Matt Brezina, Co-founder & CEO Sincerely Inc.@brezina

matt@sincerely.com

Secrets of Rapid Mobile App Development

Sincerely @brezina

We help the world be more thoughtfulSincerely

We’ve built the world’s largest gift network•1.2M members•1.6M mailing addresses• Shipped products to 800k homes

Sincerely @brezina

We help the world be more thoughtfulSincerely Products

We’ve built the world’s largest gift network•1.2M members•1.6M mailing addresses• Shipped products to 800k homes

@Postagram

@Sesame

@InkCards

Sincerely @brezina

Our first year

30+

JulyMay June SeptAug NovOct Dec

Sincerely @brezina

Why rapid app development?

We wanted to learn:• How is mobile commerce different?• Purchase flows• Pricing• Audience• Positioning• Physical delivery• and more...

Sincerely @brezina

10 tips for rapid app development

Sincerely @brezina

1. MVP

Billing

Printing

Library photos

Image upload

Address book

Send to others

Multiple recipients

Sincerely @brezina

2. Off-brand testing(or test in Canada)

Off-brand Sincerely

Sincerely @brezina

3. De-emphasize visual design

• Especially off-brand products

• Not interaction design

• Engineers do their own visual design

Sincerely @brezina

4. Reuse common components

Sincerely @brezina

5. Buy cheap, disposable users

• No cross promotion

• No PR

• Buy users from Stumbleupon, Admob, iAds, Tapjoy, Google

Sincerely @brezina

6. Be willing to kill apps

• We’re killing an app this month• You will have upset customers

Sincerely @brezina

7. Use Android for quick testing

• Android apps have no app approval

• Android updates go live in hours

• Apple updates go live in 7 days

• Closest thing we have to the web in the mobile app world

Sincerely @brezina

8. APIs are everything

Payment processing

Address book

Order fulfillmentUser accounts

Transactional emails

Internal API

External API

No Sincerely product engineers touch our database

60+

Sincerely @brezina

9. Team Structure

InternalAPI

Dev

Dev Design

DevDesign

Sincerely @brezina

10. Minimize interdependencies

My Goal: empower an engineer to have 4-6 hours of uninterrupted magic each day

Matt Brezina, Co-founder & CEO Sincerely Inc.@brezina

matt@sincerely.com

Secrets of Rapid Mobile App Development