Simply Albert

Facebook / Instagram Analysis

2012-04-11T20:34:00.001-04:00

I thought I'd put together a extended analysis of Wired/Andy Biaos great article/analysis on the buyout Facebook's $1 Billion buyout of Instagram.

(Here's a link to the full sized JPEG)

Four Years of Awesomeness

2011-04-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

It's hard for me to imagine being a more fortunate entrepreneur.

In the mid 90's, I had the good fortune of running into the idea of creating the very first “Yeardisc” - a sort of “Pre-broadband Internet Facebook on CD-ROM”, an end of year compilation of multimedia student profiles, and galleries for high-school students. While the project was not ever a massive commercial success, it did however spawn a series of very fortunate events. One of which led me to launch my first of four Internet companies prior to Kontagent. Another, was the opportunity to have worked on the Yeardisc project in high school, alongside Jeff Tseng, the person that would eventually end-up becoming my brilliant co-founder at Kontagent, over a dozen years later.

Flash forward to early 2007 - my last day, at my last company, BubbleShare (a photo sharing service that I started and sold just prior to co-founding Kontagent), the first person I called in search of my next adventure was none other than my high school partner in crime, Jeff.

Since then, Kontagent - though many twist, turns and pivots, as well as surviving one of the worst economic downturns in history, has evolved into the leading social games and application analytics platform. Rocketing to over a hundred million users tracked each month, along with snowballing revenues that is growing faster than ever before -- establishing itself as an industry standard and
leader of our software category. Most importantly, along the way, we had the opportunity to attract some of the most talented, hardworking and committed people that has catapulted the company to where it is today.

Currently, the company stands stronger than ever. With a strong cash position, fast growing revenues, expanding addressable market, committed institutional investors, supportive angel investors, along with continuous interest from outside financial and strategic partners, Kontagent is riding on a massive wave of momentum. The incredibly talented executive and supporting team assembled at Kontagent, is well equipped and positioned to continue to lead its category and expand into lucrative new opportunities.

Jeff, and more recently, Josh -- have worked tirelessly as visionary product, technology and business leaders. They are two of the smartest, most thoughtful minds I've encountered. Fredric, Chris and Lih, the three founding, and amazingly persistent and effective engineers of the company, along with their team, have built an incredible technology foundation over the past four years. Mitch, along with the sales team and Aaron have been pulling off miracles in unison to multiply revenues, and creating great market awareness with little resources. Andy and Jimmy, and the rest of the support team have helped us efficiently operate the company infrastructure and deliver customer support. Last but not least, our amazing investors, board members, angels, and advisors -- our angel investors have been amazing, and Eric and Anthony from Maverick and Altos I have been able to count on as great supports and friends from the start, in addition our two seed stage investors Naval Ravikant/HitForge and Amar & Sunny from Extreme Venture Partners and strongly recommend any entrepreneur to speak with them if you are looking for capital. Furthermore, our big list of angel investors have also been amazingly helpful these past few years, and I have been blessed with their guidance and support! There have been countless others that have contributed to building Kontagent to what it is to-date, and I wish to also thank you all for your contributions. We have an incredible team, and I have no doubt there will be a great deal of successes to come.

Upon reflection of the four years since the dawn of this adventure, I have come to learn a great deal from our talented team, and from building our product; moreover -- I learned a great deal about myself.

Kontagent has been the most successful company I have had the opportunity to contribute to launching. It also happens to be the longest I have ever been a part of any single company. I cherish every moment spent with Kontagent - even when I served as head of sales, marketing, biz dev, PR, and janitorial services, in the same 20+ hour work days, especially during our earlier years. It gives me great pride to have been one of its founding members, and I feel privileged to have been a part of this spectacular group.

This being said, I also realize that it is time to move on.

More recently, I developed an increasingly strong desire to take an extended break to recharge, while paradoxically, progressively yearning to start something else...So as to get back into an earlier stage, more business-to-consumer and product-centered type role and environment; an area that represents most of my previous start-up efforts and success -- as well as an area where I believe I can add the most value and have the biggest impact.

Perhaps starting Kontagent back-to-back from BubbleShare without an extended break, has taken a bit of a toll on me as well. This combined continuous period of time equated to seven plus intense years of non-stop “start-upping.” Prior to those seven years, I had been involved in launching three other startups, over another seven plus year period, with an equal amount of intensity, and nonexistent downtime in between.

