Posts tagged Flip
Google Shutters Fast Flip, Sidewiki, Aardvark, Subscribed Links & More Google Labs Projects
Sep 2nd
Google has just announced the closure of several well-known products, including Fast Flip, Sidewiki, Aardvark and Subscribed Links. Some of these are part of the ongoing purge of Google Labs products, while others that are being shut down were not part of Labs. And Google has also announced that…
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Farewell, Flip Camera
Apr 12th
Today, Cisco has announced its intentions to shut down its Flip camera business and restructure its consumer product line. Specifically, Cisco plans to realign its consumer business with a focus on four of its five key priorities: core routing, switching and services, collaboration, architecture and video. But despite “video” being listed as one of those priorities, that no longer means “Flip” brand video.
It appears that single-purpose gadgetry has no place in today’s smartphone-obsessed world,
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The Flip video camera was introduced back in 2006 as the “Pure Digital Point & Shoot.” One year later, it was rebranded “Flip” and began shipping millions of units. According to a 2009 article from The New York Times, the company had shipped over 2 million cameras to consumers during those brief years, with each camera costing $150 to $230, depending on the model. “The device’s claim to fame has been its minimalism,” wrote the Times in March.
Indeed, the camera’s overall simplicity made it one of the first gadgets, in a pre-smartphone era, that allowed consumers to easily record video and upload that video to the Web. It was the device that led to the explosion of online video, helping to move those large files off the desktop and into the cloud, where they were shared on sites like YouTube and Facebook.
And because of the ease-of-use, they appealed to everyone – even those who never thought they could manage a camcorder.
Their popularity led to the acquisition by Cisco Systems in March 2009 for $590 million in stock, as the company was making moves into the consumer business.
But by June 2009, however, TechCrunch’s founder Michael Arrington proclaimed that, despite Cisco’s selling $150 million of these cameras over the past year, the Flip camera was, essentially, doomed. “They face a new type of threat they can’t defeat,” he wrote. “The video capable iPhone, and video mobile phones in general, will make them irrelevant in the next couple of years.”
Score one for Arrington and his timing. It’s now April 2011 – only a couple of months shy of precisely two years, as he predicted.
And today, Flip is dead.
Cisco says it will support current FlipShare customers and partners during a transition plan. In addition, the company says it will refocus its Home Networking business for greater profitability, integrate the Cisco umi into its Business TelePresence product line and asses the core video technology integration of Cisco’s Eos media solutions with “other market opportunities.”
The full press release is here.
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How to Flip Your Startup in 5 Steps
Mar 27th
Steve Blank, author of Four Steps to Epiphany, has helped formulate the thinking behind the Lean Startup methodology, together with Eric Ries. I had an opportunity to meet him during a discussion around the Startup Genome project. He observed that most startups that succeed aren’t lean: their goal is to have an exit rather than a scalable business. What would be the methodology for startups that simply want to flip?
Flip startups are agile startups that aim to exit quickly. Unlike Lean startups, their priority isn’t to learn in order to create a scalable business model. Instead, their goal is to create a promising product. For example, it could be a successful single app or game. The idea is to build a hit that would make the founder(s) an appealing and quick talent acquisition (sometimes referred to as an acq-hire). This is lean development without any customer development. The focus is on building. Recent examples include Blindtype, Hipster or About.me. All three were bought before or right after launch.
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The many hackathons such as GameJam or Garage48 have shown that it is possible to create a viable game or Web service in 48 hours. In addition, channels such as Applifier, Appsumo or the Humble Indie Bundle have made it easy to reach large groups of users. There is a growing amount of microfunding platforms, such as Kickstarter, Appbackr or A-List Games.
The consolidation of the social graph by Facebook, the various app stores and the abundance of cloud-based services lower time to market. Lastly, large companies that seek new talent will likely hire promising individuals through a small exit. All these factors combined make it more likely for a single coder to create a one-time hit.
The development part is similar to a lean startup: you want to be agile. The part where they differ is that lean startups will seek to implement analytics and track user feedback for their next iteration, whereas flips won’t.
The lean methodology aims to find and create sustainable value, regardless of the state of the market. Flips, on the other hand, thrive on trends: what better time for an entrepreneur to create a startup than when valuations are up, investments are quick, exits are plenty and deal flow is increase? These are the times when there is more demand for startups.
Here’s a tentative methodology for flips.
1: Find a Simple Idea
If your goal is to exit quickly, your aim is to deliver an MVP as quickly as possible. This means looking for an idea that is easy to execute with a limited set of skills. In the case of Blindtype, the software was mostly based on AI and required no frontend.
If your idea is simple, it not only means it’s easier to deliver, but also easier to sell: your app/technology is probably easier to integrate and meet another company’s needs if it has a limited scope. However, an idea that is too simple and doesn’t stand out will be difficult to sell.
