Staff: 2
Founded: 2012
Location: Osaka, Paris
Website: folyo.me

Where did Folyo come from and why is it different?

As is often the case with new projects, Folyo came from my own needs and experience. I was having to turn down a lot of client work at the time, and I was lacking a place where I could simply point people when they asked me to recommend another designer. It seemed to me that the bottom of the market was well-catered to with sites like 99designs and Elance, but it was hard to find a high-end freelance designer unless you were a designer yourself and used to browsing Dribbble and Behance.

How are you testing the proposition and iterating?

The honest answer would be that I’m not, which is a problem. I have a lot of projects, and I have neglected Folyo a bit in the past few months. Part of the reason is also that I’m not entirely happy with the way Folyo currently works, so I was wary of iterating on a concept that doesn’t feel right (i.e. climbing the wrong hill).

But I recently started collaborating with a developer friend and he suggested a couple improvements to the business model that makes a lot more sense. So hopefully once we take the site in that new direction we’ll be able to do more iteration and customer development.

How did you arrive at your pricing model?

$100 seemed like a good price point to start off compare to what competitors (Dribbble, Authentic Jobs) were charing for job listings. My intention was to test the waters with that price and hopefully raise it once demand picked up, but since that didn’t really happen I ended up keeping the same price. I could probably have experimented with the price more, but I felt it would’ve been pointless without first fixing the underlying problems with the overall model.

The current model requires the prospective customer to do an unfamiliar and complex task (writing up a job description) right away, long before they have a chance to become more engaged. The model is also based around single payments, which means a customer will at best be worth $100 to me over their lifetime, which compared to most SaaS apps is pretty bad.

It also requires me to spend a lot of time editing job offers and emailing back and forth with potential customers. While I don’t mind educating people through blog posts and guides, doing over and over through email quickly gets tiring.

For all these reasons, I’m thinking about evolving towards a slightly different model where I let companies browse designer profiles without having to post a job offer first. While that feature is currently available for free, I would drastically revamp the profile search to make it worth paying for. So basically, I am planning to pivot towards a less innovative model, but better executed.

You’re written a great book on UI design. Now you’ve launched Folyo what business design problems are you finding most challenging and what are you finding helps?

The part I struggle most with is probably customer development. I know all the theory about validating your ideas first, coming up with MVPs, etc. but in practice it still doesn’t feel quite right. Same with analytics stuff, conversion rates, etc. I’m terrible at all this, more out of laziness than anything else really.

You’re big on side projects, why do you think they matter and how they helped you?

A lot of people have hobbies and passions, but online projects give you a way to actually share that passion with the rest of the world. And if you mostly work by yourself like I do, side projects can help you make new contacts and build a following. Since I can’t go to the office water cooler, side projects are a way (among others) to bring the water cooler to me.

What tactics do you find work well growing awareness of a project?

If we’re talking side projects (e.g. something like Patternify), I don’t think you should need to do anything special to grow awareness outside of posting to Hacker News and Reddit, and contacting a few relevant blogs. After all you’re giving away something for free, so if you can’t get people interested you probably need to go back to the drawing board.

Of course it’s different for more serious projects. For something like Folyo, I’ve relied on blogging a lot, but there are a lot of other approaches.

For example with Sidebar, I’m focusing on making the product itself more viral, by including sharing links in the newsletter and working on an upcoming referral program.

You’re from France and have lived in China, now in Osaka. How does the approach and outlook differ from place to place in terms of product development? Are there any stand out products that we don’t see in the west that are a consequence of a different culture?

Each place has a different approach, but I’ll come right out and say it: when it comes to product design, the U.S. is miles ahead. I suspect this is due to the huge amounts of cash floating around in Silicon Valley. Eventually some of that cash trickles down to designers, and gives them the opportunity to improve their skills.

