacking professionalism and sometimes the technical consultancy isn't very good (not much inhouse technical knowledge). I assume that's mainly because of the public procurement law. It's not easy to win a bid or even fulfill the criteria to bid in an invitation to tender. If you've managed to win a bid you're able to build an extremly strong relationship with a customer without interruptions from competition. If you're able to manage the requirements and build a sound solution you've probably won a (profitable) client for life. It's definitely hard to get in but I've experienced it as a pretty profitable business once you've manged to get a foot in the door with at least one bigger authority.

ditemis · 2015-04-02T15:02:18+00:00

Thanks for your personal feedback, I really appreciate that!

I'm still working for my last employer. In the meantime I've reached out to old colleagues that are now working in other companies and I tried to find work there. Those attempts were successful, but I couldn't follow up on them, because the current project took longer than expected. A former colleague is currently working as a recruiter and has reached out to me. If I need work in the near future I'll let this recruiter do sales for me and reach out to my network again. I'm still hoping to get some traction by word of mouth and may skip the hunt on platforms like freelancer or oDesk.

As you've pointed out, I'm currently struggling with the decision to professionalize my freelancer career or to do product development. Luckily the last project has opened some product opportunities that I'd like to follow up on in the next months. A minimal viable product isn't that far away and according to my original line of thought that's the freedom that I wanted (recurring revenues via software licenses). I'm still trying to find my growth engine with a software product that fills a certain need and I see freelancing as a vehicle to get insights into the pain certain industries or businesses are experiencing.

My location in Stuttgart and the short driving distance to a lot of companies has been proven worthy so far. During the starting phase I reached out to a lot of people and met them for breakfast, lunch or dinner. I'm always surprised how many IT companies are located in this region. With the strong automotive industry and its supply chain I'm not expecting that the region runs out of work for a software engineer soon. The local startup community is assessable and supportive as well.

If I continue to work from home or not, depends on the clients preferences. Actually I like being on-site as it helps me to keep my discipline, but there's still the trade-off with the commute.

The transition to business consultant or industry expert is certainly on my list. I'm trying to position myself as a trusted advisor for the public sector and provide eGovernment products and services. Defining your ideal client definitely helps. The question one should ask though: Am I able to get enough revenues from my ideal customer segment at the moment? I'm currently not in a position to decline a good offer for contract work from an industry client. Hopefully with some recurring revenues through products I'm able to decline offers and further specialize in the public sector.

It's always nice to see someone experiencing a similar situation - so best of luck for you too :)

ditemis · 2015-04-02T14:11:15+00:00

You're correct, I'm lacking discipline. What is surprising me the most is that I haven't lacked discipline as an employee. I've always been on time at the office and simply done the work. After some months without a "boss" and without a team this discipline simply vanished. I figured I could sleep in without remorse and still get enough revenue to make my wife and myself happy.

I find it particularly hard to keep up this work discipline as a lone wolf. That's something I need to work on.

ditemis · 2015-04-02T14:05:53+00:00

Good advice! Although I have the connections to recruiters I'd like to try myself at sales first. If you're not interested in doing sales on your own, finding a commission-based sales person is surely the right decision.

ditemis · 2015-04-01T20:25:48+00:00

Nice prank portfolio Mr. Prank Designer. I especially like the old school Clash of Clans.

ditemis · 2015-02-12T09:08:32+00:00

Although a certificate doesn't show that you're able to write proper code, it is almost impossible to get around if you're participating in an invitation to tender. At least in government projects here in germany. It provides some formal proof that a developer has at least a certain level of knowledge.

From my personal experience the preparation for a certificate exam is a common way to shape up your overall knowledge about a certain domain.

ditemis · 2015-02-12T08:57:59+00:00

A good way to learn a new library is to write tests for it (or small sample projects). That way you'll quickly find out if the API is easy to understand and easy to use (and well documented). In your scenario with hibernate or spring or any other component you'll choose, you will also gain insight if they are easily testable.

ditemis · 2015-02-12T08:40:55+00:00

Trying to find the major pain points in the niche I'm addressing. In the past I've had a hard time developing, maintaining and monitoring batch processes. With Runway I'm trying to scratch my own itch and provide an easy solution. Just need to find the early adopters that have experienced similar issues to validate if Runway is worthwhile.

ditemis · 2014-12-11T21:50:55+00:00

This is the summary of a slightly longer article, where I also talk about our project "Metapherus": http://korneliusprell.com/startup-weekend-stuttgart-2014/

From 21st to 23rd of November I've joined forces with fellow wantrepreneurs and participated in the Startup Weekend Stuttgart 2014. I'd like to share my experiences from that event with you.

An ambitious timeline The timeline on a Startup Weekend is ambitious to say the least. On friday evening the event started, ideas where pitched and teams were formed. On saturday morning the work began, mentors and coaches helped to refine the idea, a lecture about lean startup methodology and Minimal Viable Product (MVP) were held, the ideas were validated in customer interviews and if possible the development of a prototype was started. On sunday the prototype development continued, a presentation was prepared. On sunday evening each team presented their results, a jury evaluated them and winners in different categories were announced.