There has been much accomplished, and still much to do in order to realize Kontagent’s full potential. With Kontagent in highly capable hands, a strong financial foundation, and great momentum, there is no doubt in my mind that Kontagent will be successful and the team in place will take it to the next level and more.

While I will not be present to assist day to day, I am available and will be accessible for assistance and advice moving forward. Additionally, I will be serving on the board. Generally speaking, I will assist in whatever way I can, outside of my new adventures.

So what is next for me personally? While I have a substantial number exciting challenges on my mind for my next venture, the most immediate plans on my horizon is some over-due personal travel plans, with the goal of enabling me to recharge my body, refresh my perspective, and gain a more global view of technology. Ultimately restarting the addiction that is the drug of every serial-entrepreneur / startup-pirate: to once again attempt to redefine what is possible in the present, so as to reinvent the future.

Here's hoping the next four years will be even half as fun and awesome as the last four years!

Yours till' the ink blots, the chocolate chips, or the plane taxis,

Albert Lai

Start-Up Pirate :)

PS:

In case you haven't heard from me on my twitter or facebook feed, Kontagent is Hiring! :)

7 Top Social Game Metrics for 2011 - The A.R.M Metrics Framework

2011-01-04T23:16:00.002-05:00

Here's a presentation that I put together a while back that I had forgotten to post here.

We're working hard on generating and sharing more insights/research pieces from all the things that we've learned as a hub of knowledge in the analytics and social game space.

Your feedback is of course most welcomed!

7 Top Social Game Metrics for 2011 - The A.R.M Metrics Framework

View more presentations from Kontagent.

Should I Straight Up Short RIM Now?

2010-11-18T03:17:00.005-05:00

This is becoming more and more sad.

As someone who owns and carries 2 blackberry, a proud Canadian, and someone that take pride in hiring from the same pool that RIM hires from (waterloo grads and coop students), this is really really sad.

I can't help but think I should take some money and short RIM.

With Win Mobile 7, Andriod, and iPhone -- how does a developer justify building anything for RIM?

Esp. since their "Playbook" is going to be running a different OS than the Berry.

Win Mobile 7 has some amazing features, Android is already getting escape velocity, and iPhone/iOS is well... it just rocks.

Heck, even Nokia and Palm/HP are hustling hard to fight for 3rd/4th place in the Smart Phone world.

Sure RIM has the playbook, but think of all the Andriod tablets that are going to be coming out from dozens of OEMs?

Not that even matters given that iOS/iPad has such a massive lead in terms of its operating system.

Here's kind of the kicker that got to me tonight. I was using my Berry, and lately I'm finding that my experieince with my iPhone -- "a consumer toy" -- seems to be hanging/stalling less and crashing less than my "enterprise grade BlackBerry."

I got the BlackBerry to get work done. But I can't get work done if its stalling and hanging and forcing me to reboot on a regular basis.

That and my US CDMA/GSM blackberry takes about 25 minutes to reboot!!!

RIM isn't going down the shitters because of the privacy/control debacle that is happening over seas, its not even that the Playbook faces an up hill challenge.

Its that its core devices aren't doing what they are suppose to do -- ROBUST ENTERPRISE GRADE EMAIL.

Ugh. RIM, I love your hardware, its awesome. BBM is awesome. Please fix these problems so we can continue to have an awesome business-oriented device that we can all use as an alternative to these crappy on screen keyboard phones?!

I am a Start-Up Pirate.

2010-10-31T10:12:00.005-04:00

This article posted by Arrington at TechCrunch, and the link to Glenn's blog maybe the best writing I've come across this year.

The timing of this article is almost perfect.

For the past week, I've been begging some very talented Waterloo undergraduate "Co-op Students" (Canadian term for interns) to join Kontagent. Our very own pirate ship. (Read the above linked article to understand the statement - but if you don't read it, here it is: Pirates = Risk Taking Entrepreneurs)

Begging. Yes. Begging.

Why?

Because these are the very best of the brightest students.

Almost in every case in this upcoming term, these students have multiple offers from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Mozilla, [insert elite brand name here].

MULTIPLE OFFERS.

