by marwann on 12/10/15, 1:59 PM with 175 comments
by vinceguidry on 12/10/15, 3:01 PM
Your app isn't really competing against other productivity apps, it's competing against the fact that an app is not going to be most people's best approach for improving their lives. The process of integrating a tool with life is not fun, it takes work and there's only so much that things like reminders can do for you.
I use two productivity apps on my phone. Reminders and the one I'm building. It's an ongoing experiment in how one can use software to improve life. Right now the only thing I've managed to integrate is spending tracking, and even that took months of back and forth consideration. Do I want to tag individual expenditures? How do I want to categorize them? How do I want to add an expenditure to a category? What should I call the act of spending something and what should I call the category? How do I want my reports to look like? Do I want reports in the database, or should they be generated dynamically? How should I represent common transactions that I do every day in a way that doesn't clutter up the main interface?
The whole exercise has left me unenthused about productivity software as a viable product category. Adding an expenditure now is easy as pie, for me, and only me. All of the work I had to do to figure out how I spend money and how I should build an app to manage it essentially has to be redone for every single person who wants to use software to help them manage their life. The domain seems simple, but it's actually incredibly complicated, because it's different for everyone.
by Gorbzel on 12/10/15, 3:24 PM
In this case, buried among some semi-coherent arguments, we reach the point where one should ask "Was this product compelling compared to other solutions that tackle this pain point?"
Obviously not, but don't expect the company to smell the coffee. In their opinion, their "few competitor apps" didn't matter, but they lasted longer, so they probably did. Oh, but of course "they weren’t doing it as well."
Take a look at the comments rolling in here, some of which note that the product didn't seem like compelling standalone option but that would have done well as part of a larger solution. Others inquire why certain features were left out that would have adequately addressed the entire pain point, but left the product feeling incomplete otherwise.
Of course, these potential customers were all wrong, because "other apps felt heavy and complicated."
Founders considering mobile, don't make the same mistake(s) this company is making. Rather than write some clickbait Mediun post after the fact, remember that a great UIX, onboarding and maybe even a mascot might be necessary for mobile success, but they definitely aren't sufficient. Nothing beats product market fit, and if a mobile app is necessary for said fit, you better not only bother with mobile, you should embrace it...objectively.
by guhcampos on 12/10/15, 3:01 PM
The questions are right, the answers are wrong. The app did not (judging by the text, I never heard of it before) add the value they thought. Maybe it did not even work as well as they thought. Actually, I doubt that.
I won't argue too much into it, instead I will give you counterexamples:
1. I should be on the target audience, and I have never heard of the app before. 2. Concur seems to be doing really fine, working on the same problem - so they have either a better marketing or a better solution.
Bottomline: don't shy people away of doing anything because you failed.
by krschultz on 12/10/15, 4:13 PM
> The mobile app was doing something really cool: you only had to take a snap of a receipt, and tap a button to export all the data into a beautiful Excel expense report.
That's a feature not a business. That feature already exists in all of the major expense tracking SAAS products that I'm familiar with.
So who is the target market? The sliver of people that have enough of a problem to want to buy a solution but not enough of a problem to buy the major existing solution is just not that big.
by mdorazio on 12/10/15, 2:48 PM
The other issue is that if, like me, you travel a lot then a large number of your receipts will be in emails or PDFs (I book airfare and hotels online, and take Uber instead of cabs), so taking pictures of paper receipts and tracking driving miles would only get me half-way to completion.
by drdaeman on 12/10/15, 2:54 PM
Literally, this article is nothing but an advertising for a refreshed product, with some wanna-be-viral-marketing attempt at sparking discussion by somewhat controversial statement of "not on app store". (Uh, sorry for being cynical here, but seriously...)
