Nibletz And Everywhere Else Are Moving Out Of Beta

It’s hard to believe its been almost a year since I came on as Nibetz CEO. In that time, you’ve helped us host not 1 but 2 national conferences, tell thousands of your startup stories and foster countless new friendships.

Like any startup though, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. We’ve constantly been striving to get better. Your feedback has played an invaluable part in helping us make the necessary changes to continue to improve.

I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish and the way our team has dealt with obstacles and adversity.

The support I’ve received from those closest to me and from all of you that make up the heart of this new, bustling community has been nothing short spectacular.

Looking back, I’ve come to view the first two iterations of our conferences as our alpha and our beta.

Everywhere Else Memphis taught us the importance of community engagement and rallying behind the local support. Everywhere Else Cincinnati taught us how to deliver great programming and facilitate meaningful connections.

Neither event was perfect, but I am grateful to the advisers and all of you who continued to believe in our mission over the last few months. Your insight has been a driving force to the direction we take take going forward.

With our alpha and beta behind us, I am excited about the coming changes to Nibletz and The Everywhere Else Conference Series.

In order to provide the caliber of experience you would expect from a finished product, we will be moving Everywhere Else Memphis back a few months. You will notice a new emphasis on quality connections and startups over quantity. We will also be highlighting those things we all love about Memphis: Beale Street, blues, and BBQ

Lots more details, including something I’m super excited about (and I know you will be to!), will be released in the next couple of weeks. If you’ve already purchased your tickets, thanks, and we look forward to seeing you at the new and improved event.

The conferences aren’t the only change we’re making, though. Monica Selby has joined me on the founding team as editor-in-chief. Monica is passionate about highlighting the best startups everywhere else, and she has some great ideas for new ways to do that. In the short time I’ve worked with her, I’ve realized that Monica is a great teammate and a huge asset to this company. I am really pumped to call her a partner.

One of the first things she will be spearheading is our new weekly newsletter, which will keep you up to date on our very best startup features as well as our conference plans. Go ahead and sign up on the right, takes 2 seconds.

Like I said, we’ve learned a lot in the last year. I want to thank all of our readers, friends, and partners for all of the support and encouragement. We sincerely would not be where we are without you.

I could not be more excited about the next year and all the changes it will bring. As we continue to learn and grow, we are better able to fulfill our mission as the voice of startups everywhere else.

See you in Memphis.

Should You Really Be Giving Startup Advice [INFOGRAPHIC]

Today it seems like everybody has startup advice. Should you be listening to mine? Well that’s certainly up to you. In fact it’s always up to you who you decide to listen to and who you don’t. However there are a lot of people out there giving startup advice that may not be qualified to do so.

While nobody should just be classified into groups or stereotyped, here are some folks I am wary of. Also, I do have manners so I do at least listen to anyone who can break me of my ADD and actually captures my attention.

Small business and executive coaches with little or no references.

Small businesses are great. They impact the local economy the way startups would like to. They also permeate with an older, more traditional crowd than most startups can. A good friend of mine Pam Cooper, the founder of Boosterville, once told me that when going to small business folks, it’s easier to get money for a day care center or a dry cleaners than a a world changing startup.

Memphis-based self-proclaimed small business expert Tom Pease actually has some great advice for small business owners in his new book Small Business Survial 101. He’s made a lot of money with his copier machine business and tends to offer more traditional SMB advice. He doesn’t know a lick about scalable and high growth potential startups.

There are thousands just like him as well. Now if you’re one of those people who can take the good tidbits from different kinds of folks and form your own conclusions, you may be ok listening to “small business gurus.”

In my opinion, though, if you run into an “Executive Coach” that can’t rattle off a list of 5 millionaires they’re working with, he or she is probably just another out of work sales person.

Startup organizations with founders or directors who have never themselves started anything.

I don’t need you to have multi million dollar exits, but you do need to at least have started something. Even if you’ve failed a bunch of times, you get more credibility points than if you haven’t started anything. You need to be in my world for me to listen to your advice about my world.

There are a lot of folks out there who have come from finance and business backgrounds who know that starting up right now is a hot topic, and they want to be part of what’s cool and hip. That’s great and perhaps there is a place for you in the ecosystem as a “feeder,” but not giving advice.

A lot of people I’ve met who fit that description tend to be less risk averse and eager to throw in the towel. Often they can be too concerned with image to get down and grind.

This is all just my opinion, but most entrepreneurs and startup people will agree with me.

Who should you listen to? Valerie Coffman, a data scientist and entrepreneur, has come up with this flow chart from her website valeriecoffman.com

Everywhere Else Cincinnati Is Less Than A Month Away

The national conference for startups everywhere else continues to grow.

Thank you so much for being part of the Nibletz community. We all know that startups across the country and around the globe are fueling innovation and creating jobs. Whether it’s in Boise, Idaho, Memphis, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Alaska, or anywhere in between we all face similar challenges.

That’s why Everywhere Else Cincinnati is all about starting where you are. Learn tips from pros. Hear from people who have raised money outside of Silicon Valley and New York. Meet investors who could be looking for deals in your neighborhood.