Often paying WAY more than we could ever afford.

I personally fly+drive to Waterloo. Waterloo is 1.5 hours drive away from the closest international airport in Toronto.

Why?

Because students, Canadian students especially, and most people in general don't know what its like to be a Pirate.

That and because these students are f'ing amazingly talented -- and worth every hour that I volenteer to speak at Waterloo to hopefully (selfishly) inspire these students to do a startup, and hopefully join Kontagent one day.

But a pirate's life is a hard life. It means making sacrifices like less pay, longer hours, more stress.

But so many of us are condition in school to take the straight and narrow, easy way out -- of hard-work to guaranteed success.

But for Pirates, its about the risk -- and the love of risk. As Michael said in his article in TechCrunch -- the RISK IS THE REWARD. Its knowing that everything you do makes an immediate impact. Its the thrill of uncertainty of not knowing if you're going to crash and burn or if you'll change the world.

Everytime I go into battle for top co-op student talent at Waterloo, I sell the adventure. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose to the security blanket of working at Google.

But its worth it.

Because every student I rescue from the pits of the guaranteed "success" of working at a good big firm. I (selfishly) create an opportunity for a student to become an entrepreneur (that may one day graduate and come work for our company and not some generic super successful brand name tech company).

That and I often get some amazing talent that makes a huge difference in the company.

So there you have it. This is why I love my life. Its because I get to be a modern day pirate -- every single day.

If there was ever a formula to my "success" its this:

My Life = Pirates Life = A Hard Life = A Awesome Life = Eternal Happiness.

And this is why I think my life is awesome, and why I love every day of my life since I started being a baseball card pirate when I was 13 years old selling baseball cards to my friends in the school yard. :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/albertlai

Kontagent is Hiring! + Check out our press!

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

Why "Social Commerce" and "The Viral Economy" Matters

2010-10-07T06:03:00.001-04:00

So I was asked by an analyst to put into words something that I've been espousing for sometime in presentations and panels for sometime about this topic. So I thought I might as well throw it up here as well:

My fundamental thinking as it related to "social-commerce" and the "viral economy" as it relates to the Suppliers/Distribution in Porter Five Forces model is this:

We have moved from physical goods to digital goods, from physical delivery to digital delivery. Whats MOST interesting about whats happening now is the disruption in discovery and distribution of information and services, esp. in online entertainment and games. The same disruption that happened to physical entertainment to digital delivery (i.e. CDs to iTunes, DVDs to Netflix) is happening to digital distribution. We are no longer reliant on going to a "portal" -- in essence a "trusted aggregator" of digital goods and services to find and discovery quality games and entertainment that we once did with portals like Yahoo Games, because of the proliferation of social networks and virality, people discover and adopt more and more games because of invitations and notifications from friends. Distribution is now baked into the game mechanic, in essence, your distribution channel effectiveness and scale is correlated to how well you are able to acquire customers -- and in turn amplify their voices though systematic viral engineering to spread your services/goods across the network.

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

Hummer Pwned Outside Our Office.

2010-09-02T03:07:00.001-04:00

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

A Sad Day: Why I sold RIM and Traded it For Microsoft.

2010-08-25T00:45:00.006-04:00

So today I sold all my RIM stock & traded it for Microsoft. I feel quite sad about it. Not only because I lost a boat load on RIM, but because RIM is one of my favorite companies.

I have used RIM devices since its very first interactive pager system that I won at a TED conference ages ago, and while I'm still a fan of its current devices, it has IMHO lost this round of the mobile wars.

How things have changed in just a couple of years. Just 2 years ago, I would have been caught saying that MSFT had to have tried REALLY hard to make their UX on WindowsMobile as bad as it is, and I would have started this posting as a blog post. Now this posting is a result of a tweet that I made, that was syndicated to facebook and is inspired by a reply from a professional analyst where I made a reply to in the thread which I am now cross posting into this blog.

That and I'm now I'm voting for Microsoft and ditching RIM. 2 years.

Its not every day I get asked by a real analyst why I make certain trades as an arm chair, small time, armature investor. So here's my 2 cents worth rant as a long time observer of the space mobile market:

There are several reasons why I dumped RIM for MSFT:

1) I've already loaded up on Apple at some great prices, and have some Google.

