so, i think that making a blog poast about my son's business and our journey will be a good thing, so i'ma do it. or i'm gonna start it, at least. and i need to get back to writing, anyway. we joining in progress, during the second week.

for backstory, check these poasts:


http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12666288&mesg_id=12666288&listing_type=search

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12578794&mesg_id=12578794&listing_type=search



========================================================

2nd Week After Launch (i'll make titles and stuff later. i'm just tryna write now).


So, the app for android came out last friday (12/4/14). Just in case we were under any assumption that this would be easy, we *just* crossed 50 downloads last night, with 6 paid !!! Everyone who was listed as a tester automatically got a license, including me, so that 6 is prolly all of y'all (THANKS!). We strategizing on how to use that $4.16 right now!

So, just like the long haul that this has been since around March, this continues to be a lesson in patience. I'm also quietly under the gun because I have two pressing goals:

1. Ensure that this is at LEAST successful enough to make back all of the investors' $$$, including my pops' life savings

2. Ensure that there is a management and growth structure around this such that Cameron will not be tempted to focus on this full time next semester, to the detriment of HIS schooling

A distant third is to make enough paper to tell a certain company to kindly kiss my black ass, but that's really not as big an issue. I got jerked around at the beginning of last year and wound up on a new project with new management, and all of these folks are cool as hell. The larger corporation is still ass juice on a stick, but I'm not gonna leave my immediate team high and dry.

Anyway, with those two goals driving me, its about growing this thing as quickly as possible, and within our modest remaining marketing budget. At the same time, I'm trying to groom my son and his partner for everything that comes along with the ride, to minimize missteps, and help them maximize their effectiveness.

Part of the strategy for sy llabeye is to combine tops down and bottoms up growth. That's a personal strategy that I've employed in my work as an IT consultant, either in launching a new service offering, proliferating a new tool or product, or introducing organizational change. It goes like this, identify the high level people with the ability to issue edicts and directives to everyone in an organization. At the same time, identify the ground level, desk level personnel who would most benefit from xyz, and reach out to key influencers there.

This is essential because organizations are resistant to change. Even if you *are* able to get an exec to issue a directive that everyone should use a certain tool or process, if you haven't, in parallel, reached out to the low level employees to make them actually understand the need for and *want* the new stuff. I've seen that time after time, from billion dollar software deployments, to million dollar tools implementations and smaller process rollouts.

Translated to this particular project, it means that we have to get universities to understand and embrace syl labeye while also getting students to clamor for it. To that end, Cameron has met with the Vice Chancellor of his school, who was extremely enthusiastic, and decreed (yay!) that the Business and Engineering Schools should be the pilots. Now that he's meeting with them, he's encountering a bit of pushback from their 'fiefdoms' (as I tend to call the domains mid-level execs who are fiercely territorial). So he has a meeting shortly to do a demo with the IT department of one of the schools to show its efficacy with the syllabus templates we're providing.

In the meantime, Cameron is training interns and marketers to do demonstrations at strategic spots throughout campus, to engage and excite individual students, and spur downloads and conversions. In light of my stated motivations, we have to put a replicable system around both of these tops down and bottoms up marketing approaches, so that they can work, almost autonomously. So we can expand quickly and exponentially. And so I don't have to worry about my son failing out because he's spending all his time on his business.








peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

For once it sucks to be between semesters.

enshrined and we're forever grateful to you as our First Paying Customer.

my son has NO idea why the first sale was to NZ.

many thanks, fam.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

>enshrined and we're forever grateful to you as our First
>Paying Customer.
>
>my son has NO idea why the first sale was to NZ.
>
>many thanks, fam.
>

Couldn't believe it said one download. I'll be trading well off that story when your son hits the big time.

it if/when we hit that time magazine status.

>>enshrined and we're forever grateful to you as our First
>>Paying Customer.
>>
>>my son has NO idea why the first sale was to NZ.
>>
>>many thanks, fam.
>>
>
>Couldn't believe it said one download. I'll be trading well
>off that story when your son hits the big time.

meantime, i have to come to grips with a watched pot never boils. the paid download stats are like 2 days old in google. its painful waiting for that ish to increment. but i was happy, at least, this morning, that we crossed over into the 50-100 download category.

i'ma write these milestones down.