___
[1] Not a full list.
by athenot on 12/10/15, 3:48 PM
There are some services which would be more convenient as a bot on a chat platform than a "portal" site or a mobile app. Some issues with service-specific site / apps:
- password that's perpetually forgotten (unless the site plays well with the password manager)
- proprietary, doesn't explicitely support integrations unless the authors implement them
- yet another set of notifications to deal with.
by miguelrochefort on 12/10/15, 3:59 PM
We need a general purpose application that can be used for 80% of all use cases. When you think about it, all apps pretty much re-introduce the exact same features. Preferences, contacts, notifications, authentication, sharing, etc.
I want to use the exact same interface and language to order a package from China to my house, or to hail a cab to move me from work to home. I want the estimated ETA and cost prediction to be displayed the same. Tracking a package or the real-time location of a cab should be done through the same interface. I want to be notified the same way, whether it's my package or my cab that's late and/or has arrived. I want to pay for the package and cab ride the exact same way. Reviewing the received product and reviewing the cab driver, should be identical processes. I think the same should apply to pretty much any interaction, be it to ask my coffee machine to brew a cup, to be notified that my colleague will be late to a meeting, to pay for a meal, to review a movie, to schedule an appointment, to locate a friend.
My thesis is that all communication problems (which are what apps solve) are difference instances of the same one.
An app is not any tool. It's a language. We need to implement a general purpose language, and then all use it to interact with different agents/services.
by flyosity on 12/10/15, 3:07 PM
by dankohn1 on 12/10/15, 6:24 PM
WaveApps is great for invoicing, but their expense reporting module is ludicrously bad (it does OCR on the receipt images, but then doesn't include them in a nice report, so you have to download the images separately and convert them to a PDF manually).
I would have used Birdly if I had known about it. Anyone know about another Expensify competitor, preferably one who doesn't charge for single users?
As for Birdly, good luck with the Slack pivot, which looks clever.
by aggieben on 12/10/15, 3:21 PM
Yep, you're right. It's hard to get to your target market from the app store. Yep, they forget about your app. Yep, Yep, Yep.
Oh look, there's a link at the bottom to the new Birdly! Let's see what their new approach is!
It's a.....slack bot? Wut?
Just being honest here: I think that's one of the stupidest pivots I've ever seen.
by lindig on 12/10/15, 2:34 PM
by dkubb on 12/10/15, 8:22 PM
* API that accepts the scanned images, parses and returns the receipt data.
* API (that does the above and) stores the data to allow later exporting of
receipt data in Quickbooks, Excel, and other formats.
* IOS and Android Libraries that integrate with the API.
* Birdly app build on top of the library and API.
Also if there was a solo API plan, I would probably consider something like this for some personal expense tracking software I've been thinking about writing for myself.
by kfk on 12/10/15, 2:55 PM
One thing they could have tried is human support. Like let's give them a human who takes care of things or helps out or is always available to give training.
by seibelj on 12/10/15, 2:52 PM
by niklas_a on 12/10/15, 2:52 PM
by jordanpg on 12/10/15, 3:16 PM
The right answer is to get those receipts into a digital format some other way, not with the camera.
I would have deleted this app after I tried wasting 30 seconds taking a nice little picture of a $20 receipt the first time.
by AndrewAllen1980 on 12/10/15, 3:53 PM
by hmate9 on 12/10/15, 2:57 PM
by TYPE_FASTER on 12/10/15, 2:55 PM
Trying to get individual users to adopt a workflow is going to be much harder.
The target audience for the mobile app might not be the users themselves, but their managers.
Also, your workflow of using Slack to enter expenses, which looks awesome btw, might actually be easier for people to use than stopping midstream to use a mobile app.
by corv on 12/10/15, 3:24 PM
by keehun on 12/10/15, 3:45 PM
by dboreham on 12/10/15, 3:25 PM
I've found this thought experiment to be useful when evaluating new product ideas: People will buy your product for sure if a) there is a law saying they must, otherwise go to jail or b) by doing so they straight away save a significant amount of money vs something they were already doing/buying. If your product isn't close to either of these cases, you are likely to fail.
by matchagaucho on 12/10/15, 8:11 PM
If there is even a 20% chance the app cannot recognize the total amount (ignoring taxes and tips), then suddenly I am manually reconciling unrecognizable receipts.