Of course a place like Japan has countless design innovations you won’t see elsewhere, like sensor-equipped toilets and speaking bathtubs. But in my opinion, these innovations seem a little trivial when compared with something like the iPhone.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m hoping this changes soon, and that the rest of the world will be able to catch up with the U.S. Hopefully with new design techniques evolving both online (responsive web design, new frameworks) and in the real world (3D printing, etc.) the gap will start to shrink.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities founders, designers, developers face designing in our multi-platform world?

The biggest challenge is that it takes a ton of time and effort. Compared to math or computer science, creating products for the web doesn’t involve any complexity. It’s just that there are so many things to learn and take into account, and if we’re honest most of them are mind-numbingly boring.

Of course we all love it and wouldn’t exchange it for any other job, but when you stop and think about just how many moving parts go into rendering a webpage onscreen, and how many of then could potentially break down, it’s enough to make you want to quit web design and become a rice farmer instead.

The biggest opportunity is that if you’re willing to actually deal with all the bullshit, you can end up creating some pretty cool stuff.

What do you regard as the most exciting ideas, opportunities upcoming in our technologically enhanced world?

One idea I find really exciting is how so many people seem to embrace the “work for a company / work for yourself / launch a product” transition.

Of course, for a while this means we’ll end up with a thousand project management apps and marketing eBooks because we’re still afraid to take risks. But eventually, I’m hoping we will see more people embrace their passions and be truly innovative, and even skip directly to the last step.

So maybe in a couple years launching your app will seem like a completely reasonable career choice not just in Silicon Valley, but in the rest of the world too!

Which bloggers, writers do you find influential?

I’ve always liked reading Jason Cohen. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s the only blogger who manages to write about startups without being boring. Rian van der Merwe is also somebody I enjoy reading, as well as Marcelo Somers, Chris Coyier, and basically all Sidebar contributors.

What book would you recommend reading?

If you’re interested in psychology and marketing, I would recommend reading Influence by Robert Cialdini. And if we’re talking novels, my favorite book ever is Ubik by Philik K. Dick.

More stuff

Slide presentation on side projects

His step by step UI design eBook

Sacha’s blog

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Staff: 14
Founded: 2003
Location: Stafford
Website: hasbean.co.uk

How did Hasbean come about and why is it different?

Well it all started from a dream and the back of my garage. I bought a small roaster and decided to do it instead of talk about it. From then its been a rollercoaster of a a ride with mainly ups.

Anyone who has read your story of how has bean began can’t fail to be impressed by your persistence and passion. When you’re facing challenges, how do you work your way around them?

By doing that working around them. there are no stop signs just changes of direction. We have always tried to look for every alternative. A vision is good, but one without flexibility is sure to fail. For example; When we were told we couldn’t sell online because the bank wouldn’t give us a merchant account then we found someone else who would. In our case worldpay, who were very new at the time, gave us a merchant account (and cost the earth) that meant we could sell online.

[SJ: read steve's full story]

You started selling online early. How have you changed the way you use digital and why?

I started selling online as no one else was selling what I wanted. I’d seen some sites in the states and thought “we should have that” Also if you have ever been to Stafford you would know why we ell on line. We needed a huge market for our small neiche, it was perfectly suited.

What do you find works well in reaching customers and growing your audience?

Everything. Every customer wants to talk to you on a different level, be thats twitter facebook, audioboo, flickr. Everyone wants something different so I try to cover as many as is possible. We found lots of success through video, but focusing on just this would be so narrow, we try to reach out everywhere.

What role are social networks playing in your business?

They are everything. for an online business its like your landlord knowing what your favourite beer is when you enter the the pub. It makes you feel special and wanted. Knowing and being social with your customers is super important, just as it always was in shops. People buy from people, this is your only chance to show the person you are online.

Do you find there are typical customer life cycles and how has that changed how you engage them?

I think some people have been with us for 10 years, some for just a few weeks, but each one needs to be treated the same. As the short ones are normally back at some point or will share with the world the one experience they had that will have positive ramifications for the future.