2) Unlike Google, Microsoft directly profits from WinMo7 phone sales. Which is actually a pretty good platform for game devs. The devices and UI is pretty good. (I just saw a prototype in person for the first time recently).

3) MSFT has great distribution and OEMs. They will take share from RIM for sure -- as RIM is peaking out. I'm seeing switches from RIM users to Android on a regular basis.

4) MSFT will get some good OEMs that will create win7 phones with keyboards+touch that will compete well with RIM.

5) RIM's OS6 (and torch w/ its lowrez LCD screen) is lipstick on a pig. Plus RIM didn't ever take advantage of so many opportunities that I thought they would with their leadership and M&A with their LBS deal w/ Dash.

6) As a 3rd party developer your options are: #1/#2: Apple/Andriod (andriod is picking up as a good alternative to apple due to clutter and BS w/ apple and momentum of Android), #3 *WILL* be WinMo7 -- esp -- for hardcore XBox Devs. The WinMo7 platform is tightly spec-ed and is less prone to fragmentation over the long run vs. Andriod, which even with its potential for hassles as a non-completely open platform, has its advantages.

7) Nokia is welll, out. At least for "this round." Just as it is for RIM. (this round = this generation or so of phones) I'm sad that Nokia, which was one of my fav companies in the past just can't seem to get their UX out of the the 90s to win new and now much more savvy smartphone customers.

8) While sadly, I can't buy Windows as a pure play mobile company -- but even so, Win7 on the desktop is SOLID, the company's P/E is at 11.5 (vs. almost 2x that w/ Goog and Aapl), the company has a big ass warchest, Bing is gaining some ground, and while office is probably going to die a painful death -- my hope/guess is that they can't be entirely stupid about migration to the cloud (or will they?).

9) Lastly Xbox rocks PS3. And its new motion capture thingamabob looks really promising.

As a Canadian, and as someone who carry's *2* RIM devices (one for US phone number and one for Canadian) -- and a huge BBM addict, today is a sad sad day for me. I hope RIM makes a come back in the "next round" of mobile wars. But right now, I have no choice but to let it go.

RIM please get it together and put up a better fight!

Innovative Thinking in… Teaching Math.

2010-06-13T18:12:00.001-04:00

This video rocked.

I wish I was taught math and problem solving this way.

I actually did have a really good teacher that did something similar for me in high school for problem solving.

But I wish I had Dan as my math teacher.

Wow.

Fun Video Interview about Kontagent with Robert Scoble

2010-04-09T10:05:00.001-04:00

Why the iPad will Win

2010-01-28T14:20:00.001-05:00

[Types yesterday originally as an internal email]

$500 bucks a pop isn't going to make apple a ton of money on the iPad on margins.

But they are buying themselves into ubiquity via volume production and critical mass for media consumption on the device.

The app store is going to make them more money than the device itself -- easy.

I've been tracking the usage patterns of a few friends with Kindle. Microtransactions on these devices are crazy impulsive and lucrative.

The print/newsprint folks are going to be all over this as their digital content delivery savior.

The text book companies are going to see this as another interesting value add platform for schools.

The other reason the iPad will win is because its the ultimate gaming device. Hands down. Digital software delivery + Multi-touch + massive screen compared to the Nintendo DS + "subsidized" by productive uses of the device = a DS and PSP killer.

Pricing this thing at $500 bucks right out of the gates was the killer move. Establishing ubiquity and a price point that the PC knockoffs can't really compete too much on a price basis brilliant. IMHO: network effects and custom apps for this new form factor is the key to winning and creating a brand new category of usage and demand.

This is as important as the iPhone. What the iPhone did to cell phones, is what the iPad will do for print, games and media consumption.

Steve Jobs just pwned Kindle, Nintendo DS, and any/all tablet PCs.

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

Awesome Upcoming Sony Android Phone -- Looks Slicker than Nexus One

2010-01-06T06:11:00.004-05:00

The Sony X10.

Interesting to see that Rogers that dibs on it.

The videos look very very slick.

Plus device has a 8.1MP camera, totally custom UI / skin, very slick 3D capabilities:

World’s Premiere Social Networking and Entertainment Phone,The Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 Coming To Canada Exclusively At Rogers

Update:

Tried the phone. It sucks. It doesn't have anything close to the newest version of Android, the UI is sluggish, and the Phone is built on now relatively modest hardware. Sigh.

