Third time lucky

Yesterday I went to a rather excellent 12min.me.

The investor I wanted to catch up had also put his name down and was there at the beginning.

We agreed to talk after the talks (which lasted 12 minutes).

There was, of course, a lot of networking going on afterwards but we managed to speak and for me to show him the app.

He gave good advice (go to Bay Startup who may forward your details to suitable angels). He also agreed to put me in contact with an angel investor who seems, to me, to be quite suitable.

Fighting

I went to the Tech Founder's meetup on Wednesday mainly because a possible investor was there.

He wasn't.

So, on Thursday morning I dropped him a message via LinkedIn. He said he was going to the Founder's Fight Club - which I hadn't heard of - that evening.

I put myself on the wait list and was soon accepted.

It was a very good evening. We were put in teams and as to propose a business solution to a stated problem.

Our team did well, we almost one but didn't, and got a special prize. I did my usual assertiveness thing to make sure that I was noticed by everyone, including the investor I wanted to talk with.

I will try to catch up with him when he's next in Munich but at least he is more aware of me now.

There were some take aways:

• Don't worry about exit
• Find an itch - so that it's something you really want to work at
• Read about Google Sprint which is an alternative to Lean Startup.

It was a very fun evening and I met some good people.

Super progress

On Monday I realised that when Apple, a few days before, had written that they looked forward to me re-submitting the app they mean they hadn't received the new version. Even though I had uploaded it to iTunes Connect.

I spent the morning carefully resubmitting it. This was quite an effort.

On Tuesday night, in bed, just before I switched my phone to "stop-pinging-me-everytime-I-get-an-email-or-other-notification" I received a ping. Apple had changed the status of the app from "In review" to "Ready for Sale".

But it is a free app.

I got up and checked the status on my iTunes portal and checked the online documentation which confirmed that "Ready for Sale" meant approved and released to the App Store.

But it could take 24 hours (and some forums had reported days) before it would be visible on the App Store.

Five hours later, in the morning, I woke up and checked the App Store. It was there!

Finally, after two months, the app is not only on the Google Play Store but also on the Apple App Store.

Yesterday evening I went to a Tech Founders pitch event. About 15 people in a line doing a one minute elevator pitch one after the other. A VC investment manager I hoped was there wasn't. Then there was food (of awesomeness) and beer. Then I left and met a friend nearby for cocktails.

This morning I used the opportunity of missing the investor to drop him a LinkedIn PM.

Take-aways from the lean startup meetup

Not much really as I knew most of what was being talked about but ...

• when doing user interviews, maybe 10 to 20 would be sufficient
• as an inducement maybe vouchers (€50 value) or prizes but generally people are happy to help

Questions worth asking (this is around web usability):

• go to a page - what does it tell you?
• what do you see?
• Complete a task - think out loud.

Bit of an update

I am now in the happy state of being able to submit apps to Apple and for them to reject them.

This is a major improvement over not even being able to get the damned certifications working.

Today I resubmitted an app, having spent the last day correcting it, getting into more problems, then fixing those problems.

The tyranny is over

For years I have been keeping all the business cards I've been given.

And for quite a while being kept on a ledge in the living room.

Today there were biblical levels of rain, angled straight again the living room window.

There must have been a leak - small enough not to be noticed for a while but big enough to soak all the business card.

I spent an hour going through them - one by one - then throwing them out.

Many of the people on the cards I couldn't remember. And as these cards were often 10 years old, or older, basically worthless.

The only way to keep up to date is through sites like LinkedIn.

Actual progress

The development of the iPhone version has been driving me crazy.

But in the last few days I got it to work.

I then got it into iTunes Connect and then TestFlight.

Initially Apple rejected it because I hadn't put in a demo account for them to test it. Actually I had and re-explained it.

Then Apple rejected it again from the App store as it has the word "beta" in it. But they allowed it to be used in Test Flight with selected users (this is why it's a lesson learnt - don't forget FB and other social media and sources of assistance).

But I didn't know anyone else with an iPhone. The Crazy Chicken suggested PMing friends in Facebook. I did and three people responded that they were happy to try it out.

So now I have an app in test mode and hope to correct it and release it onto the Apple app store soon.

I also recorded a YouTube video on how to use it. This took a few attempts as I was using Apowersoft to mirror the screen of the mobile  and it kept timing out.