Stop Blaming Developers, Start Blaming Apple

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Brilliant interview with indie developer David Bernard. The three passages couldn’t have been more appropriate. Here’s one comment, based on the question, is there more Apple could do to support paid apps?

Currently developers can use IAP for all sorts of convoluted free-to-play schemes, but Apple has a rule against free trials, demo apps, and the like. With a single policy change, Apple could empower developers to use App Store receipts to roll their own free trials. Surely that’s no more user hostile than Candy Crush’s casino-like techniques for milking users for cash.

Exactly! I’ve said this before — and I’ll say it again and again and again — most of the problems with the App Store are Apple’s fault. All of these discussions about search, top ranked, analytics, even the annoying rate my app dialogs, all of them are really about Apple and the policies they put in place.

As David points out, one single deletion in a policy document — not even a technology difference — could completely change how indie developers make a living.

Unblocked

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Every once in a while there is something that happens and I just have to wait for that situation to resolve itself. The past month has had one of those situations. Ten other decisions [1] hung in the balance while I waited on this one event to resolve itself. There was nothing I could do to speed up the process. I just had to wait.

I could do other things while I waited. I could try to line up everything so coming out of the decision I could move quickly. I did that. I worked on re-arranging the financials about three dozen times and worked on streamlining some of the existing costs. I could analyze what happens in each situation, depending on the decision, but I couldn’t execute and I couldn’t do anything else. I could only wait.

Last Thursday, finally, the decision resolved itself. It didn’t come out the way I preferred but I’ve been running a business long enough to know that sometimes the decisions that work against me at the time they are decided end up being the right decisions in the end.

At first I was sad. I wasn’t wanted and that is depressing. But as the evening wore on I figured it is the way it is meant to be, that it really doesn’t change our near-term plans anyway, and all the things that have been stuck can finally flow. It’s like having a big bolder finally moved out of the way of my stream, and now the water is flowing again.

I have another week to plan and organize and then back to coding, hopefully this time with a release soon around the corner. I knew that this decision would open up avenues one way or the other. What I didn’t realize was that there would be a sense of relief with any decision at all. I’m excited to move on.

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[1] Exaggeration

Screwing Your Customers Is Supposed To Be Bad For Business

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We are traveling to Florida the end of March. We booked the travel in November because it is Spring Break and traveling during the Break is always risky. At the same time we booked a car. This past week my grandmother called to offer us her car. No reason to spend the money on a rental, she said. We were grateful.

I called this morning to cancel the car and was told I rented the car under a no change, no refund policy. I couldn’t believe it. I’m calling more than three weeks before the travel and Hotwire is telling me I have no recourse. They said this was part of the agreement, which of course is only provided as a click through link when signing up, and then is buried in a multi-page agreement. I don’t remember the site ever once saying, clearly, booking this car means no changes and no refunds.

So I called Hertz. Here’s a company that supposedly takes care of their customers. No dice there either. They basically said I should have booked with us instead. Great. I have a $400 rental car in Florida that I don’t need. I love pissing money down the toilet.

It bothers me that Hotwire trusts their services so much that they bury important information like no refunds or changes. (Delta changed our flight and we arrive 7 hours earlier. Hotwire wouldn’t change our arrival time either — no changes — so who knows if we will have a car when we get there.) This makes Hotwire look shifty and underhanded.

I’m just as disappointed in Hertz, though. Here’s a company that supposedly takes care of their customers and they are basically telling me to pound sand. Why, if you want a good relationship with your customers, would you even rent cars through assholes like Hotwire? Could you imagine buying an iPhone at an AT&T Store and then Apple telling you they won’t support your iPhone because you didn’t buy it from them?

It’s not like I’m an amateur here. I’ve sold products to customers for 17 years. We have always tried to accommodate them even when they didn’t buy through us. This is particularly challenging in the App Store world, where we are given no recourse for our customers. I’ve given away tons of promo codes to customers who felt they bought the wrong product even though we have no means to prove a purchase was made.

