The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

US Festival '83 Remembrances: Hell, Heaven and Hell Again -- in One Day!

US Festival '83: A generation earlier, the cliche was that if you can remember Woodstock, then you weren't there. I not only can remember US Festival, Day Two, but I was definitely there (with my brother, a good friend, and his girlfriend). 

Imagine, hell, heaven and hell again in the same day. The hell was 600K+ people showing up for a festival where parking is 6+ miles away from the fair grounds, and having to walk 6+ miles to the same fair grounds when like four buses show up. 

Heaven is seeing Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Triumph, Scorpions and Van Halen back to back to back in an orgiastic, positive-vibe filled mud pit (although, truthfully, Van Halen sucked, as David Lee Roth was too blotto to remember the lyrics in song after song).

You knew definitively that it was a life event.

Hell was desperately climbing through a bus window, and getting separated from our small group, so as to not have to walk miles back to the parking area, only to not be able to find our car or my brother for hours. 

This was pre-cell phone days, and the parking area was literally on a dried up lake bed, where our reference marker, a bathroom, got moved from its original point, and we had no reference point in a sea of thousands of cars and many tens of thousands of people.

I will never forget the moment when we actually found one another in that parking lot.

It was every bit as dramatic as the end-sequence in the 1963 animal classic, The Incredible Journey.

I guess that's why they say the journey is the reward.

Jolly and Roger's Misguided Adventures is Ansca Mobile's App of the Week

The accolades are starting to come in on our latest creation, Jolly and Roger's Misguided Adventures: Quest for the Dragon Tear, an interactive children's ebook for iPad, which was produced by my company, Unicorn Labs, and co-created with Stephen Silver (Kim Possible, Danny Phantom) and Frank Rocco (Wow Wow Wubbzy, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness).

'Jolly,' which is already a Top 50 ranked iPad Book App (in terms of sales) was just recognized as App of the Week by Ansca Mobile, makers of Corona SDK, which we develop our ebooks on top of.

Needless to say, we are thrilled, inasmuch as this is the third time we've been recognized by Ansca, including our Top 10 selling ebook hit, 'Rabbit and Turtle's Amazing Race.'

Btw, if you are interested in such things, here is the podcast that I did in tandem with this announcement.

UPDATE: ANSCA has now recognized our ebook as the App of the Month. Thanks, guys!

Related:

1. Unicorn Labs produced 'Spot the Dot' featured in NYT article: Finding Good Apps for Children With Autism
2. The Five Keys to a Successful eBook Production: The Story of Spot the Dot
3. Kirkus Reviews gives Spot the Dot a Kirkus Star as a Book of Remarkable Merit

 

PATTERN RECOGNITION: Four 'Thematic' Phases in the Life of a Startup

Over the years, I have launched, built and grown startups in Commercial Real Estate, Embedded Systems, Consumer Software, Network Hardware, Internet Access, Mobile Apps and eBooks.

Some of these ventures have achieved breakout success, resulting in millions of dollars of annual revenue, culminating in liquidity events to companies like Apple, IBM and Intel.

Others have become lifestyle types of endeavors, and still others, have failed outright.

One of the excercises that has helped me keep things intellectually honest in gauging "where we're at" in the life cycle of the business, and "how we're doing" is to define thematic-phases that anchor the definition of the situation for the company, the key milestones that we need to achieve to successfully navigate that phase, and the tactical priorities within same.

To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that there is "one right way," or that the details within a phase are necessarily the same from one company to the next.

I am just trying to provide the reader a "straw-man" to be picked apart and iterated upon.

One core take-away is that it takes about three years to get into the game as a serious player in your chosen segment, and about five years to establish a dominant position.

Know this fact before you start, if for no other reason than many aspiring entrepreneurs lose heart after 12-18 months, when perennially getting poked in the eye simply trying not to die gets demoralizing.