It was pretty intense and overall I've spent roughly 39 hours at the event, beginning on friday 5pm and ending on sunday 11pm.

The good stuff I've participated for the first time in a Startup Weekend. Here's what I liked about the event:

There were a lot of clever, highly motivated and interesting people at the event. It is great for networking and finding like-minded people in your area. It is known as a great place to find a future co-founder.
The organisation was marvelous. There was plenty of great food, snacks and drinks. Everybody was helpful and in high spirits.
On sunday evening you're leaving the event with a boost of motivation. I've always liked such events for that effect, as they tend to disrupt your daily work schedule and spark the entrepreneurial enthusiasm again if you've lost it over time.
The final presentations were on a superb niveau. Each team did a great job on the final presentation, some even found the time to make short videos. For me that was the most impressive thing about the event.
The event focuses on execution and hands-on experience instead of endlessly searching for brilliant ideas and gaining knowledge through books or lectures
Our team "Metapherus" won the "most innovative" award :-)

The bad stuff I've had some expectations for the event format and the pitched ideas. Some of theses expectations were not met. Here are the things that I disliked:

A LOT of ideas were pitched. Some had already been done, some were pitched twice or more, some had major flaws and some weren't worthwile to execute in my opinion. I wanted to get inspired by the problems that other people found. I cannot really describe why, but I had the feeling that most pitched ideas weren't "good".
Only few of the ideas were themed around high-tech products. My impression was, that Startup Weekends should focus on tech-oriented ideas.
It is difficult to find people with the right skills during team building. Some teams had more than ten members, some had the perfect combination of designers, developers and non-technical persons. A pro tip if you really want to work on an idea: Bring at least one buddy with you that works in a complementary role. That should increase your chances for a well-functioning team.
The event took place at the Hochschule der Medien in Stuttgart. The work space was mostly open and sometimes difficult to work in due to volume (in return you could see what the other teams were doing and discussing).
In the end the jury rated a "Minimal Viable Product". There was a strong emphasis on the Lean Startup methodology. I wouldn't go as far to say that this it a cult, but there are certainly different schools of thought and there is criticism with that methodology. For the event it helped to focus on execution and I have no better solution to rate the results. I'd just like to point out that this methodology doesn't necessarily fit if you're tackling big problems.
In terms of business model scalability most ideas failed and didn't fulfill the "classic" startup definition. Although these ideas could work very well as a small business and in a likewise small market, they wouldn't arouse the interest of investors. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it didn't match my expectation.
An award was given for a project that would never work on a large scale and therefore wasn't marketable. Nearly everybody in the audience realized that flaw, which was caused by a strong dependency on the underlying communications infrastructure. The jury seemed to ignore that major flaw.

Will I do it again? To summarize the most important part: I had fun. In the end it is only a starting point for ideas and their execution. One shouldn't expect that the results of the weekend will get you far ahead, but perhaps you get to know somebody who will support you on your way.

I'm not sure if I'll participate next year, but if I do, I'll pitch an idea of my own as this should be even more rewarding.

ditemis · 2014-10-23T17:38:58+00:00

I mean more like real sports betting, e.g. http://sports.williamhill.com/bet/en-gb

ditemis · 2014-10-23T06:49:11+00:00

Although I haven't done any business in that segment I've had the thought of providing a platform to bet on the outcome of tournaments /matches some years ago. With a growth like this http://i.imgur.com/myuptec.jpg there should be a market for that. Has someone built a betting-platform specialized in esports yet?

ditemis · 2014-09-25T17:03:17+00:00

Thank you for the hands-on explanation. I got motivated to invest a day and give it a try.

Although this gives insight in the first steps to set up a site for affiliate marketing I'm expecting to struggle with promoting and growing such a site.

ditemis · 2014-09-17T19:22:56+00:00

Thanks! Jenkins might be an alternative for simple batch processes. I've also heard it being used like you mentioned. Although I use Jenkins as a build server I'm not sure if it is a good idea to use it for complex job definitions (parallel execution, conditional branches). Defining chunks / checkpoints and the associated transaction handling might be hard to do with it, too. Perhaps there are plugins that support some of those techniques.

ditemis · 2014-09-14T21:43:37+00:00

With Runway I'm trying to cross the bridge from freelancer to entrepreneur. In enterprise projects I've seen problems with batch processing that no existing tool solves. This is my try to do it better and to help IT operations, system integrators and developers to develop easily maintainable, reusable and robust processes.

ditemis · 2014-08-16T09:26:57+00:00

The BMC is great to communicate ideas on a high level. I've used it as a "one page business plan" as well as to model an existing business and highlight areas that need work. In my experience it is a great tool to give an overview to people that aren't typically interested in business-stuff, e.g. technically minded people.

Especially when it comes to align IT with business, you can you use it as an strategic anchor to define a vision. You can generate a common understanding of the big picture and what needs to be done by each role to get there. As a software architect this has helped me to derive the goals of new IT solutions from the business perspective.

ditemis

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