I will definitely never book anything through Hotwire again. And as for you, Hertz, we’ll see if I get over this one. At the moment I wish a plague on both your houses.

65 Years of Honda Innovation In 2 Minutes

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(I apologize if you saw this twice.)

Great commercial from Honda. It runs through 65 years of innovation by the company in two minute.

What really jumped out at me was how disruptive the company was, a la Clayton Christensen. Bolts to engines to motorcycles to small cars to bigger cars to… . Honda attacked one small segment of the market with each advancement, were laughed at with each step, until their motors were considered some of the best engineered in the world.

The Art Of Bootstrapping

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Some great articles (or references to them) this morning about bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is the art of building a business from its own revenues or resources that you have to repay implicitly. This is opposed to a funded business, which grows based on other people’s financial resources.

Infinity Softworks has been both bootstrapped and funded. When we started in 1997 we received a small angel investment ($10,000) and then in 2001-2002 I raised a round of financing ($550,000). In 1999 I borrowed $10,000 to buy out my business partner. That was repaid in a year and a half. And then in 2009 we borrowed $120,000, which is still being repaid. Except for the funding round in 2001-2 and the few years after that in which it was used, I would argue that Infinity Softworks was bootstrapped the other 15 years.

First, I will point you to a great post by Justin Williams. Justin recently bought an iOS, Android and web service called Glassboard. In Getting Good At Making Money, Justin writes:

If there is one thing I don’t think I excel at as a business man, it is making money. That’s probably not a good thing to admit publicly, but it’s reality. In fact, I’d argue that I’ve gotten worse at making money in the past several years as the third-party software market has bottomed out. Making money was hard enough selling $25-$40 products. Try doing it when your most expensive app is $4.99.

I can relate. Making money the past few years seems like an afterthought. The only thing keeping most of us going is a love for the craftsmanship and product. I feel that way a little, too. After spending more than a decade charging sustainable prices for our products, I’ve forgotten how to value price and feel like the business side of my brain has turned to mush. I’m working on that now.

Given that, Justin (and I) are making money and do remember how to do it. Both of us have been doing contract development jobs to pay the bills. So it isn’t exactly a lost art, it just hasn’t been as focused on product as either of us would prefer.

Next, Theresa Shafer over at SKMurphy, a consulting firm, points to Five Serious Financial Mistakes Bootstrappers Can Avoid. It’s an excellent starting list. More on this later.

Finally, an article in Inc. Magazine from Jason Fried of Basecamp (formerly 37signals) fame (via Manton Reese). In this three year old article, Jason writes about how to get good at making money. In it Jason discusses how he learned to make money and how, like learning any other skill, it takes practice:

One thing I do know is that making money is not the same as starting a business. For entrepreneurs, this is an important thing to understand. Most of us identify with the products we create or services we provide. I make software. He is a headhunter. She builds computer networks. But the fact is, all of us must master one skill that supersedes the others: making money. You can be the most creative software designer in the world. But if you don’t know how to make money, you’re never going to have much of a business or a whole lot of autonomy.

If I have quibbles with any of these articles it is that none of them pound us in the head with the only thing a bootstrapper needs to know: CASH IS KING. Nothing else matters and every decision needs to be made to maximize cash. Yes, all of these articles refer to revenues. But revenue is not cash. Here’s an example: I do a contract development job today for $10,000. When done I submit an invoice and the company takes 60 days to pay. Yes, I have $10,000 in revenues today but I don’t get the cash for 60 days. How do I pay my bills in the meantime?

I am relentless when it comes to managing cash. I have a spreadsheet that gets duplicated and updated with actuals and projections every month. This allows me to make cash flow decisions months before the negative shortfall actually happens, allowing me at various times in the history of the company to ratchet up spending, lay people off, cut payroll or minimize other expenses. Because of this work, I see the company very very clearly on a month to month basis and can make appropriate choices.

It isn’t easy, but I’d never put running a business and easy in the same sentence anyway.