PHASE ONE: “Don't Die” (First 12-18 months)

• First heart beat
• Definition of core values and beliefs, purpose, mission
• Creation of 1.0 strategic and tactical plan
• Secure initial financing(s)
• Business model validation
• Public launch of corporate identity
• First product shipment (alpha to 1.0)
• First customer sale, deployment, support and reference-ability
• Emergence of viable competition

PHASE TWO: “Run Like Hell” (Next 12 months)

• Transition from start-up to upstart
• Refinement of business model to more closely align with value proposition
• Differentiation: Product road map and related messaging emerge
• Creation of 1.0 recruiting, training and retention strategy
• Follow-on financing, development of corporate structure
• Product-izing out-of-box experience and support process
• Begin meaningful partnerships and affiliation

PHASE THREE: “In The Game” (Next 12-18 months)

• Full funding and development of sales and marketing organizations
• First deliverables on differentiation strategy
• Strategic and tactical plan reaches 2.0 stage
• Beat competition in initial beachhead
• Secure key partners and channels
• Recruiting, training and retention strategy reaches 2.0 stage
• Avoidance of sustainable mediocrity

PHASE FOUR: “Goal Line” (Next 12-24 months)

• Economic viability and/or robust liquidity options
• Maturation of products in differentiation strategy
• Clear differentiation and defensibility in industry
• 3.0 recruiting, training and retention strategy 

Jolly and Roger's Misguided Adventures: Quest for the Dragon Tear (Children's interactive ebook for iPad)

Jolly and Roger's Misguided Adventures: Quest for the Dragon Tear is now LIVE in the App Store. 

This interactive children's ebook for iPad was produced by my company, Unicorn Labs, and co-created with Stephen Silver (Kim Possible, Danny Phantom) and Frank Rocco (Wow Wow Wubbzy, Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness).

It's a wonderfully enjoyable story with beautiful, hand-drawn art, intensely great audio, and a treasure chest full of 70+ fun surprises.

Plus, it showcases the power of our ebook creation engine, Unicorn Engine for eBooks, which enables rapid development of highly interactive ebooks in a fraction of the time and cost of completely custom efforts.

In fact, via the Unicorn Engine, we have already earned both a coveted Kirkus Star on David A. Carter's 'Spot the Dot,' which we produced for Ruckus Media, and achieved a Top 10 revenue grossing eBook on 'Rabbit and Turtle's Amazing Race.' 

What is 'Jolly' about? It is a story about dueling pirates, a witch's curse, and a little boy who dreams of becoming a pirate. It is the first chapter in a continuing saga, a true original creation for a rapidly evolving medium.

The book is priced at $4.99, and there is a free Lite version that you can check out to "try before you buy," but to celebrate the launch, we are pricing 'Jolly' at 99 cents for one-week only.

To get a flavor of what Jolly and Roger's Misguided Adventures: Quest for the Dragon Tear is all about, check out this one minute video trailer.

Update: AppAdvice has a decent write-up of the book, and is giving away a few promo codes for a free download of the book. Check it out.

Update #2: ANSCA (makers of Corona) has honored the book by naming it their App of the Week. Also, here is the Podcast that I did in tandem with it being announced.

Update #3: Our book is picking up steam, and 'Jolly' is now the #44 Top Paid iPad Book App.

Related:

1. The Five Keys to a Successful eBook Production: The Story of Spot the Dot
2. Kirkus Reviews gives Spot the Dot a Kirkus Star as a Book of Remarkable Merit
3. Rebooting the Book: One iPad at a Time
4. Anatomy of an eBook App

Inconvenient Truths: How Adobe lost the Mobile Wars

In 2005, I launched a startup in the online video space by the name of vSocial. Powered by Adobe Flash's 'embed and spread' capabilities, our service grew virally, piggybacking on the growth of the emerging social networks, most fundamentally, MySpace.

In about 120 days from launch, it would grow from 0 to 71M+ monthly page views, and 45M+ monthly videos served.

Moreover, there is little question that the rise of YouTube (and countless other video service providers) was directly tied to the power of Flash to facilitate viral distribution.

In fact, numerous video clip sharing networks existed before Flash took hold, but for this lack of virality, never reached a tipping point.