We’ve assembled over 30 top tier national speakers for the two and a half day event which starts September 29th and runs through October 1st at the Duke Energy Convention Center in downtown Cincinnati.

With the conference less than a month away our early bird pricing will end at the end of this week. Right now you can save big on an attendee ticket or Startup Avenue booth which includes three attendee tickets, booth space, exhibition area, and a great pitch event.

Need more reasons to attend Everywhere Else Cincinnati? Here’s 42 of them.

Here are the speakers we’ve announced so far (we still have even more to announce):

Blair Garrou, Managing Director Mercury Fund
Scott Gerber, Founder of YEC
Ethan Austin, Founder GiveForward
Joe Medved, Partner SoftBank Capital
Naithan Jones, Founder AgLocal
Derek Flanzraich, Founder Greatist
Andrew Warner, Founder Mixergy
Andy Sparks, Co-Founder MatterMark
Wil Schroter, Founder Fundable
Jake Stutzman, Founder Elevate.co
Jonathon Perrelli, Managing Director, Fortify Ventures
Justin Gutwein, Filmmaker and Entrepreneur StartupLand.tv
Mark Hasebroock, Founder Dundee Venture Capital
Jason Healy, Founder Blu
John Bracken, Founder Evite and Speek
Dave Knox, CMO Rockfish, co-founder Brandery
Patrick Woods, Managing Director a>m ventures
Sarah Ware, Founder Markerly
John T. Meyer, Founder Lemon.ly
Raghu Betina, Managing Partner The Starter League
Ryan O’Connell, VP Influence & Co
Blake Miller, Managing Director Think Big Accelerator
Michael Bergman, Founder Repp

Investors committed so far:
Mercury Fund, SoftBank, Detroit Venture Partners (DVP), CincyTech, am>ventures, Fortify.vc, Ben Franklin and many more.

You can register below at a great early bird discount rate or at eecincinnati.com

Online event registration for Everywhere Else Cincinnati – “Start Where U Are” powered by Eventbrite

Employee #1 Monica Selby Gets It Done

Monica Selby, Nibletz, Managing Editor, startups, employee 1

Monica Selby (r) our Managing Editor and employee #1

You may have noticed that my grammar, spelling, and story flow have improved over the last two months.

First, thank you.

Second, that’s not by accident.

As an entrepreneur with two successful exits under my belt, I’ve always been a bit headstrong. I’ve also, for the most part, been a one man show. On my previous blog, we had writers, but no one above that or between me and the writers.

However, as Nibletz continued to grow I realized two things: I couldn’t do it all by myself, and people actually wanted to help me.

Most of you know Nick Tippmann joined me on the founding team late last year.

Well two months ago, we got our “employee #1.” This is a huge milestone and a celebration of any startup’s growth. For us though, we didn’t just got an employee #1. We got a bad ass startup chick, like a boss.

Monica Selby has been writing since the 2nd grade. She was the girl that was always writing stories and organizing writing clubs in middle school with her friends. Even while she was in the “real” work force, writing was always a passion for her, and 3-4 years ago she started looking at writing as a serious career path again.

I met Monica at the Upstart 48 Hour Launch in Memphis, where she had pitched her own startup. Unfortunately her startup wasn’t picked, but rather than go home, she spent the entire weekend helping Danielle Inez and Pink Robin Avenue. Inez won the 48 hour launch competition. Monica continued to stick with it, and with Inez, helping her with her Everywhere Else: The Startup Conference booth.

Monica stayed involved with LaunchMemphis (now Start Co), the organization and startup community in Memphis. She had first become aware of LaunchMemphis through her family friend (and our investor*) Patrick Woods. Monica originally thought Patrick was crazy when he asked her if she ever had business ideas of her own. As I prepared this story, Monica told me how she got involved:

Years ago Patrick encouraged me to let him know if I ever had a business idea. At the time, I had 3 kids under 5, so the last thing I was thinking about was starting a business. But, I got involved with some education stuff here in Memphis and had an idea for a education accelerator for teachers. So, Patrick put me in touch with Eric [Mathews, co-president of LaunchMemphis]. I very quickly learned that idea wouldn’t work in this particular educational climate, but I was hooked into the startup scene here in Memphis.

Monica’s title at Nibletz Media Inc is “Managing Editor.” But, like at any startup, that means she wears a ton of hats. She keeps our team organized; she makes sure Nick and I don’t kill each other; she works to grow her personal networks to help create new content and new content categories. Monica is also an integral part of planning next year’s Everywhere Else: The Startup Conference in Memphis and something else really big being announced next week.

On Monica’s personal blog she writes about issues important to her and her audience, including entrepreneurship, women in entrepreneurship, working women, and of course the coveted work-life balance. With 3 boys–a 7-year-old and 2 5-year-olds–that issue definitely hits home. Monica’s husband Austin is a high school teacher and cross country/track coach, which makes “normal” afternoons nonexistent in the Selby house.

Even with all this going on in her life, Monica is dedicated to Nibletz and the Nibletz mission, spending late nights and weekend hours working on ideas, compiling stories, and making new friends in the startup world. Monica has some exciting ideas she’ll be debuting soon, including a contributor network and several regular series. Make sure to check out her first investor spotlight with Carla Valdes.

