Kiddy Up Go just landed in the App Store! Sort your kids by age and see how much they look alike… Marc, the father of this app must be very proud!
It was a good weekend for SellanApp, almost $10.000 in total pledges on our app ideas…
We really wanted to share this happy user quote:
“I am now doing all my investments via SellanApp. The stockmarket is so last year.”
By Charles Holtzkampf
Talk and listen.
Any network, any time - cut the distance between you and your community.
Talk to people! Don’t just rely on social media to get people engaged with your app idea. Everyone prefers a good face to face meeting. Social media always creates a distance, the promoter’s job is to remove that distance, get their idea into the world and make sure it spreads.
Find out the secrets to a half a million dollar Kickstarter campaign here. Get out there and start connecting with your community.
An exciting week!
Dear Friends of SellanApp,
It’s has been a really exciting week here at SellanApp.
StudyPic - the first App funded by the SellanApp community has hit the App Store, we launched loads of improvements to our web platform and pushed a major update of our free iPad App…
We’re thrilled that already over $30.000 has been pledged towards App Ideas brought forward by creative people like you. And… we’re excited to see our pipeline filled with many great ideas soon to be published on SellanApp. We think they’ll get their funding, just like StudyPic did.
Five Apps are now in development, and we have 6 crowd funding campaigns running on our platform.
Last but not least, 16 developers are now connected to SellanApp with more developers currently under review.
“Phew… We think that’s just cool being live for just a few months” :-)
Also we recently saw the launch of the Ketel App Idea. This app idea was crafted by a whole team of creative people and not a single individual. We are excited to see SellanApp proves to be a solution for this collective of awe-inspiring people.
So, start test driving StudyPic and our brand new iPad App. We’d love to hear from you! If you have any questions or feedback, drop us a line.
What’s next?
Well, we are cooking up some some very cool things here… Watch this space…!
Get Social!
Engage with your social networks. Put your dream and passion on display for all to share.
Crowd funding is about engaging with your social networks and encouraging connections to support your cause. The key is to maintain continuous engagement with your network. Keep them updated on your progress and show them your dream and passion coming to life!
Slava Rubin the co-founder of Indiegogo has some great tips including a full article and video over on Inc. Check it out!
You’re closer to your problem than you think.
Keep your app idea close and your solution even closer. Make it realistic and tangible for you and others.
Your app should only try to help people solve a real life problem. If you have an App Idea, you are probably very close to the problem yourself.
Keep the solution closer. This means keeping it realistic and tangible for you to understand and for you to explain to others. This article explains the importance of not having ideas for apps or startups, but providing solutions to problems!
Source: paulgraham.com
Future Finance
We hit Euronews!
We are absolutely thrilled with this feature and it reinforces how mainstream crowd funding has now become. We are the first specialising in smartphone apps and let’s face it, the original is always the best!
Our CEO Aernoud Dekker sums up with his 3 key tips to attain crowd funding success.
1. “Keep it simple. A simple story will reach more people.”
2. “More media is more money. So open all media channels you can possibly reach.”
3. “Take the people who pledge on your idea seriously. Because they will be your future ambassadors.”
StudyPic is Live!
The first successfully funded app StudyPic is now live in the app store!
A huge thanks to Sabrina for her great work and to everyone who got behind the idea pledging to make it happen. A further thanks to the developer that brought it to life.
StudyPic will make studying much easier. No longer will you have to fill your backpack with tons of books. StudyPic will help you organise your information by taking photographs. You can add categories and subcategories to create a simple and organized database.
Go and take a look :)
There will be many more to come!
“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
One of the most common enemies of progression is procrastination. We know what we want to do and should do. Nevertheless we still we end up spending hours upon hours doing easier work or escaping via TV, blogs or music.
1. Stop thinking. Start doing.
A bit of planning can certainly help you to achieve what you want to achieve. A lot of planning and thinking tends to have the opposite effect.
You think and think and try to come up with ‘the perfect plan’. A plan where you don’t have to make mistakes, where you will never be rejected, where there will be no pain or difficulties. Such a thing does of course not exist so get started!
2. Don’t blow a task out of proportion.
By over thinking and putting things off you are not only trying to protect yourself from pain. You also make mountains out of molehills. The more hours and days you put something off the worse it grows in your mind.
This makes a little thing a big Godzilla, a horrible beast that is threatening to ruin your life. So plan a little and then take action.
3. Just take the first step.
When you start to look too far into the future any task or project can seem close to impossible. And so you shut down because you become overwhelmed and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead. That is one of the reasons why it is good to plan for the future but then to shift your focus back to today and the present moment.