Furthermore, if this project doesn’t work, you’d like to be able to reuse some of its code, in order to iterate new ideas quickly, so you might want your code to be somewhat generic. Eventually, you should focus on an idea you can deliver, reuse, in a field you know really well, so that you require little to no outside help. This should also help valorize you in a acq-hire scenario.
2. Build It
The development part is similar to a lean startup: you want to be agile. The part where they differ is that lean startups will seek to implement analytics and track user feedback for their next iteration, whereas flips won’t.
Build your product on top of existing blocks. You may have existing code lying around from earlier projects, or be able to use open-source components or libraries to make your life easier. Hosting can be pushed to public clouds, authentication to OpenID or Facebook; services like Launchrock or Optimizely can help create a landing page. The same goes for payments, analytics, emailing and more. Once you have those out of the way, you can focus on creating only your actual app, game or service.
Services such as Cabana or GameSalad let you easily create an app using drag and drop. There is nothing inferior about using such a tool to create something meaningful rapidly. However, this will impact the value of your IP.
3. Create Buzz
Every startup needs PR, but this is even more true of flips. No one is going to buy your product if they don’t see potential in it. The key is that you want to create the promise of value and showcase your idea in the best angle. There’s nothing wrong with hype; movie trailers do this all the time, after all.
Hipster got pre-registrations because of their name and the rumor they were working on something amazing. Blindtype posted a video on Youtube that showcased its technology. Creating quick buzz and social proof is not the same a developing long-term customer development, but it pays off.
A good way to get attention is to get catchy metrics. Being the most-downloaded app in a small country, generating the most traffic or the most downloadable content sells. For a small investment of money, you can get your friends and family to buy your product and extensions, and buy your way to top of the app store. Consider it a type of SEO investment!
4. Don’t Pivot, Reboot
The vast majority of startups fail. At this point, you will probably think about what your next steps should be. The key for a flip is to make sure you don’t put all your eggs in the same basket and diversify as fast as possible, to maximize your chances of success.
Think of yourself as a VC. You have a limited fund, bandwidth for deals you can work on, and a portfolio of existing code and skills. In that sense, lean startups are similar to a focused investment strategy, whereas flips are more like diversified, “spray and pray” approach.
How would you handle your failed investment? Do you have anything of value to get out of it, such as traffic, brand or technology? Ideally, you’d like to be able to piece the stronger parts together to create something event stronger.
5. Funding?
If things go well, you may want to persist with your idea, but do keep in mind that transitioning from a product built on a hunch to a scalable business is a risk. At that point, you should seriously consider becoming a lean startup.
The good news is that the goal of a flip is aligned with VCs; their aim is to sell too, not simply to build a sustainable business. The problem is that they are also known for their herd mentality. Your idea might fit their portfolio or a hot trend, but your early traction isn’t enough to be the basis of a healthy business. After all, you haven’t proven any assumption yet.
One more thing to consider is whether or not you feel like turning your successful hobby into a full enterprise, and recruiting and managing a team. Do you want to stick to this idea in the long term and possibly gamble further, or fold?
Flip or Lean?
The decision to create a lean startup or a flip is entirely dependent on your ambition. If your goal is to show off your skills, create apps, make a quick buck and maybe get hired, flips are the way to go.
While I expect many supporters of long-term value creation to be detractors of this approach, I think it is safe to assume that we will see more and more small apps being built and propelled to success in this way in the coming years.
What remains to be seen is whether flips are dependent an environment where large companies are constantly making talent acquisitions and where apps can scale to hundreds of millions of users, or whether this methodology is sustainable regardless of industry trends.
Photo by nighthawk7
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Google’s Fast Flip in the Works
Jan 5th
If we were to state one reason why Google has taken over the search engine world, it would be “innovation.” Their original approach to search engines was entirely unique and revolutionized the way we think about search engine ranking. Since that time, they have entered a large number of fields, creating an array of beautiful products; Gmail became a front-runner in web mail, Google Docs changed our approach to productivity, and YouTube has wasted literally billions of hours that should have been devoted to work. And Google is always on its way to its next innovation, with a full “Google Lab” devoted to upcoming features. One of the more anticipated lab items is Google’s Fast Flip, which creates an automatic magazine in your browser.
As described at CS Monitor, the service will pull in links and stories to a variety of online news stories that are directly related to user interests. It organizes all this data — including the content, images, and so forth — into an easy to navigate, “flip through the pages,” online magazine. To make this project successful, Google has partnered up with several publication resources, including The Monitor.
For those of you who hear this and think “Hey, that sounds like Flipboard!,” you’re right. The features of this Google Lab makes it a close cousin to the incredibly popular iPad application. However, the Google service will be doing a few things that Flipboard doesn’t do (yet). Most prominently, Google will use its existing technologies to help the service learn about the interests and habits of the reader, presenting an evolving magazine that becomes more fine-tuned to the reader’s preferences as they continue to use the service. Additionally, Google will be providing several methods of customizing your own organization, allowing users to sort their magazine by source, subject, or popularity.
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Google’s Fast Flip in the Works
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