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Why did it need to be a stealth startup? It looks like they thought they had a great idea, but instead of being first to market, they went stealth and let faceb

Why did it need to be a stealth startup? It looks like they thought they had a great idea, but instead of being first to market, they went stealth and let facebook be first.

cobrabyte 13y ago
Yeah, was thinking the same thing. Also, I would think in-app purchase pricing would be relatively inexpensive. I guess I don't see who they're targeting... the target company would need substantially-priced in-app purchases to justify the cost of even traditional advertising. Wish them well though!
- the_watcher 13y ago
  >> Also, I would think in-app purchase pricing would be relatively inexpensive. I guess I don't see who they're targeting... the target company would need substantially-priced in-app purchases to justify the cost of even traditional advertising. Not sure what you mean. Why does in-app purchase pricing have to be inexpensive? Why does it matter if it does? Traditional advertising is substantially more expensive than mobile advertising. The reason a company would be interested in this is because someone who has your app installed (say Uber, to take one of the apps that enables transactions on my phone as an example) is one of the highest value customers you can reach in terms of likelihood to make a purchase (they installed your app, so it's akin to someone entering your store).
  - cobrabyte 13y ago
    Uber's a good use case that I had not considered. The pricing of their in-app purchases are outside of what I think about when thinking about in-app purchases (extra game levels, etc). Thanks for framing their target customer for me.
    - the_watcher 13y ago
      No problem, I think their biggest value add will come in mobile commerce, where they can push people towards a "buy now" page within an app that has already been installed.
      - alook 13y ago
        Exactly - we figure that our biggest strengths as a team (given a combination of Machine Learning/Data Mining/Information Retrieval backgrounds and a strong Design/Mobile contingent) will be in indexing deep app content (which obviously is a much richer dataset in commerce apps than it is in, say, mobile games). It seems like Facebook sees the same thing happening. Of course, I am curious to see how this affects game developers - I've encountered a few who have rolled their own retargeting solutions on top of house ads. It seems like game developers are especially reluctant to pay for anything except to pump up their install count in order to reach the top of app store rankings (seems like using SEM to boost your SEO). Any predictions?
        the_watcher 13y ago
        Facebook definitely sees it happening. Their account reps are constantly raving about mobile ads with Facebook, and in our limited tests, they haven't been over-promising. It probably wouldn't be a bad strategy to base a significant amount of predictions about the larger mobile market on decisions made by Facebook, since they have the best data on it. As far as game developers, the SEM for SEO strategy is the TapJoy model and it sucks for people who play. One thing I think deep linking could start to do for developers is allow them to cannibalize each other (say Angry Birds started advertising in Candy Crush Saga to people who spent over $X/week and had Angry Birds installed, I know this probably isn't the best example, but it is descriptive at least). Does that push game devs away from allowing in app ads from other game companies?
the_watcher 13y ago
Facebook was not first to market. Deep links have been around for a while. Also, it looks like URX isn't on the supply side (they aren't providing ad inventory, instead leveraging mobile display networks - so Facebook isn't competing with them directly), instead focusing on the demand side and providing robust analytics and targeting. There is no reason why they wouldn't be able to include Facebook deep link ads to their customers. Also, there is a pretty large section of the mobile web that Facebook deep links won't cover.
untog 13y ago
I've come to the conclusion that 90% of 'stealth' startups do so entirely out of psychology. It's cooler to invest in stealth startup, and the mystery builds notoriety. I'm not sure it has much if anything to do with the actual business at hand.
- alook 13y ago
  Personally, I think about this differently; Startups who are outspoken about what they do early on are generally hoping to benefit from inbound interest. From what I observed in YC, launching a TechCrunch article typically doesn't lead to a ton of inbound interest (at least for B2B companies this is true - if you're Uber/Vine/Tinder/Grouper, it's a different story). For B2B companies, press helps get investor attention, can help with inbound hiring, and can potentially help get clients, if your press releases are well targeted enough (which most aren't). From our perspective, staying quiet was the default. Now we're at the point where we're interested in reaching a slightly broader audience.

Why did it need to be a stealth startup? It looks like they thought they had a great idea, but instead of being first to market, they went stealth and let facebook be first.

cobrabyte 13y ago

Yeah, was thinking the same thing. Also, I would think in-app purchase pricing would be relatively inexpensive. I guess I don't see who they're targeting... the target company would need substantially-priced in-app purchases to justify the cost of even traditional advertising. Wish them well though!

the_watcher 13y ago
>> Also, I would think in-app purchase pricing would be relatively inexpensive. I guess I don't see who they're targeting... the target company would need substantially-priced in-app purchases to justify the cost of even traditional advertising. Not sure what you mean. Why does in-app purchase pricing have to be inexpensive? Why does it matter if it does? Traditional advertising is substantially more expensive than mobile advertising. The reason a company would be interested in this is because someone who has your app installed (say Uber, to take one of the apps that enables transactions on my phone as an example) is one of the highest value customers you can reach in terms of likelihood to make a purchase (they installed your app, so it's akin to someone entering your store).
- cobrabyte 13y ago
  Uber's a good use case that I had not considered. The pricing of their in-app purchases are outside of what I think about when thinking about in-app purchases (extra game levels, etc). Thanks for framing their target customer for me.
  - the_watcher 13y ago
    No problem, I think their biggest value add will come in mobile commerce, where they can push people towards a "buy now" page within an app that has already been installed.
    - alook 13y ago
      Exactly - we figure that our biggest strengths as a team (given a combination of Machine Learning/Data Mining/Information Retrieval backgrounds and a strong Design/Mobile contingent) will be in indexing deep app content (which obviously is a much richer dataset in commerce apps than it is in, say, mobile games). It seems like Facebook sees the same thing happening. Of course, I am curious to see how this affects game developers - I've encountered a few who have rolled their own retargeting solutions on top of house ads. It seems like game developers are especially reluctant to pay for anything except to pump up their install count in order to reach the top of app store rankings (seems like using SEM to boost your SEO). Any predictions?
      - the_watcher 13y ago
        Facebook definitely sees it happening. Their account reps are constantly raving about mobile ads with Facebook, and in our limited tests, they haven't been over-promising. It probably wouldn't be a bad strategy to base a significant amount of predictions about the larger mobile market on decisions made by Facebook, since they have the best data on it. As far as game developers, the SEM for SEO strategy is the TapJoy model and it sucks for people who play. One thing I think deep linking could start to do for developers is allow them to cannibalize each other (say Angry Birds started advertising in Candy Crush Saga to people who spent over $X/week and had Angry Birds installed, I know this probably isn't the best example, but it is descriptive at least). Does that push game devs away from allowing in app ads from other game companies?

the_watcher 13y ago

Facebook was not first to market. Deep links have been around for a while. Also, it looks like URX isn't on the supply side (they aren't providing ad inventory, instead leveraging mobile display networks - so Facebook isn't competing with them directly), instead focusing on the demand side and providing robust analytics and targeting. There is no reason why they wouldn't be able to include Facebook deep link ads to their customers. Also, there is a pretty large section of the mobile web that Facebook deep links won't cover.

untog 13y ago

I've come to the conclusion that 90% of 'stealth' startups do so entirely out of psychology. It's cooler to invest in stealth startup, and the mystery builds notoriety. I'm not sure it has much if anything to do with the actual business at hand.

alook 13y ago
Personally, I think about this differently; Startups who are outspoken about what they do early on are generally hoping to benefit from inbound interest. From what I observed in YC, launching a TechCrunch article typically doesn't lead to a ton of inbound interest (at least for B2B companies this is true - if you're Uber/Vine/Tinder/Grouper, it's a different story). For B2B companies, press helps get investor attention, can help with inbound hiring, and can potentially help get clients, if your press releases are well targeted enough (which most aren't). From our perspective, staying quiet was the default. Now we're at the point where we're interested in reaching a slightly broader audience.