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

in every big school. CANT be that hard.

like sallyq @ MIchigan w/ 3500 twitter followers or whatever...DM her & be like yo...we will give you our product for free if you give us 5 tweets about it or whatever

every school.

they'll spread the word MUCH better than you could ever dream


does it really matter?

for all my fans who keep my name in their mouth: http://i.imgur.com/v2xNOpS.jpg

colleges in the country with > 10k students, and their main twitter and social media accounts.

they have the brand ambassador type folks for ECU. getting them for the other schools will be a bit trickier, although now that i think about it, that's doable by checking the hashtags for the schools and noting the most prominent folks in the mix. be nice to have a script to do that. i'm sure there's a way. i'll try that out on a school or two.

thanks for the suggestion.

meanwhile, the compensation and other ish is a bit murky. we're working with the developers on that. one thing we're gonna do is offer a scholarship for paid users. working w/ the dev lead to find out how we push the msg out to them, and how we confirm.

i was naive and thinking that we automatically would know who all of our users were. nope. we have to build a backend server solution with a user portal where we get them to authenticate, etc, and opt in for that ish. :-/

can't do that (pay for that) until we get some revenues in. i'm wondering, however, now that you mention it, if i can just add someone's ID to the tester list, since i was TRYING to pay and could not.

hmm. that could work. good lookin out.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

the app.

Have you guys thought about an online demo/training for college interns?

What does the intern get in return in order to make sure they are motivated?

Just a few questions that popped up when I first heard about this app.

i've seen kids (mine included) bust they ass for very small amounts of money). the idea is that if we can provide a good incentive + training + a product that is worthwhile, people WILL do this, and that will be an invaluable asset and support our broader aims of having a freestanding marketing organization.

one of the ideas is to use the qr codes that we have on our business cards (and, later, on promotional ish, like tshirts, flyers, free giveaways like cups and pens) to have students scan.

w/ multiple qr codes (and hte one we're using lets you direct to a different site per mobile device) we'd have very detailed views of who is doing what from where.

prollem is, per feedback yesterday with the on campus demos, is only the most tech savvy students even have qr readers on their phones or know how to get to them. most of them were just going to the website of play store. (got to get iOS up QUICK -- most of the kids yesterday had iphones).

still. we can adjust for x number of downloads from a particular geography or school. basically, we gonna have to find a low tech way to do it until we can get the functionality built into the tool.

>the app.
>
>Have you guys thought about an online demo/training for
>college interns?

cam did training sessions with three interns yesterday, including video taping them. this has been in our plans. the idea is, once we go national w/ the marketing, to send out a packet of promo materials (clipboard, business cards, flyers, tshirt for them to wear w/ the qr code on it) to the reps on other campuses. also, a link to online training material showing them exactly how to do the demos.


>What does the intern get in return in order to make sure they
>are motivated?

its kinda odd. my initial idea was the street team approach w/ ppl getting paid. (we still plan to do so -- just have to figure out the mechanism. one way is to give some percent of shares in the marketing company we'll create).

cameron came up w/ the intern thing because he knows folks in the business fraternity and they were really excited and motivated because the stuff that they do for school and in the biz frat is not really real world.

those folks will be on the short list when we are able to actually hire. but we will put aside some kind of compensation for these folks. also, there's a lot of stuff you have to ensure (including a mandatory percentage of training) to legally have interns, so doing all of that due diligence is helping out. the folks who participate are getting real world experience as well as a chance to talk to execs from other schools and be first in the queue when we're ready to hire.

we definitely have to figure out the compensation model, b/c goodwill and experience only go so far.

part of that i'll save for my next blog post.

>
>Just a few questions that popped up when I first heard about
>this app.
>

great questions. talking w/ y'all about it helps me clarify my thoughts.
>


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

this is like HELLO! perfect!

young Black man, tech product, rolling it out...inexpensive. utilitarian.