Where is the RIM/BlackBerry Nexus One? (or: some random mobile thoughts & open letter to RIM)

2010-01-06T06:08:00.001-05:00

This is a great article from Bill Gurley on iPhone vs. Android. Which is similar to much of my thinking.

Boils down to this:

iPhone = Apple of the PC Era = Control Platform for Superior UX (user experience)

Android = Microsoft of the PC Era = Open Platform and Cater to Customizations

But also inspired this rant what I think of the Berry

But what about RIM/BerryOS, Palm/PalmOS, Microsoft/WinOS and Nokia/Symbian?

- Nokia, Palm: too far behind to be a part of the real "super smart phone/OS" race. Nokia still stuck in feature phone land, PalmOS/PalmPre is so slow, i could make coffee between switching apps sometimes.

- Microsoft: has a decent shot at being #3. Windows Mobile v7 is way late. Some devices like the HD2 look awesome, but too little too late IMO.

- RIM: Will sadly, likely go from a platform that should have stayed at the #1 spot, to going to fight MS for the #3 position

RIM's BlackBerry keyboard based smart phones are still the best PHONES of any smartphone on the market for a business user. I've seen even consumers fall in love with the Berry without an email or data plan simply because of how functional it is, and how responsive the entire user experience is.

The issue is their OS and their lack of innovative consumer product DNA is killing them.

Issues w/ the Berry:

1) BlackBerryOS Looks like Ass: The OS and UX still feels like Windows 3.1 in an era of Aero powered 3D desktops. The icons used even in the latest version look like they are from the 80s (that said Nokia and Google both don't seem to have done a lot better and looks as if they keep hiring design school rejects to create most of their icons)

2) BlackBerryOS 3rd Party Dev Platform Suck Balls: The platform is difficult for developers to build on.

3) RIM Has No Critical Mass Usage of Touch Screen: There are too few touch screen devices shipped from RIM to get game developers remotely excited about the platform.

So why do I still own RIM stock? Besides the fact that my most favorite productivity device of all time is still the BlackBerry...

RIM does 3 things awesome well:

1) Great / Fast Email Experience (important to enterprise market)

2) Great IM/BlackBerry Messenger Ecosystem/Experience (important to consumer)

3) Knows how to Build the Best Mobile Hardware Keyboard (important to everyone)

None of this matters however if they don't continue to innovate. Here's a 3 areas that I think they should innovate on to help them stay competitive in 2010:

1) Own Location Messaging: They bought Dash Networks, put some of the Nav/GPS experience/IP to work and make BB Messenger even more addictive with great geo features. If they can get this rolled out in an interesting way, the install base that they have will far exceed that of the tiny installation of Gowalla or FourSquare. That said, I think those companies are all very innovative, and I don't think RIM should be focused so much on the fun element, but rather the P2P aspect of friend-finding.

2) Own Social Messaging: Invest and build the BEST Facebook Integration experience: you guys built the best email experience on mobile devices, now build the best social-messaging platform on top of the best mobile device with a hardware keyboard in the industry. There's no better way to update your status than to use a Berry keyboard. Just as Google allows you to sync all your data with your gmail account and gcal. Look to Palm Pre as a starting point of making Facebook Connect as the basis for building a social messaging phone form the ground up. Log-in w/ FBconnect, sync your contacts, integrate messaging and contacts with Facebook. Be THE social phone that the Palm was suppose to be (but is way too slow to actually work, and not as integrated as it could/should have been)

3) Own Flash: Get the best damn implementation of Flash on your devices -- which seems like ages ago since it was announced, and get a real browser working, and you'll have a shot at competing. I don't think people care if you re-write the OS or not, or if you lose the existing applications that work in the legacy OS -- the thing that matters most is: will your 2010 phones with with Flash better than the other guys? And will it have a competitive/fast browser experience. Get flash right, and the Berry can immediate attract a massive number of developers that can contribute to its platform.

