“Shipping A Product Is A Lot Of Work”

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There’s an interesting interview with Sam Soffes in this Venture Beat article. Sam wrote the app I referenced yesterday, Cheddar, which is a to do list app that works across iOS and Mac systems. I love reading these interviews with people actually out trying to make products and make a living. Once companies get big they become guarded and generally don’t release these kinds of statements.

One answer I wanted to point out specifically is this one:

After I left Hipstamatic, I decided I wanted to make something. Over a year ago, I had played with Cheddar a little on a flight and thought it would be fun to make it for real. I thought it would take three weeks tops to get a version out and start making money. Three months later, I shipped Cheddar on the web as well as a native iPhone and iPad app… It turns out shipping a product is a lot of work.

Well, yeah! Shipping a well designed, fully functioning service is hard work and does take time. He says it took him three months to ship. No, it took him a year plus to ship. Even if he wasn’t actively coding Cheddar, he was thinking about it and solving problems in the back of his brain. And this is a simple idea — a task list app.

The reality is complicated things take time to develop and ship. Be patient.

The Key To Freemium Subscription Conversion

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I’ve been analyzing a number of subscription services over the past year, primarily those following the freemium business model. The ones who seem to have the most success not only solve a problem but also seem to have something else in common: each one offers multiple ways to ram your head against the pay wall.

To simplify, I’m going to focus on a handful of freemium services. Freemium, if you are not aware, are products that offer some functionality for free and more if you pay. Examples include Evernote, Flickr, and 37signals’ products. To different extents, each service offers functionality for free and then gives you multiple methods where that free service isn’t enough and paying becomes the likely option.

Evernote offers more for free than most services. You can create and upload way more for free than 99.9% of people would ever use each month, for instance, and gives you access to that information everywhere. Given that you’d think Evernote would have a low conversion rate. But it’s actually really high: over 20% of active users (those who use the service at least once per month). Why do people upgrade? Bigger uploads, better security, offline access, history of note changes, collaboration options, better search and  faster image recognition. And those are just feature reasons. Evernote CEO Phil Libin claims that the primary reason is because customers want to know the company will be around long-term. That’s eight reasons — and I didn’t list them all — for a customer to pay. Each customer only needs one reason to upgrade. Evernote ensures most customers will eventually run into one of them.

Flickr has an upload limit for free, or rather it has a limit of how many of your uploaded photos you can see. The Pro account adds unlimited photos, larger sized photos, more videos, HD videos, more groupings, high res images, ability to download uploaded images and statistics. Again, Flickr offers nine or more ways for a customer to hit a wall and need to upgrade.

As a third example look at 37signals’ Highrise. Highrise revolves its various price points around four or five key features including number of users, amount of storage, number of deals, number of contacts, etc. Again, multiple ways to run into a wall and need to pay.

In contrast, let’s look at a product like Cheddar. Cheddar is a subscription-based to do app for iOS and Mac that is for sale right now. According to the sales site, Cheddar has a 2.55% conversion rate, fairly anemic and, given his numbers, not enough to make it a full-time job. Cheddar offers one reason to upgrade: unlimited lists. That’s it. That means 97% of customers are more than happy with one or two lists, which is what you get for free. There is nothing else to get these folks to pay.

There is more than this required to make a subscription service work but getting people to convert partly means giving customers more than one excuse to do so.

The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins

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The question as I see it: how do you live within legal bounds if your God-given talent is, well, illegal? Fundamentally, that’s the question asked in this excellent New Yorker article on pickpocket artist Apollo Robbins. The start of this one is amazing:

A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability. Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with.

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.

“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.

Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen.

For his next trick, Apollo stays out of jail.

A Lifetime Endeavor

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David Heinemeier Hansson at 37signals has been on a roll lately with some great writing. Yesterday he wrote about his life’s work, feeling a connection to firms of old where people worked for 40 years:

Committing myself to this long-term focus has led to a peaceful work atmosphere and an incredible clarity of purpose. If this is the last job I’ll ever have, I damn well better make sure that I like it. I won’t just tough things out. If shit is broken, we’ll fix it now, lest we be stuck with it for decades.

I generally feel that way about the work we do here at Infinity Softworks. If I spent the rest of my life on the idea of figuring out better ways for people to work with numbers, I wouldn’t be upset at all.

Wall Street, generally, has the opposite problem. Since companies are judged every quarter, it is hard to make long-term decisions. The broken stuff doesn’t get fixed because the broken stuff doesn’t help make the fourth quarter numbers.

It helps, of course, that David (like I) helped invent the company he wants to spend the rest of his life working for. He helps pick which projects 37signals takes on, he helps develop the plans and manage the teams. When you pick your own future, it’s a lot easier to love what you do and want to spend a lifetime doing it.

The Future of Tablets

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I skimmed the headlines coming out of the CES trade show in Las Vegas the last couple of days. I never found hardware that interesting, honestly, so almost nothing caught my attention… until I saw this video:

Obviously it can be this thin because there is no battery attached, but it is clear to see a future where our tablets are as thin as a piece of paper and can connect together just by touching them. This is cool stuff!