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I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

theappifier.com

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Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#121

Post by there »

marknutter wrote: post #22

Kudos to you for following your dream, but I do have to say I'm fully against making it easier for people to move that which should stay on the web to native apps. We have web browsers for a reason.

i don't think his intention is to move content, but rather just to make that content more easily accessible and visible to mobile users.

the problem with mobile websites is that they have to compete with the app store. if an iphone user wants a train schedule, are they more likely to open up a browser and search google for "train schedule iphone" and scroll around clicking on random sites? or would they just open the app store, search for "train schedule" and easily see all available apps, ranked and reviewed, easily added to their home screen with a single click?

i run such a mobile website for metra trains (http://metra.jcs.org/) but because i have no native app in the ios or android stores, it doesn't see much traffic. i've thought about developing an app that just embeds a browser and goes to the site, just so it can be listed in the app store.

apple does in fact have a listing of mobile web apps at https://www.apple.com/webapps/ but i doubt most iphone owners even know it exists. it's also not very easy to use from mobile devices, strangely enough.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#122

Post by larrys »

traftonesler wrote: post #69
larrys wrote: post #30

You need to move this site to a host that can handle the load today. I'm getting timeouts and finally got the home page to load. I can't get any of the other pages to load either.

Trying to reach you via e-mail -- www.wpengine.com can help with your site. We specialize in high traffic!

I just grep'd the log and saw that in the three hours since I posted the screen grab there were 1610 unique IP's. So obviously many more people were not able to reach the site.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#123

Post by mobiplayer »

nakkiel wrote: post #112
gozman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I was a software engineer that got an MBA and was doing management consulting. 2. Over 80k / year 3. My runway is private, but we financed ourselves by taking on short-term iOS/Wordpress dev/design consulting gigs to stay fed.

28, an MBA and 80k / year. I must be doing something very wrong.

Me too. 29, no MBA and not even half of that :-)

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#124

Post by RoastBeats »

You should consider offering a free version that serves your ads. You'll get more people using it, and then you can monetize off the ads. If enough people are using the free version, you might discover it's an even bigger revenue generator than the paid version.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#125

Post by snorkel »

marknutter wrote: post #22

Kudos to you for following your dream, but I do have to say I'm fully against making it easier for people to move that which should stay on the web to native apps. We have web browsers for a reason.

I think it's genius. WP site owners don't care about channel redundancy, they just want a push button method of putting their content into as many channels as possible. Catering to the "Look Ma, I made a mobile app!" crowd is a big market.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#126

Post by derrh »

marknutter wrote: post #22

Kudos to you for following your dream, but I do have to say I'm fully against making it easier for people to move that which should stay on the web to native apps. We have web browsers for a reason.

Supply and demand. As long as there is a demand for native apps then it doesn't really matter where we think things "should stay." I think this is a great step toward making Wordpress sites more accessible via mobile devices. Good work!

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#127

Post by larrys »

patio11 wrote: post #111
larrys wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should add to your marketing more info about how you are good in handling traffic and most importantly why. In a way that will make sense with both tech and non tech types. (Non tech has no idea what aws is or a cdn is for example). I've looked at your site a few times (even right now) and that isn't the thing that stuck in my mind from your marketing. The takeaway for me was "expert at WP" not necessarily "exper…

We're (literally) working on a website refresh right now, which hits that and other points. Sample factoid: One of the customers was on 20/20 recently and sustained 2,500 requests per second for 15 minutes. Boring technical details: Varnish caching, automatic load balancing, redundant servers (beefy physical hardware to avoid poor disk performance on virtualized systems), "Death to KeepAlive", etc. (Ooh, it is live n…

That's great. I actually read the whole page.

I would add an additional bullet to the home page adapting a key statement from that page where they said "sit back and be happy you're not having to do all this yourself."

Why our engine never stops

-----------------------------

(Hey, why are we so fast, secure and scalable?)

Sit back and be happy that you're not having to do all this yourself

Linked to the "our-infrastructure page".

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#128

Post by jordanmessina »

huhtenberg wrote: post #118
gozman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey mark! it was strange to me too at first, but we built it in response to the fact that we kept on getting asked about getting onto the "app store" by small business owners who were going digital and building Wordpress sites. Everyone wants an app nowadays - so we're filling a niche. In the end, browsers are great but mobile safari doesn't yet let you have access to everything you can get in Cocoa. We want to open…

> Everyone wants an app nowadays Every merchant wants an app, but their customers couldn't care less. Not that it affects your business model in any way.

I feel like everyone with content on the Internet wants an app. My old co-founder wasted about 3 months worth of time talking with an Obj-C dev and drawing screens because he was obsessed with having an iPhone app. His proof that we needed it? Every time someone saw our icon on his iPhone (which just launched our site in Safari) they'd ask if we actually had an app. These people wouldn't even use our site in the first place, I'm not sure what made him think they'd use an iPhone app instead, yet he was dead set on getting one into the app store.

Re: I quit my high-paying job to follow my dream of launching a startup. Here it is.

#129

Post by tehwalrus »

This is awesome, I know loads of people who will use this, including me if I ever have time! A couple of questions though:

How does payment/subscription work? Is there a limit to the number of apps you can publish under the monthly plan, or is there a cost per app and then a monthly fee for the analytics and push? Is there a nice user interface for push? Where can I see a demo of it all in operation (the management of an app that's out there)? :)

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