How do you see the internet changing your industry? (from farmers through to consumers)

I think people are being more social more reaching out to the consumers. I’d like to think a little because of what we have done, but mostly because it makes sense to look after your customers / consumers. Customers are also understanding that they can speak to the roaster and in some cases growers and taking advantage of that.

You travel widely to remote places to source beans. What do they think of the market and environments their produce is sold at?

It varies so much from country to country. In a recent trip I went from El Salvador to Guatemala to Costa Rica, all so so so different. What I have seen in my short 8 years travelling is people being far better off, being more aware of how much they can get for their coffee and interacting more with the buyers than ever before.

Which bloggers, writers do you find influential?

James Hoffmann of Jim Seven is a good friend (and fellow uk roaster) and someones work who I love. Big fan of Gary Veynerchuk too and keep a close eye on what he does although nothing to do with coffee. But I find so little time to read blogs now, twitter killed the blog for me (along with my rss) [SJ: long live newsletters & blogs ]

What book would you recommend reading?

Crush it by Gary Veynerchuk again I liked it so much I bought 50 of them because he did a hang out thing on live stream where he said anyone one who bought 50 books he would do something special for. So I did it and asked to be a guest on his very very popular wine show. It was lots and lots of fun. The book is an interesting take on social media.

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Where did Tweetie and Letterpress come from? (How did you choose between the ideas in the backlog to pursue?)

Both came from an itch I had; with Tweetie I wanted a new Twitter client for myself, and with Letterpress I wanted a game to play with my wife. I enjoy working on many things simultaneously, so for a while I wasn’t so much choosing as exploring tons of stuff. Eventually things got to the point where I thought Letterpress could be viable, so I put everything else on the back burner and put all of my energy into it to get it out the door.

Once you’re set on an idea how do you approach the early stages of shaping of it into a more defined product?

I may be an outlier, but I prototype first in my head, second in code. Rarely will I circle back and draw something out on paper — usually if I hit a wall that I can’t reason through. And if I hit that point it might be a symptom of an error in my thinking.

In the case of Letterpress, we played rough prototypes as I fleshed out the guts. Tweaks and polish happened in parallel as I finished off features; I like jumping back and forth between a few different things to let my subconscious chew on one problem while my conscious works on something else.

^ An early prototype of Letterpress

How do you decide on the rollout of features on the roadmap of a product?

I put all the ideas on the todo list and constantly re-sort it, knowing I’ll only be able to tackle 1%. Lots of times finishing one “thing” can knock of a bunch of disparate things from the list by making them irrelevant. Those are my favorite things to work on.

Drawing the line at 1.0 is always tough. There were hundreds of items I thought I’d get to before releasing, but at some point you have to say “it’s finished” and ship. So that’s what I did. The game was fun, and it was solid. It was exactly what a 1.0 needed to be.

For point releases my approach is to have one notable feature along with as many smaller tweaks as I have time to get in. The notable feature in 1.1 was Rematch. 1.2 will be Replay and Share.

Letterpress is wonderfully addictive. The behaviour of the UI has its own personality, from the bounce effects to the way modal dialogues drop off screen at a slight angle. How do you think about that when designing products?

The UI is representative of my own — still evolving — personal aesthetic. I wanted to make something as simple as possible, but not simpler. Minimal, but still human. At the same time I wanted to build something that was true to the capabilities of the underlying hardware. Getting the visual, interaction, and implementation design to align is the way I like to work, and I’m still learning how to do it.

Devices are becoming more capable through multi-touch than is commonly used. What are you thoughts on designing for multi-touch and how do you see this evolving in the coming years?