So, we at Nibletz are excited to have Monica on board. Reach out and say hi through email (monica@nibletz.com) or on Twitter.

Meet Monica and the Nibletz team in person at this huge startup event.

CentUp Comes to Nibletz, See What It Does

Have you ever read a great blog post and wished there was some way to show your support? Sure, you could leave a comment or tweet a link. That stuff’s great. But you know what content creators really need?

Cash. Just like the rest of us.

There’s been a slowly growing trend of micropayment companies in the last few years. The deal is that you, the reader, give a very small amount–even a few pennies–to your favorite bloggers or content companies when they create something you like. It’s another way of showing your gratitude and helping them stay in business. Win-win.

Now, though, Chicago company CentUp is upping the ante even more. Instead of transactions straight from consumer to content company, there’s a third party benefiting from your pennies: charities.

CentUp will take 10% of all donations, and the other 90% will be split evenly between 1 of 6 charities and the content provider. The charities include national nonprofits such as Love146 and The Fender Music Foundation. As the company grows, they plan to add more charities.

Nibletz is proud to be a CentUp publisher. Our button is right there at the top of each post. All you have to do is sign up with CentUp, then start clicking. Besides designating how much you want to give, you can also use the button to Tweet about your donation. It’s similar to a Facebook “like” button, but benefits a couple of great organizations.

For our part, we will use our portion to continue our Sneaker-Strapped Road Trip. This enables us to travel the country, get in the trenches with great startups, and talk to amazing investors. It’s also when we cover awesome events like SXSW and Southland, which starts tomorrow. In fact, the majority of our content (which we know you love!) comes from our Sneaker-Strapped Road Trip. Love Nibletz? Every little bit helps us continue to be the voice of startups everywhere else.

DC Sartup DeJed Wants To Be Ebay For Digital Goods [interview][video][disrupt]

Daniel Kim and Bhupinder Singh were at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC’s starutp alley on day one. Their startup DEJED is a new digital goods market place that Kim describes as “ebay for digital goods”.

They are hoping to bring together creators, marketers and buyers in one platform that allows people to find the digital content they need and for creators, and affiliates to get paid.

In an untraditional model the duo are attracting third party people with social clout to help market the digital goods that the creators are selling. This may offer DEJED the biggest competitive edge over competitors. Singh is very excited about this aspect of the business, he told us during an interview that someone with tens of thousands of followers could easily make good money helping to bring buyers to digital goods.

DEJED hopes to become the go to place to buy and sell music, videos, ebooks, apps, plug-ins, code, models, icons, avatars, class notes, games, pictures, animations, how to’s, comics, coupons and any other good that has digital delivery.

On the buyer side DEJED will offer lifetime cloud access for all of the purchased digital goods as an archive to save everything someone buys using the DEJED platform.

Check out our video interview below and for more info visit dejed.com.

The Sneaker Strapped SXSW TakeOver, and Now We’re Back On The Road

Nibletz celebrated their first birthday as “The Voice Of Startups Everywhere Else” at South By Southwest 2013. The idea was born last year after the now infamous Startup Bus standoff. That’s when founder, and content director, Kyle Sandler (that’s me and I hate writing in third person), found that there were so many more startups outside Silicon Valley, than inside. 94% to be exact.

With that an idea was born and we immediately went to bootstrapping. Well our two man team, and our photographer put the words sneaker-strapped to entirely new levels. First off we would not have been able to perform like we did if it wasn’t for the “free food for founders” GroupMe group at SXSW. That list kept us informed for 5 days as to where all the great food was.

We also could not have done it without the help of Kelly Krause at the SXSW press office. You see in the previous four years we had press credentials through my previous site thedroidguy. This year, in planning everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, we totally forgot the press deadline. A little groveling and some sponsor help allowed us to strike a deal with Krause and the SXSW press team where we came in early, covered the crap out of SXSWedu (which was a great show) and they would let our little oversight get swept under the rug. (that will never happen again).

So now here are some of the milestones, remember one writer (Kyle), One biz dev guy (Nick) and one photographer (Allie) and less than $300 when we got on the ground did all this:

– We were ranked 3rd on Twitter for SXSWi coverage (@nibletztweets) on Sunday and finished top 5

– We’ve already published 40 stories and have another 30 that are still being prepped

– We shot 100 videos

– Made friends with over 200 startups

– Sold a bunch of tickets to everywhereelse.co 2014

– and didn’t get into serious trouble

We stayed 20 miles out and took a combination of buses to get to and from the hotel. We caught up on a lot of rest in the Hilton lobby. And we truly brought out the voice of startups everywhere else.

Now as we get back on the road to again continue our roadtrip we need some major community support. We’re sneaker strapping it and we’re reader supported. We are charged with being on the road for the balance of 2013 as we wrap up our book that will be released Q4 2013. We’ve already been to 65 cities now and plan on visiting another 40 more.

