Renewal

It turns out that Apple likes to renew their certificates every year.

Which gives me time to forget how they all fit together.

So for a while the push notification service for the iPhone version wasn't working. But it is now.

Venture Wiesn takeaway

The main takeaway from this year's Venture Wiesn is don't go to the next one.

• Very poor presentations - from the VCs (!)
• Not very good Bavarian food
• Not such a good environment for networking.

Burda bootcamp

Yesterday went to the Burda Bootcamp for digital startups.

A few takeaways:

• Av size of startup is 7.5 people in Munich
• Investors should be thrilled with the business
• Best of investors were entrepreneurs

It's all about the mobile

Yesterday I went to a Mobile Marketing Association "Retail in a Mobile World" seminar which was very good. It reinforced that mobile is key these days.

Then went to a meeting about big data - we anticipate that our app will start producing a lot of data.

Oh yeah, it's been a while since I've updated this blog.

I kinda stopped doing app dev work as we really need customers to use our app and give feedback (and money). Which is hard for me as my German isn't good enough.

But we do now have a co-conspirator who is German, likes app dev and likes sales.

And we have engaged a lawyer to write the standard terms and conditions for our commercial offering.

So we are crawling along in the right direction.

Topping from the bottom

Someone actually used this term at a panel discussion yesterday on the topic of corporate entrepreneurship. Apparently I was the only one who noticed.

His usage on the term was on how to innovate in a large company. I spoke with him afterwards, stressing that actually I'm not into that scene but am aware.

The lesson learnt in this post is that if you want to remember something write it down.

Several of the panel talked about the need of a good mentor. I agreed and made a note of it. A mental note which I immediately forgot.

That's also my take-away: we (and all startups) need a mentor.

Investment

We're getting the feeling that the investment advisor/facilitator we've met doesn't think we're ready to approach investors.

The steam problem

I had to get out of the flat. Even though I should be meeting the Crazy Chicken this evening I had to escape now.

So, I am sitting in a San Francisco Coffee Shop (in Munich) - think Starbucks without the grotty carpets.

To avoid any incidents I didn't get a coffee - already had one - but tea.

They handed it over with a second saucer on top. So I didn't realise that they had put two - TWO - tea bags in the cup.

Oh well.

Why is this post labelled as a lessons learnt?

Well, I've been looking at colour swatches. Purple is our corporate colour which is used on our flyers, window stickers, logo and most of the app itself.

But to make the app less monochromic I am looking for a colour that is complementary to purple. There are lots of free colour matching sites out there. But I am kinda thinking that maybe we should have asked our designer to give us a series of colours.

A few days ago the latest version of the app rolled out. This gives us usage information. Appery supplied a view of this but we couldn't download it and analyse it - I guess for security reasons.

So I had to create a work-around.

From this we deduced that one phone (apart from ourselves) is using the app. Well, it's a start.

I'm hoping that by this weekend I will have submitted a more colourful and enticing version of the app with some bugs fixed and some new features.