4) Own Style + Personalization: Bonus - Hire a good Sr. UI design director that has some real authority and influence: seriously, it wouldn't take that much to make your device icons and skins looks much better than the default AndroidOS. The only people I've seen that come close to being decent are the Palm folks. I mean, you could probably spend 1/10,000th of your engineering budget and get 10x better design than the Corel Draw clip art pack styled icons and look and feel. Ok, that's a bit mean, but seriously -- give user experience design, and polish some thought. You may never be Apple, but at least you could be competitive with Palm.

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

Burj Dubai Tower Is Insane.

2010-01-06T04:07:00.001-05:00

The Burj Dubai, the massive buildings below looked just puny in comparison in the video from above. The thing is more than 50% taller than the next tallest building (Taipei 101 -- see below) and also 50% taller than the CN Tower. Another crazy thing is that the elevators hit 64km/hour. Then again, when you consider that the tower is 8/10ths of a kilometer high -- I can see why you'd want that kind of speed.

I had the opportunity to visit Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat/Oman, and Fujairah not long ago, visiting the region was a real eye opener.

What I found most interesting was the amount of interest and investment that were being made not just in real estate, but what seemed like a real desire to build up a technology hub as well.

That said, Dubai still felt quite unfinished and seemed even at that time when things were going full steam ahead, perhaps 5-10 years away from being a real "finished" city.

What I also found interesting was the fact that it was build by Samsung C&T of South Korea (Samsung is insanely big -- turns out they have 276K employees with revenues of $170B a year), the same primary contractors as the Taipei 101 building (which I got to visit with, of all people, on a unforgettable trip with Stewart Butterfield and Mike Arrington as guests of the Taiwan government for a Web2 conference).

Totally random... I know. Now back to our original programming.

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

Gigapixel-Dresden.de - Large Size Panoramas

2009-12-22T00:50:00.001-05:00

This is pretty bad ass: 26,000 Mega Pixel Photo (largest photo in the world as of Dec/2009):

Gigapixel-Dresden.de - Large Size Panoramas

"Technical characteristics
The picture was made with the Canon 5D mark II and a 400mm-lens. It consists of 1.665 full format pictures with 21.4 megapixel, which was recorded by a photo-robot in 172 minutes. The converting of 102 GB raw data by a computer with a main memory cache of 48 GB and 16 processors took 94 hours. With a resolution of 297.500 x 87.500 pixel (26 gigapixel) the picture is the largest in the world. (stand December 2009)"

Make $1M on Apple App Store. Woop-Dee-Do.

2009-12-16T03:07:00.001-05:00

So I was reading about this article on TechCrunch about how awesome this app was to make over a million dollars over 8 months.

Gut reaction was, wow, indie developer making real bank on the app store!

Then I put it into perspective: that's over 8 months, about $125k a month. That's assuming that the $1M number if POST apple's 30% cut.

Lets forget that for a moment. Lets say the app made a over $1M in one single month.

Woop-Dee-Do.

Now before you all start calling me a hater -- I sincerely have crazy respect for the guys who built this awesome barcode scanning app (something I've always dreamt of wanting to have and even at one point contemplated building in the distant past). Lets put this in relative terms to the Facebook platform for indie developers:

I know for fact, indie developers that have made hundreds of thousands (to million+) a month, for many months, on Facebook.

If $100k-$300k a month is a big deal on the app store as a TOP paid app for multiple months is a big deal, with little in the way of recurring revenues off the one app is a fantastic success story:

Then I stand by my opinion that it still the economics still suck to build for the iPhone platform as compared to the Facebook platform, and perhaps this suckage is a good thing for apple for innovation as I've talked before in a prior posting.

That said, I suspect/hope things will change for the better on the iPhone platform.

Someone had to say it, but pound for pound, hour for hour, the pay off is still better for a developer to build FB apps than iPhone apps today.

As I said before, this is just another great data point for those that are evaluating between the two platforms to build for.

All that being said of course, if I had to build something -- I'd always build something that I'd find most interesting AND lucrative. But never just one or the other -- as you'll never win if there isn't a good balance between the two.

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

Does iPhone's Suckage Breed Better Apps?

2009-12-10T02:30:00.001-05:00

...Or Put Another way Does Lower Virality on App Platforms Breed Better Apps?

Here are some great iPhone apps demo videos from a recent AppsFire contest at LeWeb. In spite of the crappy economics of building iPhone apps, I seem to keep finding more creativity employed in iPhone apps than FB Apps (granted the iPhone has a camera and location and touch screen to play with over most FB apps).