I was sufficiently blown away by the potency of Flash that I wrote in mid-2006 that Flash was delivering on the promise of 'write-once, run-anywhere' in a way that Java never would, and had the potential to be the fuel that drove the engine of social computing.

Meanwhile, Adobe was spreading the message how by the end of 2006, tens of millions of mobile devices would be running Flash lite, giving developers the dream scenario of being able to develop on one platform that would run on PCs, Macs, the Web and Mobile devices.

There are no Shortcuts to Greatness

I set the above backdrop, as in 2006, iPhone had not yet been announced, Adobe had incredible market momentum with Flash, legions of dedicated developers, and as a developer, the ideal of NOT having to create different code bases for different platforms, while maintaining rich application and media functionality, was a no-brainer. 

Thus, IF Adobe had delivered in mobile, I and most of the developers in my circle would have enthusiastically ridden that bandwagon.

There is not a SINGLE mobile Flash Success Story

Flash-forward to the present, and the inconvenient truth is NOT that Apple blocked Adobe, but rather, that there is not a single mobile success story that Adobe can hang its hat on showing why mobile Flash is more asset than liability, let alone a viral propagating game-changer.

Think about that for a moment. There is not a SINGLE mobile Flash success story that one can point to either at the killer app level, the handset level or the carrier level. And it's not for lack of interest on the part of any of these constituencies.

You don't think that RIM desperately wants to be able to piggyback on the installed base of Flash on the desktop?

Or, that Google didn't want Flash's presence on Android to make Apple's iOS look closed and hobbled?

Or, that the legions of Flash developers didn't want to see their existing Flash apps running on mobile devices?

Or, that AT&T and Verizon didn't want a device-agnostic software play that would strengthen their hand relative to end-to-end providers like RIM and Apple?

How the fuck did this NOT happen for Adobe?

If they had even remotely executed on the mobile side in terms of portability, performance and battery life, they would likely still be in the driver's seat, and Apple would have had no choice but to capitulate and put Flash on iOS (something that every Mac owner knows would have sucked the performance 'juice' out of iOS).

Adobe didn't Bow to Apple; they FELL on their face

The narrative that Adobe management would desperately love to propagate is that, in the end, pushing Flash on mobile was blocked by Apple, and the success of iOS forced the company to shift to open standards like HTML5 (which notably, has been long-pushed by 'closed,' proprietary Apple).

The hard truth is that almost eight years after Flash variants were introduced to run on mobile devices, and five years after Adobe began pushing mobile as core to its Flash everywhere strategy, mobile Flash is a dog without any serious defenders outside of Adobe.

In other words, in the so-called war for mobile video and mobile app run-time supremacy, Adobe simply never showed up, something to keep in mind when you see ludicrous headlines, such as WSJ's 'Adobe Bows in Apple Feud.'

If anything, the company that was once known for creating brilliant tools and core technologies for creative professionals and web developers, fell prey to its own internal entropy.

In this context, shooting mobile Flash in the head hopefully frees the company both psychically and from a resource perspective to focus on building great products that enable HTML and other open web technologies to realize their potential in mobile, the desktop and beyond.

But, as others have noted, the sheer PR-speak, gobbledy-gook nature of their announcement that they are killing mobile Flash is indicative of a company that continues to confuse assembling a bunch of fatty chicken parts with the magic and alchemy of creating a living, breathing, organic free-range chicken.

That, in tandem with their failure with Mobile Flash, is the inconvenient truth the company needs to get clarity on IF they are going to turn the tide of irrelevancy in mobile.

UPDATE: Mike Chambers, Adobe’s Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform, has written a 'clarifications' post that in blaming Apple, seems to be confusing correlation with causality so as to ignore an inconvenient truth. After all, Adobe was like the 'Boy who Cried Wolf' for so long that when Apple came along and solved many of the problems that Flash had been known for and then Adobe STILL failed to make them pay for it on Android, RIM, etc., it was more a case of death by irrelevance than by attack. 

Related:

1. Adobe Crumbling: Is Winning Mobile Flash Fight Critical to Company’s Success?
2. RIM: Confusing a Bag of Chicken Parts with a Living, Breathing Chicken