Then you just focus on taking the first step today. That is all you need to focus on, nothing else.
4. Start with the hardest task of your day.
Maybe you have an important call to make that you also fear might be uncomfortable. Maybe you know you have gotten behind on answering your emails and have big pile to dig into. Maybe you have the last five pages of your paper to finish.
Whatever it may be, get it out of your way the first thing you do. If you start your day this way you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed and good about yourself.
5. Just make a decision. Any decision.
We feel bad when we sit on our hands and don’t take action because it’s unnatural. The natural thing is to be a decisive human and take action.
When you procrastinate you want to do something but you don’t take the action that is in alignment with that thought. You become conflicted within.
What you do always sends signals back to you about who you are. Taking confident action is what really builds your self confidence and a self-image of you being a confident person.
6. Face your fear.
It’s harder to just take action. To risk looking like a fool. To make mistakes, stumble and not avoid that pain. To take responsibility for your own life.
The easier choice can come with a sense of comfort, with a certain level of success, pangs of regret for all the things you never dared to do and a vague sense of being unfulfilled. You wonder about what would have happened if you had taken more action and more chances.
The harder choice gives you, well, who knows? But it will sure make your feel more alive.
7. Finish it.
Not taking the first step to start accomplishing something can make you feel bad. But not finishing what you have started can also leave you in a sort of negative funk. You feel fatigued or stressed and sometimes you don’t even know why. It’s like someone zapped your inner power.
Is there something there you know you want to finish but haven’t yet? Try to get that finished as soon as you can you will start to feel a whole lot better.
Just be careful. Don’t think you have to finish everything you started. If a book sucks, read something else. Using this as an excuse to quit something that feels hard or unfamiliar is not a good idea. But there is no law that says that everything has to be completed.
Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.
iSave to the rescue!
We did an interview with Arthur Postmus, producer of iSave.
Q: How did you come up with your idea for iSave?
Well, it actually started a long time ago. Back in 2003 a good friend of mine told me he wished he could have filmed a weird situation he’d encountered in traffic. We elaborated on this idea but concluded that the technology was not ready. Remember those were the days of camcorders with DV-tapes inside.
So we dropped the idea and in 2009 picked it up again, this time exploring the integration of a tiny camera and a navigation device. Although small car cameras were becoming available, I didn’t think a separate little camera would appeal to the public as much as a camera integrated with the portable navigation device.
I then realized that the smartphone would beat the navigation device in the end. As smartphones became smarter and contained accelerometer and gyroscope hardware, I realized that the smartphone could also implement eCall. This lead to the idea of the iSave app.
Q: So basically your app idea combines two functions: watching the road and calling out in a crash.
Yes, that sums it up pretty good.
Q: Why would people want to buy this app?
Most people don’t like to think of accidents and emergency calls. However we face risks in traffic every day. In a small country like Holland we have around 200 accidents per day on average. So it’s always good to have an extra eye on the road.
Besides, it not only helps yourself if you encounter an accident. It can also help others if you recorded something that happened to them.
And it’s not only about accidents. There is also the fun-factor. You can capture special events you would like to keep.
Q: Can you name some simple examples where people could use the app besides saving their lives?
Showing others how they drove to get to the place they are now (playback function).
Uploading funny or strange situations in traffic to sites (Facebook) and TV-programs. In Holland there is a TV program called ‘Blik op de weg’ (view on the road) which shows strange behavior of car drivers taped by a police camera. iSave users can submit their recordings to such a program.
Helping in Amber alerts. When an amber alert is issued (for a missing child) there a fair chance that the child will be filmed by an iPhone running iSave.
Help the police resolve accidents or crimes on the streets. There are many accidents and other peculiar situations in traffic every day. The serious cases can be resolved using the images recorded by iSave.
Some car insurance companies can lower their insurance fee if car drivers use iSave, in order to attract new clients.
To provide km declarations for business drivers (iSave tracks all routes that have been driven).
Q: How many people you think will download and use it within a year? And how do you think you can promote it?
This is hard to estimate. Once it will become available, it will gradually spread out both by ‘mouth-to-mouth’ marketing by people who use it and by advertising on websites around traffic, traffic research, automotive bloggers, services like ANWB and the governments once iSave has proved to implement eCall better than the dedicated device. I have proposed an estimated 15.000 downloads for the first year.
Q: We read about eCall to be built-in into new cars in Europe from 2015. Why do we need your app for eCall then?