I'm starting to think that its the reasons behind the poor economics on the iPhone platform (i.e. crappy distribution channels, low virality, no re-engagement channels, etc.) that are driving/forcing more diverity and creativity with iPhone Apps over Facebook Apps.

Because there are no easy viral channels on iPhone, from a economic perspective, building a derivative game/app on Facebook that copy an existing proven game mechanic (farming, fish tank, mob-combat, quizzes) and model that:

1) have of strong viral loop opportunities (quiz apps)

2) lends itself to well to driving its users towards monetization behaviors (in game survival and personalization purchasing motives)

3) have a low cost of replication (i.e. no complex 3D engines)

4) lends itself to opportunities that enabled developers to differentiate though easy "re-theming"

Where as in the iPhone world, derivative works tend not to stand out, and relies on short bursts of exposure (and high churn) of the Apple App store via large amounts of downloads via burst promotions/marketing campaigns and strong word of mouth and reviews.

The rational developer is driven to build profitable, derivative viral games that can take advantage of a fast growing ecosystem of "fresh blood" that grows at 20-40M users a quarter on the FB platform, whereas on the slower growing iPhone platform, the rational developer is forced to differentiate itself much more so in order to gain distribution without the benefit of virality.

So the questions is: does virality + explosive platform growth breed highly profitable, derivative app development efforts, crowding out and driving out creative efforts? And is the lack of better economics for iPhone developers actually providing Apple a better and more diverse app developer ecosystem?

Either way, at Kontagent, we are seeing that developers are becoming much more focused than before about micro-tuning their virality, and putting more efforts on A/B testing given the more limited viral events/messages/channels that are available to them.

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Quick Blog

6 Must Read Start Up Blogs

2009-12-09T03:35:00.001-05:00

Here's the list of my favorite startup resources and blogs... not entirely conclusive, but I've picked the ones that I think have the highest signal to noise ratio from a startup content only perspective.

Collections of Top Resources:

Noam Wasserman/Founder Research: http://www.founderresearch.blogspot.com/
- HUGE Body of Reference on Founder Related Issues and Research from Noam Wasserman, Professor of Entrepreneurial Management at HBS
Nivi and Naval's VentureHacks - http://venturehacks.com/
- HUGE Collection of Real World Advice from the Trenches by Naval Ravikant and Nivi

Fantastic Start Up Bloggers:

Mark Suster - http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/
- Killer Advice from someone that's been on, well, both sides of the table.
Andrew Chen - http://andrewchenblog.com/
- Great Startup Thinking
Eric Ries - http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/
- Lean Startup Concepts
Paul Graham - http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
- This is why Y-Combinator Rocks

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Posterous Quick Blog

Another example of why Paul Graham rocks in my books.

2009-12-08T00:58:00.001-05:00

Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters

...In the world of painting there are some people who are just fabulously talented at drawing. They can sit down, these are like the kids who could draw in high school age fifteen they can sit down with a pencil ... sit in front of you ... wow, it looks just like me. But then when you say to these guys, "ok, use this amazing skill to just produce anything, just put it on the wall it's going to look great and then they lose". And within programming there is this distinction too. There are some people who are really really good at implementing code like if you give them a spec for a programming language and man, they will just implement it; The hardest stuff as long as you tell them precisely what to do, they will just do it. But you say, "ok, make up a product, make up some kind of new product that people want", and they are just utterly lost. This is actually a big mistake that companies make. There's a lot of companies who think that the programmers are basically implementers, that products are supposed to be designed by product managers. They are supposed to be designing what the products do. And they make mockups or something like that and they hand it to the programmers and the programmers translate their ideas into code. Like this one way process, no loopback - that loses! The best programmers are the ones that combine in one head both the ability to translate ideas into code and having the ideas. Just like the best artists have both the ability ... (have) a great hand. They can make their hand do what they want. But they also know what to tell it to do and actually between the two, I would take the Cézannes. Cézanne could not draw, he makes the same drawing mistakes that every one makes in introductory drawing classes. Occam's razor said he couldn't draw, not that he was trying to transcend three dimension ... But what he was good at was sort of the other half - deciding what to produce. He was terribly frustrated he was like this guy who had all kinds of ideas, but he couldn't articulate them with his hand. When you put the stuff on the wall in a room full of other paintings, it looks like there's a spotlight shining on his paintings and other ones have been sprayed with a light coating of mud. It's just amazing when you look at side by side paintings. So I will take the Cézannes actually and one interesting thing that has been happening is because programming languages have gotten so powerful you don't have to be that good an implementer to get something built.