We stopped in over 60 different cities across the country, went to startup meetups, startup weekends, startup weeks, incubators, accelerators and anything with a startup pulse. We made some awesome friends and met some great startups, many of whom came to Memphis for everywhereelse.co.

We can’t do this alone. Last year in 4 campaigns we raised around $5,000 on indiegogo. For this leg of the trip we’ve got some interesting things we can offer our sponsors and we’re doing it directly below. Thank you so much for your continued support and let us know what city and state you’re in so we can connect on the road trip.

Sponsorship levels

Attaboys (The Extra Value Meal) $6.00 (face it $5.00 doesn’t get you an extra value meal anymore)

This is our “attaboy” sponsorship feel free to get us as many extra value meals as you’d like. We’ll gladly thank you with a link in a thank you weekly wrap up on nibletz.com and give you a shot out on our twitter accounts.

A Taco, from Moe’s Or Chipotle $10.00

This sponsorship will help get us a taco from Moe’s or Chipotle, food is fuel, fuel is good . Feel free to get us as many taco’s from Moe’s and Chipotle as you’d like we will be extremely grateful.

For this sponsorship we will give you a paragraph shout out with your link, description and Twitter handle in a per stop thanks for the Taco’s post. We’ll also give you a shot out on Twitter (info captured in the butto below).

Bus Ticket $25.00

We take the Bolt Bus, Megabus and other regional cheap bus services everywhere we can because we boot strap to the point we call it sneaker-strapping. Your $25 donation can get us a lot more places than you would ever imagine on Megabus and Bolt Bus.

For this sponsorship you’ll receive a new “nibz” short form story about your startup (identified as a sponsored nibz) along with a linkback in the logo and at the bottom of the story you’ll also get 2 shout outs on Twitter.

A Tank Of Gas and A Tank You! $50.00

For the stops on the trip that we can’t make by bus we have to drive and your $50.00 sponsorship for gas comes in quite handy.

With your $50.00 sponsorship you’ll get a nibz featured post on nibletz.com as well as a thank you mention in our weekly thank you post with linkbacks. You’ll also get 4 tweets with your Twitter handle and link.

Hotel Money $120

You’ll breathe easier knowing that the nibletz crew will get most likely 2 nights out of this hotel money. We may not sleep, but rather stay up and work all night, but that’s ok with you because we’re all startup founders.

With your hotel money sponsorship you and your startup will receive a “sponsored” nibz feature story about what you do. We’ll tweet the story out on our regular tweet schedule to nearly 150,000 followers and share across all of our social networks.

Sneaker Strapped Patron Sponsor $550.00

The nibletz sneaker strapped patron sponsorship includes one “startup village” booth package for everywhereelse.co 2013, February 17-19th, 2014 in Memphis Tennessee. The Startup Village booth includes booth space, wifi, a chance to pitch for over $10,000 in cash and several other contest opportunities, name in program, description in virtual village and 3 attendee tickets.

As part of the road trip patron sponsors your website will be mentioned in a rotation with other sponsors on our youtube videos from the road trip (not including SXSW).

You’ll also get a sponsored feature story. Which will run in our social streams.

Also, if you choose, you can send two t-shirts one XL and one M and we will wear them in videos from the trip.

Sneaker Strapped Saint $1000

With the sneaker strapped saint sponsor package you will get everything in the Patron package including the startup village booth for next years conference. You will also get your logo prominently featured on the 2014 everywhereelse.co conference SWAG bag.

Provided it fits in the tour schedule we will also stop by your startup for an event or meetup.

If you choose we will wear your t-shirt in our videos as well.

Nibletz/Everywhere Else Saint Sponsor $1800

This sponsorship includes everything in the Saint sponsorship however the perks will be included during the SXSW 2013 coverage. This is an excellent opportunity for startups that can’t be at sxsw but still want added exposure.

At $1800 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for an entire day and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos. Your startup will also be featured in all of our AOL Radio coverage as demonstrated here.

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of a week. We will also give you 20 additional Tweets

Platinum nibletz & everywhere else sponsor (3 Available) $2700

This sponsorship includes everything in the Saint sponsorship however the perks and more

Your startup will be featured in every video that we do during the “outro” see this link for an example.

At $2700 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for three entire days and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of a week. We will also give you 40 additional Tweets.

Thank you so much for your continued support!

Nibletz & The Everywhereelse.co Team Are Looking For A Few Good Sponsors

As many of you know prior to putting on everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference 2013, we are on the nibletz, sneaker-strapped startup road trip. We stopped in over 60 different cities across the country, went to startup meetups, startup weekends, startup weeks, incubators, accelerators and anything with a startup pulse. We made some awesome friends and met some great startups, many of whom came to Memphis for everywhereelse.co.

Well right after the conference we had to get right back on the road in order to finish our book in time for a December ’13 publishing (that seemed like so long ago when we first struck the book deal). We’re no officially on the road for the next 100 days. Our immediate next stops are Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis, Austin (sxsw), an outreach trip in San Francisco, Kansas City, Portland, Baltimore and more.