Hello, sir or maam. my name is Poetx Jr, besides being a genius im also a black college student just like your students here @ HBCU A&M. As such I have a lot of experience with syllabus and getting that information in a form i can use it...so much trouble that i made this really great app thats available for only .99 HOWEVER i'll grant your school X amount in a corporate accoutn, for use among your students, etc etc

man, cmon. this shit is a gold mine


does it really matter?

for all my fans who keep my name in their mouth: http://i.imgur.com/v2xNOpS.jpg

lotta hbcus around here. have to get shaw, st aug, central, etc.

big thing is that he did some research showing that small increases in retention can save millions for schools depending upon how much they already spend on recruitment. that bottom line approach should go over everywhere, but especially at hbcus, with all the financial pressures most are feeling.

problem is that we're still working with the developers on how to approach the institutional license. that has always been a goal. like, why spend a lot of time selling to 75% of a 10,000 person freshman class if you can convince a school to buy a license for their whole freshman class at 80% of list.

that's where we want to go. we gonna need a domino effect for that one, though, like i was mentioning in the other poast, when cam went to ECU first, then the local community college, then nc state, then unc ch, then unc g, then a&T, and successively touting the previous schools on the list as down to pilot the program.

>this is like HELLO! perfect!
>
>young Black man, tech product, rolling it out...inexpensive.
>utilitarian.
>
>Hello, sir or maam. my name is Poetx Jr, besides being a
>genius im also a black college student just like your students
>here @ HBCU A&M. As such I have a lot of experience with
>syllabus and getting that information in a form i can use
>it...so much trouble that i made this really great app thats
>available for only .99 HOWEVER i'll grant your school X amount
>in a corporate accoutn, for use among your students, etc etc
>
>man, cmon. this shit is a gold mine

that's what we trying to get to. i'm working with the developers on how to implement. apple has an institutional buyer program and, specifically for higher ed.

what i don't know, though, is how one does this, cross platform.

if ECU has an incoming freshman class of 10k students, i don't know how to create or sell a license so that, say, 6k get it off iTunes and 4k get it from Google Play.

working through those issues

much thanks for the brainstorming, bin.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

keep us informed, shit looks awesome from the outside looking in


does it really matter?

for all my fans who keep my name in their mouth: http://i.imgur.com/v2xNOpS.jpg

the app and buy a license for my two sons, by entering their google play ids. i brought that to the developers but apparently that's frowned upon. (at least by apple, who don't like nobody getting between them and their money).

i need to go back and reread that note.

but if we could do that, it would be a wrap, b/c as a parent, if you asked me if i could spend 1 dollar to guarantee all that tuition and book money? that's a no brainer.

if you get your kid a google play card or $5 for christmas, they MIGHT spend it on syll abeye, they might not.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

A and B have the app

A buys his/her license, which grants them the ability to pay for additional licenses that they can then share with specifically assigned phone numbers/device ids/Play/Apple id’s. To curb the obvious piracy attempts, if the kid gets a new number/device, they keep their license if they keep the same device/number. New device and number? You buy a new license.

It’s not really gifting and it would actually allow for the creation of a more social element, perhaps opening the door to create small networks of users.

You can even tack on a premium (I dunno, $1.99?) to allows for the purchase of additional licenses at, say, 79 cents. You could even allow for different premium tiers that would allow for a finite number of license purchases under that tier.

I.e, $1.99 allows for, say, 5 licenses to be purchased at .79 cents, $2.99 allows for 12 purchases, and $4.99 allows for 20.

This would also help open up high school and jr high markets, where parents would generally be the primary purchasers.

need to study how it works technically and from a business/licensing perspective. my wife just sent out a release to multiple homeschooling networks (since a homeschooler is a co-creator). that's a gang of parents. if we have this feature and can get it in front of the helicopter and even not-so helicopter crowds, its a wrap.

>A and B has the app
>
>A buys his/her license, which grants them the ability to pay
>for additional licenses that they can then share with
>specifically assigned phone numbers/device ids/Play/Apple
>id’s. To curb the obvious piracy attempts, if the kid gets a
>new number/device, they keep their license if they keep the
>same device/number. New device and number? You buy a new
>license.
>
>It’s not really gifting and it would actually allow for the
>creation of a more social element, perhaps opening the door to
>create small networks of users.
>
>You can even tack on a premium (I dunno, $1.99?) to allows for
>the purchase of additional licenses at, say, 79 cents. It
>would cater to the greed of app(le) stores and fix the problem
>IMO.

thanks for the brainstorming. i'm gonna set aside some time to pore through the options.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

I know my wife is finishing up her classes tonight and won't return in January. If so, mid-January/early February is probably where you're going to really start seeing that first wave of growth. Classes are winding down for the quarter so you’ve got plenty of time to get people to hit the ground running after the break when everyone gets that next syllabus.