- Paul Graham in an interview with Russ Roberts (~45:30-48:25)

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Posterous Quick Blog

According to Compete.com: Facebook Reach/Usage Nearly Same as Google and Yahoo

2009-12-07T05:03:00.001-05:00

Whats even more impressive is the growth rate over the past year alone...

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Albert's posterous

Early Predictions for the Social Web in 2010-2011

2009-12-05T01:39:00.002-05:00

2010/2011 Will Be the Year of...

The Social Web, Facebook will be a part of the fabric of the web (PC, mobile, xbox, PS3, iphone, etc.)
LAMP-"F" (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python, Facebook-connect)
Social Micro-Commerce: Facebook Connect + "Facebook Wallet" = Web Micro-Transactions at last (for light weight web content/services etc.)
First pure social game company to IPO (zynga) and people will finally realize that it is the most successful internet company in a first two/three year time window in every financial (revenues, profits) and reach metric (users)
Brands will start to clue into the power of viral marketing in the age of the "social web"
"Data Driven Design" and "Viral Engineering" will be memes used in the real world (and powered by Kontagent ;)

Posted via email from Albert Lai's Posterous Quick Blog

I'm Such a Geek: StarWars: In Concert (in Toronto) - Rocked the House.

2009-11-27T01:55:00.001-05:00

Show was pretty damn awesome.

A fellow StarWars geek friend of mine wanted to go, and we had to resort to scalper seats on craigslist as the WHOLE Air Canada Center was sold out.

But wow. We had some of the best seats in the house.

The music was awesome.

The visual/video college was amazing -- esp. on the ultra high res/high contrast projector -- and we were right in front of it, right in the middle.

Just awesome. Almost worth the ludacrous amount that we ended up paying (mind you, it was still probably less than the really great tix for a Basketball game)

But hell, you only live once: Work hard. Geek harder!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Albert's posterous

This is a MUST SEE Slide Show

2009-11-26T05:29:00.003-05:00

Virtual Goods in Asia</object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more documents from Benjamin Joffe.</div></div>

Posted via email from Albert's posterous

Damn I Love Posterous

2009-11-26T05:09:00.001-05:00

If you guys haven't checked out Posterous, you should.

It makes blogging so easy.

I can see myself blogging daily now, or at least a lot more often.

Its reminds me of BubbleShare -- Focusing on simplifying something that used to be a pain in the ass. Clever use of email. Etc.

Love it.

Posted via email from Albert's posterous

United Airlines: You Impress Me - $250 Coupon Back for a 60 Min Short Delay!

2009-11-26T05:02:00.002-05:00

(Update: To be clear, this was not a normal pre-boarding delay, but a delay that was due to a malfunctioning gear on the plane that forced us to land, but it was a short stop and they were able to get us back in the air within 60 mins)

Dear Mr Lai,

On behalf of United Airlines, please accept my apologies for the delay and inconvenience you experienced on Flight 854.

I was made aware of the circumstances regarding our precautionary diversion of your flight to Chicago for mechanical reasons, and requiring a change of aircraft. I want to assure you regardless of the reason, I understand how frustrating or unsettling it can be to have your travel plans suddenly altered. I know that in choosing air travel you do so with time constraints in mind, and I am truly sorry if we did not provide the level of service that you expect or deserve from United. Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we made preparations to get you safely on your way.

Let me assure you that we are thoroughly evaluating our recovery efforts in order to improve coordination of services for our customers on future flights. Meanwhile, your satisfaction and business mean a great deal to United, and I am pleased to offer you this choice of a goodwill gesture. I hope you will use it with the full confidence that United is committed to meeting your expectations and we hope for an early opportunity to serve your travel needs.

Sincerely,

Sherri Hermance
United Airlines
Customer Relations

Posted via email from Albert's posterous