Sponsorship levels

Attaboys (The Extra Value Meal) $6.00 (face it $5.00 doesn’t get you an extra value meal anymore)

A Taco, from Moe’s Or Chipotle $10.00

Bus Ticket $25.00

A Tank Of Gas and A Tank You! $50.00

For the stops on the trip that we can’t make by bus we have to drive and your $50.00 sponsorship for gas comes in quite handy.

Hotel Money $120

Sneaker Strapped Patron Sponsor $550.00

As part of the road trip patron sponsors your website will be mentioned in a rotation with other sponsors on our youtube videos from the road trip (not including SXSW).

You’ll also get a sponsored feature story. Which will run in our social streams.

Also, if you choose, you can send two t-shirts one XL and one M and we will wear them in videos from the trip.

Sneaker Strapped Saint $1000

Provided it fits in the tour schedule we will also stop by your startup for an event or meetup.

If you choose we will wear your t-shirt in our videos as well.

SXSW 2013 Nibletz/Everywhere Else Saint Sponsor $1800

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of SXSWi 2013. We will also give you 20 additional Tweets during the course of SXSWi.

SXSW 2013 Platinum nibletz & everywhere else sponsor (3 Available) $2700

This sponsorship includes everything in the SXSW Saint sponsorship however the perks and more.This is an excellent opportunity for startups that can’t be at sxsw but still want added exposure.

Your startup will be featured in every video that we do during the “outro” see this link for an example.

Your startup will be featured all day long on AOL radio, listen to this for an example.

At $2400 Nick or Kyle will wear your startup t-shirt for one entire day and an entire day’s worth of on camera videos. Your startup will also be featured in all of our AOL Radio coverage as demonstrated here.

Finally, we will write two stories about your startup and tweet them out over the course of SXSWi 2013. We will also give you 40 additional Tweets during the course of SXSWi.

Thank you so much for your continued support!

Lessons From Damien Echols Have Our Twitter Followers Sighing In Relief

We took a lot of heat for having New York Times Best Selling Author Damien Echols speak at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference. All in all though, post conference, the feedback has been tremendously positive. Echols shed a new light on just how far technology has advanced since the early 90’s and opened up eyes to a world many techies and startup folks take for granted.

The fireside chat between Echols and Commercial Appeal business writer James Dowd, was one of the few sessions I got to attend in full, and I learned a lot. But what I really learned came afterwards.

After the speaking engagement we went out with Echols and his wife Lorrie along with Elizabeth Lemmonds from Upstart Memphis/Launch Your City and her husband. We had some amazing conversation and a good time. All Echols wanted to do was eat pizza and ride the trolley, so we went to our favorite local pizza spot, Aldo’s.

During Echols presentation he talked about Twitter. With all the technology out there Twitter is one of the things he likes the most. He likes Twitter because it’s more poetic, to really drive people to engage you need to think out what you’re going to say.

That got me thinking. As many of you know we have over 150,000 social media followers in aggregate. I have a little over 100,000 followers on my personal Twitter and the site has just under 23,000. That’s a lot of followers.

Until now we’ve been broadcasting a lot of content ( a lot may be an understatement). Echols noticed how much we repeat tweets as did many of the folks who attended the conference. Our good friend Tony Monteleone from Indianapolis didn’t want to hurt our feelings but said something has got to be done with our Twitter.

Around 2pm Central Time today, we changed it. While it’s important to get our content out there’s no reason to force it down our loyal followers throats. How many times do you need to check out the same exact story.

My co-founder Nick Tippmann and I spent a good deal of the day arguing and then recrafting the way we’re going to Tweet, and we’re pretty sure you’re going to like it.

Nibletztweets is the official Twitter account for the site. This is the feed where we will post our links to stories, (but not 100s of the same link anymore). StartupTechGuy is my personal Twitter, you’ll see links to stories, a little of my awkward personality, old school hip hop lyrics, Memphis Grizzlies tweets and the things I like.

If you only want to keep up with the Nibletz news, by all means follow just Nibletztweets but now you won’t see the same exact tweet on both feeds. I may tweet a story out with some opinion mixed in or just throw you for a loop.

The Everywhere Else Twitter will be used to tweet out stories that pertain to the conference, and the community of people that have formed around the conference. It will also serve as a notification place for information about our next big conference and some exciting events in between.

So rest assured, if you have any of our Twitter accounts on mute, and you want to unmute, it’s now safe. Also if you missed a story you can always check out the site or tweet @nibletztweets or @startuptechguy and we can re-send it to you.

Finally, if you want coverage feel free to visit nibletz.com/questions and follow the instructions there.

Did you miss this years everywhereelse.co conference? Well don’t miss next years! Click here

Top 10 blunders when developing and managing mobile apps…from a puppy

“As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.” – Mel
Brooks

This is Devie. Besides being the avatar of cuteness he’s an eccentric mobile app developer. Devie is quite
skilled when it comes to the mobile landscape in general and as such it would be wise to pay attention to
what he says.

The mobile app world has passed its infant phase but it hasn’t quite reached full maturity yet and many
developers and companies still make mistakes when it comes to putting out apps on the market.

To this end, Devie has helped us in making a list of the top 10 overlooked mistakes when developing and
managing apps. Heed his words carefully, otherwise, you will make the same face when disappointing your
clients and users, the same face Devie makes when he tips over the coffee cup (which happens roughly twice
a day).

Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top 10 mistakes:

# 1 Forgetting that you’re developing for real people

Apps are built for real people and not ,,the idea of people”. In other words UX or user experience. User
experience doesn’t mean just the interface. The UI is just a part of it. UX is everything from the moment
when the user finds out about the app, reads the description, installs it, sees how it works, when he needs
it, if he smiles, if he frowns in confusion, etc. When designing an app, think about how your regular user will
react to it.

Your app should have a precise functionality in mind, a natural flow like opening a book and an intuitive
design. A user shouldn’t be forced to study an app manual to use a mobile application. Especially if he pays
for it. Always remember : the end user experience is your primary goal.

# 2 Your mobile app looks like a quantum mechanics diagram

In other words, complexity doesn’t necessarily imply cool design no more than simplicity means the absence
of it.

In the case of smartphones, think about the iPhone for example. Do you really want to put 20 buttons and
features on a small screen? Just because you can code your app to do anything you’d like, doesn’t mean
you should. Unless you need an app with a lot of details (such as a media and entertainment app), your
app will take time away from a user instead saving time. Often times, simplicity wins 9/10 over complexity.
App functionality and design shouldn’t be drowned in useless buttons, unnecessary scrolling and being so
complicated that it makes you forget how you got to a certain section within the app.

# 3 Don’t make people squint, the screens are small

So you have a brilliant idea about creating an app. You’re going to corner the market. People will praise you
and cheer you on the streets. You’re the new Michelangelo. You might have created the new Sistine Chapel,
but unless you find a way to put it on a 3,5 inch screen you’re just going to let all that work go to waste.
Instead of trying to paint as many details into your app as possible, let them appear one at a time so your
users aren’t faced with a maze of buttons and too much detail. Let them savor the experience.

# 4 No app scalability

There are a lot of apps out there that have the potential of growing but they were built with only a few users
in mind. Unless you’re intentionally putting out one time apps, you should take into consideration that one
of the reasons you are developing mobile apps, is because you want to reach as many people as possible.

Think about this one. What would have happened if the moment when Angry Birds really got popular,
the app was only designed with limited playability and only for a few thousand users? it would have
become ,,One of those games I played for a couple of days and that’s all“. ,,That’s all” isn’t the phrase you
want to hear when your app is reviewed.

# 5 The app itself isn’t your main source of revenue

The main source of profits isn’t the mobile app. In-app purchases and in-app advertising are. In 2012, more
than 3/4 of the global app revenues came out of in-app purchases. Don’t forget the interactive feature of in-
app currency, for example customer points when shopping. Most apps are sold for 99 cents or $3. You might
reach 2000 users, but your only going to make $2000-$6000.

Developers aren’t different from rockstars. No, developers, you’re not the next Jimi Hendrix…yet. We’re
talking about the fact that most money rockstars make isn’t from cd’s and songs (especially with torrents
nowadays) but from concerts. They make their daily bread from offering interactivity and memorable
experiences.

,,Fact : Apps don’t make a lot of money. The content they deliver does.” – Devie

Such as it is, most apps are free anyway and all apps should be free. Why? Because psychologically speaking,
why would someone buy a product they haven’t even tested based on a 3 line description of how awesome
it is. If it isn’t free, then a free trial should be implemented so customers can know what to expect.
Monetizing mobile apps isn’t about selling the app. The app is a medium for revenue and not the end goal.

# 6 Ads can make or break an app

Not all mobile apps are madefor mobile ads. First of all, the smartphone or tablet is not a desktop pc. When
building an app, say for a restaurant chain, an ad that offers coupons or discounts might work. But right now,
banners and spray and pray ads are most likely to backfire on your user experience.

Another thing you should never do is integrate ads that have buttons looking like a natural extension of
the app. Spammy and intrusive ads that gobble up the screen when the user is in mid-use of the app often
begets negative reviews and complaints. Mobile ads are a tricky business. The question you should ask
yourself is :,,Will the ads cut into the user experience and make monetization impossible or not?”

Mobile app success stems in the first place from the user reaction and not just from the fact that your app
was downloaded – Devie

# 7 No points of contact, no user feedback, no improvements = no cookies for developers and companies

There are a lot of apps out there that stand only to gain from updates and improvements that never seem to
arrive. Not all apps have to implement points of contact for developers /companies (such as a mail address
or forum), but it doesn’t hurt when you want to ,,actually!” see how your app is perceived and how it can
be improved from the users themselves. No points of contact sometimes means that you’re telling the
users ,,That’s all we offer and nothing more, so don’t bother us”.

# 8 Poor push notifications pushes users away

Or even the very lack of push notifications for that matter. Apps such as news apps stand only to benefit
from the smart integration of PN’s and they keep users retention at good levels. However, poor PN planning
can ruin your app. PN’s should be relaxed like when a friend calls you and tells you about a good movie that
just came out. But if he’d call you every 5 seconds to tell you about every TV channel, you’d think about
choosing your friends more wisely wouldn’t you?

There are apps for example, that help you find coffee shops on the map. A badly planned PN would be when
every 2 minutes when a user walks an extra 600 ft, an annoying update about a coffee shop a few streets
away suddenly breaks his train of thought. Or if even disturbing users while sleeping is a guaranteed way

to screw up your app. For more details on what you should and shouldn’t do with push notifications, check
out Push notifications, the do’s and don’ts.

# 9 No analytics and no idea what your app is doing on a saturday night at 3:00 a.m.

Analytics or another way of saying app behaviour and user behaviour is a must when you want to understand
what’s happening when your app is ready to grow u p and see the world. The ability to monitor and study
app usage, users characteristics, how long do they use the app, how many times and so on is vital.

Without analytics an app faces fully fledged uncertainty on the part of developers. Not knowing whether
your app really becomes popular or it has been slowly dying leaves you with a blindspot that’s going to affect
investment and results.

# 10 Targeting too many platforms or too few

Apps are fickle children and sometimes they want all flavors of the ice cream or other times just one.
Consider the value proposition of your mobile app. If you’re going for native on multiple platforms, then
really really take a few steps back and consider if it’s worth it. A lot of business /enterprise apps are
preferred to be on tablets due to the wide screen that allows presentations, pitches, reports and getting
quick news from business blogs and magazines.

Rather than developing for 3-4 mobile platforms, such as iPhone, Android, Windows Phone or Blackerry,
make careful considerations about this next question : Can I waste valuable resources such as time and
money developing for multiple platforms while my competition puts out an app before me?

Going for a one size fits all is good in a lot of businesses but the technology for doing this in mobile apps isn’t
here yet. Rather than targeting a lot of platforms, develop an good and polished app for one or two main
platforms such as iOS and Android.

Conclusions : These are just a part of the big questions and mistakes you can make when developing and
managing mobile apps. Other things we could highlight would be : little or no integration with the device’s
native features, apps that are developed requiring user immobility which is the exact opposite of ,,being
mobile”, lack of social network implementations and so on.

The main key ideas you have to keep in mind is UX and targeted needs. Like Rebecca Flavin , CEO of Denver-
based Effective UI said some of the elements of UX: usable, useful and enjoyable. The three cherries of
creating an interactive and engaging user experience.

Take heed of what Devie said and as a company or developer you’ll be able to brag to your friends that you
saved thousands of dollars and created stunning apps because you listened to a puppy.

P.S. – We wanted to put the cherries on top but Devie would have ate them before we got to the end.

This is a guest post by Appscend (www.appscend.com) — the all-in-one cross-mobile performance based
application platform. Appscend offers its customers the fastest cross platform development technology
available on the market today together with a complete list of backend technologies that ensure application
& user management, a powerful push notifications platform as well as app analytics, ad-integration, in-app
purchases and over-the-air distribution services.

everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference Named To Forbes’ Must Attend Conference List For Entrepreneurs

Forbes Magazine’s online site forbes.com published their must attend conference list for entrepreneurs in 2013. The Small Business Summit held annually in New York and SXSWi held in March in Austin, of course made the list. However two key startup events in their first year also received accolades from forbes.com

Silicon Prairie News’ newest event Big Kansas City will be held March 26-28th. This event compliments their Big Omaha Conference and last year’s Thinc Iowa conference. In addition to Big Kansas City, SPN’s Jeff Slabotsky are again holding Big Omaha and also Big Des Moines, another new venture. On Wednesday they sent out an email release highlighting a “season pass” that will be available next week which will get conference go-ers in the midwest access to all three events.

Our own everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference also made the must attend list. everywhereelse.co has quickly become the largest single venue startup conference in the country with over 2000 attendee tickets sold as of this publishing. With a super strong speaker line up and unparalleled access to curriculum, investors and other founders from “everywhere else”, this inaugural event quickly caught the eye of the lists author John Hall CEO of Digital Talent Agents.

Ticket sales will wrap up early next week but there are still a handful of attendee tickets and a handful of startup village booths available. You don’t want to miss this awesome event.

see everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference on Forbes.com

Online Ticketing for Everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference powered by Eventbrite

nibletz.com Becomes The First Site To Integrate With 500 Startups “Markerly”

Markerly founder Sarah Ware has teamed up with nibletz.com as their beta guinea pig

We’ve covered Markerly pretty in depth over the past few months. Their rockstar woman founder, Sarah Ware, will even be a panelist at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference” event in February.

When we first started reporting on Markerly it was a browser plugin that allowed you to very easily highlight, clip and share any content on any website. Markerly allows you to share to your social networks, email or even your own personal Markerly account so that you can have text later on, and the source information from that text.

We installed the browser plugin a few months back and would share content from nibletz.com and other startup focused online magazines periodically using the Markerly tool.

Well, last month Ware and her DC based startup got accepted into Dave McClure’s 500 startups program in Mountain View California. We have a pretty good relationship with Ware and we weren’t surprised when she called to tell us that just under two weeks into the program they were making a mini-pivot.