I'm also wondering if you’ve got secondary niche markets in the pipeline. You could tweak it to appeal toward either a general productivity app toward various markets with something as simple as a skin change with a few niche-specific differences or two, offer it as a separate product and remove the barrier of people assuming it’s only for those with a syllabus. I can see it working well in real estate, for example.

it's almost seasonal when you think about it. hot months will be

Jan/Feb
summer classes??
Aug/Sept.

It’s not really seasonal though because there will always be incoming freshmen and there are ways to branch this out into other markets.

now. so we are going to offer a scholarship for anyone who pays now (as opposed to waiting until january) to cover the cost of books. (b/c we're trying to create that link between avg cost of books being $600 and syllab eye costing 0.99 per semester.

but yeah, we know its a dead time. this is tantamount to a soft launch.

>I know my wife is finishing up her classes tonight and won't
>return in January. If so, mid-January/early February is
>probably where you're going to really start seeing that first
>wave of growth. Classes are winding down for the quarter so
>you’ve got plenty of time to get people to hit the ground
>running after the break when everyone gets that next
>syllabus.

yep. we're hoping to get critical mass in advance by getting a good number of people to download in advance. but we know we're competing with finals and all of that.

>I'm also wondering if you’ve got secondary niche markets in
>the pipeline. You could tweak it to appeal toward either a
>general productivity app toward various markets with something
>as simple as a skin change with a few niche-specific
>differences or two, offer it as a separate product and remove
>the barrier of people assuming it’s only for those with a
>syllabus. I can see it working well in real estate, for
>example.

oh, most DEFINITELY. we even have some additional names figured out. i don't want to say too much but, yeah. there are a ton of alternate uses for this approach which dwarf the school market. we got two precursors:

a) revenues in excess of what we need to continue s yllabeye deveopment and marketing

b) additional enhancements to the base product (features which are on deck pending funding and development) before we fork off the app, so we don't have to pay for development twice or complicate mgmt of requirements. (e.g, if syl labeye does abc and futurebeye does abc, then we add functionality xyz, we'd have to add and test in both places. if we wait for xyz to be a part of the original app, and then fork, we make things easier for us and the developers.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

I saw a few posts today with graduation pics, LOL. So yeah.

higher ed... mannn, winter break comes, they weren't paying nann bills or doing nothing new.

on the other hand, it's a great time to come in and pitch them on ish (no decisions) b/c they just sitting around w/ mostly nothing to do. so we trying to use that to our advantage.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

i already told my two brothers who are in college
and they will tell their friends
and i am going to use it next semester too

as a consumer
it is no need to get it now
but im going to pump it heavy
in january
:)

cop early.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

.
.
.
"America, stop turning our Court Houses of Justice into Dens for Justified Murderers."

LOT of work to do.

its making me put my thinking cap on, though.

for example, we need to create a model where a lot of people can take very small, discrete actions, coordinated to have a large effect.

to some extent we prolly recreating the wheel but, whatever, it'll be our wheel.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

:D

also hyped about the moves you and your ppl making.

we about due for some more okps to blow.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

for android (in bulgaria) earlier this afternoon (which was mad late for him).

he had questions about us doing the contest. we think we have a manual workaround that will enable us to figure out who is a paid user and add them to a spreadsheet in order to do a promotion.

i'm not going to type out what that entails for the sake of plausible deniability. eventually we'll build it into the app (or the backend server and portal supporting the app) but for now, we got to make due to make it do what it do.

talking w/ my son tonight via txt re: incentive and marketing options. i think i've identified some things that will work there. we 'bout to pilot that real quick.

verbatim:

"if we can create Simple, Clear Instructions with Motivating Incentives, and a structure in which a LOT of people can come in and do a little bit of work and have it all add up... then we've built a scalable model."

stuff i do at the j-o from a technical perspective and just applying it to a business realm. systems thinking. i have a lot behind that in terms of how i think it comes together.




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad