Raji Bedi

A few weeks ago I sent a survey to freelance developers to collect data on major pain points during mobile development projects. Several results came in, but not enough to be able to draw meaningful conclusions. If you haven't filled the survey out, please do. Otherwise please share it with freelance mobile developers in your network.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY

Survey highlights ("General Thoughts") :

"Think more! But don't just focus on the idea, focus on the UX. I cannot stress this enough, the experience needs to be solid. A user without any previous interaction should walk in and know exactly what to do."

"One of the major challenges in my practice is that the usual project is structured in a way that makes collaboration between designers and developers difficult."

"...a lot of my initial conversation with a client is 'Apple doesn't allow that'"

"Most people I deal with have more money than brains. It can be very frustrating."

"It's [mobile] still a new concept with 1000 ways to do everything and no 'set' or 'accepted' standard of [measure]... as things progress, mobile projects will stop being so much like the 'wild west' and start being more predictable."

A social app can't start out being social when nobody is using it yet.  For that reason, social feature apps first need to be (1) seeded with founder-generated content (inorganic) or (2) play well in single-player mode. When early users are baited with something to keep them busy, they may get just enough utility out of the app to produce their own content and, in turn, grease the social mechanics of the startup.

The app now...

Standardizes UI (profiles, persistent tab bar, etc)

Puts "features" where they belong (lists, etc)

Transitions from consumer to content

Highlights more than just checkins (tips, pictures, likes, etc)

While often spoken in the same sentence, a cap and discount are never used at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. When a note converts, the more generous of the two options is used. That depends on what the valuation of the company is, and the amount being raised in the Series A, among other things.

The terms of a note can vary dramatically, but the most common include a $3m cap, 20% discount and 8% interest.  So, how much does the team own after the Series A (when the note converts)? It’s tricky to figure that out, so I put together the attached spreadsheet to help. 

How it works

In this spreadsheet, a note holder converts using whichever of the cap or discount results in a lower share price. But calculating a share price is tricky. This spreadsheet will help take you to the promised land.

For me, the key to calculating share price was learning what “effective valuation” means.  "Effective valuation" is sort of like the "enterprise value", commonly used when talking about publicly traded companies.

Enterprise Value = Market Cap + Debt - Cash

The enterprise value is the amount an acquirer would pay for a company. In this exercise the enterprise value is the "valuation". But the market cap is what's used to calculate share price, so we have to solve for it. Assuming there is no cash on the balance sheet, we solve for market cap by subtracting the debt from the enterprise value. The market value of debt depends on if the discount or cap is being used, therefore it's the "effective valuation".

Once you have the effective valuation, you can calculate the share price for the Series A investor, and then adjust the share price for the note holder.  Click into each cell to study the formula used - it makes more sense visually.

Random notes regarding the spreadsheet

The spreadsheet provides a visual for what has been explained by many others, on many different sites (I learn easier this way). It can be a good resource to send to family/friends participating in early rounds. However, there are easier ways to relay the information.  For example, using back of the envelope math, you can figure the cap table out without a number of shares (see the rows labeled "equity" for the formula). 

So, take the spreadsheet with a grain of salt (I'll post updated versions here, if necessary). The spreadsheet is not a suggestion on how to do your fundraise, and it's certainly not legal guidance. It's just another helpful resource (hopefully), among many.

Lastly, what are you doing tonight? Download doingtonight from the iTunes app store and see how doingtonight is reimagining life at night.

Edit: Most Series A investors will want to create an option pool. There is now a second worksheet in this updated document that shows the effect of creating an option pool. This is version 1.1.

Edit (12/4/2012): There was a small reference error in the spreadsheet that has been resolved in this version.

When I  arrived on campus at the Univ. of Michigan in 2001, a group called Komposit dominated the party scene in Ann Arbor. Komposit was causing waves on campus, down from the Blind Pig, up to the Church on Church.  

The proliferation of “feature” apps has caused a huge signal-noise imbalance. Check-ins, deals, status updates, photos and others offer an incomplete picture of siloed activities. But organizing feature activity around time, makes activity streams more useful and easier to consume. Take the new Facebook Timeline for example. I may post a status that reads “Just passed my exam!”. I also have a Spotify integration that broadcasts that I am listening to Celebrate Good Times by Kool and Gang. Lastly, I post a picture of me popping some bubbly via Instagram. As individual snippets of information, my friends may either be moderately entertained or generally annoyed at my frequent broadcasts. But when viewed in aggregate, each activity centers around a single, and much more palatable “event” plotted on an axis of time. The timeline amplifies the utility of feature activity because of the added context. It's not unlike a conversation about analog vs digital.

Every social app suffers from a chicken-egg issue, where density is required for the real utility of the app to emerge. As a result, many app developers use Facebook Connect to accelerate and simplify the process of adding social connections. But there is often some amount of manic push back from user's who do not want Facebook all up in their business. 

I recently revisited a blog I wrote several months ago about social neutrality, and came across a section that I thought was worth reblogging. It may help clear up how and why app developers are using Facebook Connect.

These days, students are paralyzed by rising tuition rates and astronomical amounts of debt. The prospect of becoming a young entrepreneur is mind-numbing, if not absurd.   However, entrepreneurs have an out unlike their peers. According to the Kauffman foundation, the entrepreneurship index was highest among the least-educated Americans, moving from 0.49 percent in 2009 to 0.59 percent in 2010, suggesting an increased number of people pursuing entrepreneurship out of necessity.   This achievement-gap has titanic effect on the economy. According to a 2009 study by McKinsey & Co., if the [academic] performance of low-income students had been raised to those of their peers, annual GDP would have increased by as much as $670 billion, or 5%.   In today’s system, academic achievement is no longer a sufficient proxy for ability - especially for entrepreneurs. The definition of achievement should stretch beyond "academics" and into "ideas". The result shifts the focus of the commentary to the entrepreneur and reads: If the performance of uninformed entrepreneurs were as favorable as the informed, mentored and connected, returns would increase by billions of dollars, or a gazillion %.   Queue the rise of angels, VCs, incubators and accelerators looking to fill their funnels. People like Peter Thiel pay kids to “stop out” of school, hack their education, and start innovating right away. If young entrepreneurs don’t take Thiel’s bait, some consider dropping out to join programs like Y Combinator, which have emerged as legitimate post-secondary alternatives. The economic value created is undeniable. According to the NVCA, venture-backed companies employed 11 percent of the total U.S. private sector workforce and generated revenue equal to 21 percent of U.S. GDP in 2010.   One thing preventing further acceleration of job and wealth creation caused by entrepreneurs is the misaligned incentives of the education system. Continued economic uncertainty and an inflating tuition bubble amount to a principal-agent problem. The education system's lean counterparts, however, have emerged with a disruptive solution. Prioritize outcome over income.   Y Combinator, TechStars, and the rest of the burgeoning incubator scene are giving academic institutions a run for their money with a pay-for-performance type model. The programs are a semester long with admission rates akin to top tier universities. Payment for the program is tied to the performance of the company. The program takes X% of the business and work with entrepreneurs to make their (100-X)% worth something. As a result, entrepreneurs don’t just leave the program with paper certificate, but with a pronounced ability to earn real paper. The green kind.   Tying payment with the performance of entrepreneurs is working. In a recent infographic published by Gist, entrepreneur failure rates for TechStars (6.5%) and YC alumni (22.2%) pale in comparison to “home-schooled” entrepreneurs (40%).   Early in an entrepreneur's career, ideas are typically overcooked and strategies are raw.  For that reason, the same infographic highlights that VCs appear to favor founders that rely less on degrees and more on experience. Adil Wali observes,  “VCs are in the student loan business. They are paying entrepreneurs to learn and make mistakes.”   “Learn” being the key word. An entrepreneur’s pursuit can be described in one variant of the word’s definition: “to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience”. All three of which are pillars of the above discussed incubators and accelerators.   The alternative definition more accurately describes the University’s interpretation of “learn” which is simply, “to commit to memory”. The problem is, machines can also commit routines to memory.   During his commencement speech at the University of Connecticut, Alan Greenspan describes how workers need to break their routine in order to sidestep the end of work.

“The growth of the conceptual component of output has brought with it accelerating demands for workers who are equipped not simply with technical know-how, but with the ability to create, analyze, and transform information and to interact effectively with others.”

In Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee discuss why.  

“The root of our problems is not that we're in a Great Recession, or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring.”

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink describes this restructuring as the onset of the Conceptual Age.  

“We’ve progressed from a society of farmers (AGRICULTURAL AGE) to a society of factory workers (INDUSTRIAL AGE) to a society of knowledge workers (INFORMATION AGE). And now we’re progressing yet again (CONCEPTUAL AGE). The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people…will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.”