We won’t go too much into what that mini-pivot is, we have to save some of the suspense for the 500 startups demo day early next year. But we will tell you that Markerly is now integrated within nibletz.com.

All you have to do is select text like you would to copy and paste, anywhere, in any article within nibletz.com. Regardless of whether you have the browser plugin or not, once you select the text you want a hover button will appear above the text. At the moment the button allows you to share the extracted text to Twitter, Facebook or by email.

When you share your highlight, those who check it out on your social networks will be taken to our original story and they’ll even be able to see the highlighted text within the story.

Markerly is a great tool in that regard. I’m willing to bet on a daily basis someone shares a link with me either by email or instant message and with that link, minimal text. Well the problem arises when I’m sent a link to a 1000 word story. I don’t have time to read 1000 words just to get to what someone else wants me to see. Using Markerly I can see the text that someone wants me to see within the entire body of the story so I can grab the context at my leisure.

While we’ve seen some of our readers adopt the browser plugin Markerly product and share across Facebook and Twitter, the team at Markerly has made it insanely easy for anyone to capture the experience (you see what I did there).

Right now it works on any desktop/laptop/PC/Mac browser and hopefully down the road it will work on Mobile as well.

So go for it, try it, select some text in this story and see what happens.

Markerly is actually solving two problems for nibletz.com. The first is the sharing problem I described above an also the more traditional social sharing problem. We have share buttons at the bottom of each and every story, and we encourage you to use them. However, we know that we have some long stories here at nibletz.com so when you can’t wait to share something, highlight it and send it out immediately using nibletz.com now powered by Markerly.

Linkage:

Check out Markerly here

500 startups here

Everywhere Else here

Nibletz Teams Up With StarTropica For Strategic Content Partnership

Here at the nibletz world headquarters we are pleased to announce that we have entered into a strategic content partnership with Moises Szarf and StarTropica.

StarTropica, “cracking the startup coconut”, is the premiere startup and high growth technology website super serving southern Florida, specifically Miami.

Although just launched three months ago Szarf has been gathering and reporting on Miami area startup news continuously since then as both an outreach and traction tool for Miami’s fledging startup community.

We are particularly pleased to announce this partnership on the heels of the Startup America Regions Summit which served as a hyper advocate to promote startup communities working together and partnering for the good of the overall startup ecosystem across the country. Also, a strategic partnership with StarTropica at this time cements the foundation for our evolving plan for the nibletz.com brand and long term goals.

Our partnership with StarTropica will include story pick ups, custom content provided by Szarf and his staff as well as co-hosting events and meetups in Miami Beach (and who doesn’t want to partner when it means trips to Miami).

Nibletz.com content originating out of Miami Florida will either be diverted to the StarTropica staff, or cross posted from the Nibletz hub. Miami startups are encouraged to keep corresponding with StarTropica directly or feel free to email miami@nibletz.com

We look forward to increasing our coverage of the great startups in the sunshine state.

Linkage:

Check out StarTropica here

Nibletz Florida coverage is here

And this is for everywhereelse click it

We Need Startup SWAG!!!!!

As many of you know we’re on a nationwide sneaker strapped startup road trip and it’s about to pick up for a long three month run. In the next three months we will be in Cincinnati, Austin Texas, San Diego, Portland, Nashville (again), Milwaukee, Columbus, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and most likely Florida.

We will be at accelerator demo days, startup weekends, 48 hour launch events, Global Entrepreneurship week events, CTIA MobileCon, SXSWEco and many more events.

What startup wouldn’t like to have their t-shirt in front of the thousands of people, startups and investors that we’ll see during this leg of the trip. Heck you may even be lucky enough to have your startup swag featured in one of our many videos that stay on YouTube forever.

So here’s what you gotta do. Send us your SWAG. Send an email to startups@nibletz.com and let us know that you want to send us SWAG. We’re looking for t-shirts (of course), hats, hoodies, shoes, whatever you’ve got. We need at least two if you’re sending shirts and XL and XXL are our preferred sizes. We actually have three co-founders, and our third insists he’s a medium (he’s lying so send a large along for him).

When we get your SWAG in the mail we’ll write a nice story about you, featuring your SWAG and if your SWAG really rocks we’ll do a video, and maybe even have Mr. Voice our voice guy do a little intro to your SWAG wearing video.

The cooler the SWAG the more we’ll wear it. Let me just clue you in a little bit.

I wear my “Why Combinator” shirt from Wahooly at least twice a week, more when we’re on “tour”.
I love the softness of my big green RentStuff t-shirt
We love the Justdecide t-shirts because it’s bad ass that it says “Born in Brooklyn” on the back.
We wear our dog tags from Rawporter and always pack Rawporter Condoms (LOL)
and so much more, but it’s time to re-up the wardrobe so if you’ve got SWAG and you want to be featured just email us. It’s that easy. startups@nibletz.com

Our laptops could probably use some sticker changing too. You probably know we have an enormous social audience (110k +) and get a lot of hits on the site, but on the road real people see us all the time, and now they’ll see your stuff too.

Linkage:

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from “everywhere else”

Send us an email to send us your swag at startups@nibletz.com

Show your swag off personally HERE