A lot of people are of the opinion that multi-touch “gestures” are like the “keyboard shortcuts” of touch. I couldn’t disagree more. Having opaque, disassociated complex gestures to do complicated things on screen is wrong on so many levels, it’s unintuitive, hard to learn, hard to remember, and inextensible. Instead I think the future is in *composing* simple gestures to perform actions greater than the sum of their parts. Leverage the simplicity of direct interaction, but allow many things to be interacted with at once. Let me interact with an object on one part of the screen with one hand, and use another hand to perform another action that can compose with the first interaction. Each interaction on its own is obvious, and putting them together is obvious, but the end result is incredibly powerful. Letterpress barely scratches the surface, it allows you to interact with multiple tiles simultaneously, picking up a tile with one finger, manipulating the order of letters with the other, then letting you drop the tile back down. Enabling simple interactions without complex coding was one reason why I decided to experiment with my own UI framework.

You developed Tweetie back when the Twitter ecosystem was a friendlier place for developers to innovate. App.net sprung out of fracas in this area with FB. What do you see as the impact of this changing in the web ecosystem for developers, businesses, consumers?

Just as there are cycles of innovation and consolidation, boom and bust, in any industry, I think we’ll see this entire system of monolithic centralized services get replaced by something that is modeled closer to the true distributed underpinnings of the Internet… all while enabling a massive explosion in new types of “apps” and eventually, human behavior.

What do you regard as the most exciting upcoming technology enabled ideas & opportunities?

Self driving cars and the human colonizations of Mars.

Which bloggers, writers do you find influential?

Scott Adams Blog is one of my favorites.

What products inspire you and you love using?

iPhone

What book would you recommend reading?

I just finished reading 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson, thought it was great. Just started on his Mars trilogy, which is equally awesome.

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Staff: 5
Founded: 2011
Location: Mountain View, CA though we got our start and still have employees in Columbia, MO
Website: Zapier.com

How did the idea for Zapier come about and why is it important?

Zapier was created because of two problems Bryan, Mike and I had. 1) When we were building our own SaaS tools we always got asked for integrations, but could never provide all the integrations we wanted to our customers and 2) customers are always demanding new integrations and using an API is too difficult for 99% of the population.

Zapier is what makes it easy for SaaS vendors to connect with hundreds of other services and it’s easy for customer and end users of SaaS products to get integrations between the tools they are already using.

Where on the continuum of [MVP --> Early Traction --> Scale] would you put Zapier? can you identify some of the key points on that journey.

Zapier is definitely in the early traction growth stage. In November 2011 we launched our initial MVP to relatively few early customers. The UI wasn’t great, but it did what our early customers needed it to do. Another key decision we made was to charge from the get go. Every single beta customer we had paid us.

By March we launched our current iteration of the UI which got much more traction and allowed us to publicly launch the site to anyone. Soon after we applied to Y Combinator and got in which really gave us the legs to grow the product and get to where we are today.

You’ve got gamified interactions as part of the experience from getting extra tasks to unlocking features on plans. Why did you adopt that approach and how’s it affecting the way people use the product?

One of the reasons we added that was to get users to use the product. A lot of times people think that’s just a way to get users, but for us it’s more about incentivizing first time users. We’ve found that users who are able to get one Zap setup and get a few tasks completed are much more likely to be long time users. So we added a little incentive that encourages a user to get to that stage instead of just giving up.

How are you using data to change the pitch to potential customers?

We use a lot of qualitative data at Zapier from talking to users via support, twitter, facbeook, you name it. One of the key things we do is collect email addresses for services we think users might like. We then keep a running tally of the most popular ones and those are the services we integrate next.

Zapier is a company that couldn’t have existed even a few years ago as API’s were not commonplace. What other advanced do you envision changing the way businesses operate?

APIs are just the first piece, but it’s still the wild west in the API world with APIs constantly changing. One thing that will happen is APIs will move away from polling driven to push driven. That way API consumers don’t have to constantly asking providers for new data like a kid on a long trip asking “are we there yet” but can instead rely on the API provider to send us the data when we get to the proverbial travel destination.

What your thoughts are about the changing landscape of API access with some of the free big networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin are becoming increasingly restrictive in the way they allow developers to access their feeds?

The only services I’m seeing become more restrictive in how they allow developers to use their APIs are free tools. Many those services ar