So, if I'm always manually reconciling expense reports, then why bother with an app... I'll just continue taking pictures and forwarding them to my email for manual expense reporting. 100% of the task can be done in one sitting.
That being said, I SINCERELY HOPE somebody WILL develop the machine learning algorithms necessary to get 99% OCR accuracy in this space.
by mwexler on 12/10/15, 2:53 PM
This was similar to TripIt which organized your trip based on parsing confirmations. At the end of the day, it was a great feature, but struggled to grow beyond a certain point as a product.
Love the idea behind Birdly... but I think it belongs in other apps/tools used for more frequent and broader business needs. (i.e., here's hoping for a great acquisition and adoption for you!)
by username223 on 12/10/15, 4:16 PM
by dade_ on 12/10/15, 2:51 PM
by pbreit on 12/10/15, 5:45 PM
And "Don't bother creating a mobile app" is terrible advice. But if you are going to create a mobile app, you have to really try an understand if it makes sense, how people are going to find it, if it's compelling enough, if it takes advantage of "mobile-ness". Etc.
by samuell on 12/14/15, 4:39 PM
Neither would I find it again, if looking for that "receipt scan app I installed last month".
I tend to forget what apps I have installed, what they do, and their names, and anything else than a really descriptive name, such as "RunKeeper", would not get used much in the long run.
by dceddia on 12/10/15, 8:31 PM
Those categories they listed are apps you'd use on a daily basis, or that have some kind of notifications (read: dopamine hits) built in. They build up a habit loop by making the app fun to use, and emitting notifications to keep the users coming back during that formative early usage period.
Monthly expense reporting (or monthly anything, really) seems like a rough road for building habits.
by jasonkostempski on 12/10/15, 7:05 PM
by intellegacy on 12/10/15, 9:11 PM
If you start with a flawed idea there's no saving you, no matter how hard you try.
by thinkling on 12/10/15, 9:04 PM
Anyone have a good, established workflow for this?
by 20years on 12/10/15, 9:11 PM
I guess I don't really understand the shift of ONLY creating a mobile app for productivity or business type stuff. Seems like these types of apps can more easily be monetized with a web app and "maybe" complimented with a mobile app.
by franze on 12/10/15, 5:00 PM
idea: an app that helps people find shops with offers nearby
how people use it: users look up offers while they are already in the shop (nearly always inside big supermarkets.)
idea: vegan restaurant finder
how people use it: users look up pics of food of that restaurant while they already sat down in the restaurant (but as Instagram has more pics, they always switch to Instagram)
idea: apartments for rent app with awesome "find apartments nearby" feature
how people use it: to look up the newest apartment in the city while in the metro home
i believe it will take a few years more until we get mobile more right than wrong, until then be prepared to question your product hypothesis! (and best do it while you are running around, stressed, on your way to work or during business travel, you know, while you actually are "mobile" / or at home at your couch (also a mobile scenario) ... not while in the office in front of your mac book pro)
by niklas_a on 12/10/15, 2:49 PM
by benologist on 12/10/15, 3:14 PM
by at-fates-hands on 12/10/15, 2:51 PM
FYI - your mobile navigation isn't working.
by jorisw on 12/10/15, 4:18 PM
How do you know what I'm building (if anything) and if it falls in a category that might benefit from being a native app and the distribution that comes with it?
What worked or did not work for you need not apply to every other business.
by inthewoods on 12/10/15, 4:22 PM
by radnam on 12/10/15, 3:14 PM
by JustSomeNobody on 12/10/15, 4:05 PM
by brlewis on 12/10/15, 2:39 PM
by wehadfun on 12/10/15, 3:19 PM