Last september a driver was found dead in his car 3 days after his car spiraled from the highway into the bush at night. It frustrates me that people are losing their lives while carrying a smartphone that could have saved them. We should not have to wait till 2015
Furthermore, the whole idea of getting eCall to Europe is based on the outdated notion that we need to put a separate device in each car to call 112. If there’s one device capable of calling, it’s the smartphone.
Q: So you’re saying that with iSave you don’t need eCall anymore?
Indeed. You only need your smartphone, I believe so much more is possible with a smartphone than calling.
Arthur, thank you for bringing iSave in to the world and thanks for sharing your insights with us and lets hope that we can bring iSave in the app store soon! You’ve already raised more than $ 10.000, good luck with your app idea getting selected by a developer!
SellanApp LIVE was again exciting!
What a day! Thursday we had our second SellanApp LIVE event. Students from the University of Amsterdam were able to push their app ideas forward all day. We invited professionals to help them create an effective concept with our iPad app. This allowed them to quickly and efficiently make a working mock up of their app idea. At the end of the day they could pitch their ideas to a professional jury consisting of people from uber.com, 22tracks, Whizzcraft and Stichting Doen.
Team Localise working on their mockup
Everyone that joined us at SellanApp LIVE is a true winner. The opportunity to conceive your app idea in a creative and inspirational environment with skilled professionals, no wonder everyone was pumped after thursday!
Judges are important for a sense of context and relevance. In the end however, the crowd decides whether an app idea gets funded or not. It’s just an opinion that the judges express.The judges decided that these apps needed to win:
- Workabroad: Lisa en Nadide thought of an app idea for backpackers to easily find work abroad and stay a little bit longer in the country they love.
- Track my Pet: Sarah, Isabel en Roos want to track down their pets when they get lost and have some fun by knowing where their pets go.
- Localise: Maarten en Ismay thought of a unique way of matching travellers with locals to share experiences.
These and other app ideas are coming on the platform shortly, the other producers that joined are also getting the green light to join our platform and get their app ideas funded.
The jury discussing and announcing the winners.
Thanks to the professionals that gave feedback, the jury for being critical and thanks to Study Association Off Screen for organizing it with us! You can see all the pictures here.
We’re already planning new LIVE events and we eager to invite you on the fun. Do you have a venue or do you or your organization wants to help organize a SellanApp LIVE in your city? Let me know at m@sellanapp.com
Studybuddy Funded!
We have a wonderful update from all of us here at SellanApp….
The first app has been successfully funded and selected for development by one of our trusted developers!
This has been a great first milestone for us and we are already excited to see the finished product. Very soon ‘Studybuddy’ will be available for you to download from the App store. You can add yourself to the waiting list to be notified when it is live by popping over to the site.
Not only that, but we added over a 1000 users since we launched into Public Beta just two weeks ago which is incredible.
Who’s App Idea will be next? Download our free iPad app and get going!
Or if you just fancy some revenue - you can join in on the revenue share, for example on ‘That’s Good Coffee’. 9 lucky StudyBuddy pledgers will be getting some cool cash from the App store.
Let’s keep changing the way app ideas get made!
For The Planet Fund
Launched originally with Uncover’s Steve Jobs Tribute campaign, the ForThePlanet Fund (beta) supports app projects that have value to society, but don’t have an innate business model.
A project is chosen if (at least) one of these apply:
- Helps people live healthier lives
- Empowers communities in developing parts of the world
- Helps people live more environmentally friendly
The fund is set up as a Partner Account on SellanApp. This means there will be no hassle to invest the profits of the campaign in worthy projects; the infrastructure for it is already there on the SellanApp platform and projects can easily apply for the fund.
Do want to apply for the fund with your App Idea? Create an account on SellanApp and publish your app idea and invite ForThePlanet (for now only accessible for private beta users) as a partner in your project! If you have any question how to do this you can contact m@sellanapp.com
The decision which Ideas the funds merit the Fund’s support is shared between SellanApp’s co-founder Milan van den Bovenkamp, the director of AppsForThePlanet.org Casper Koomen and Uncover’s founder Victor van Doorn.
SellanApp has Arrived!
A word from our CEO
Appiphany
“Great ideas happen when you expect them the least.” Over a year ago I experienced an epiphany when I posted about my first successfully developed iOS App on Facebook. Friends responded immediately with questions like:
“Hey, I have this great Idea for an App. If you build it, we share the profit…”.
Sound familiar?
This gave me the striking realisation that there is need for a solution to easily work out ideas for apps, because most of us have thought about one at some point in time.
Some history
Time flies! I started my career 30 years ago as a freelance programmer. I had loads of fun developing games for the Commodore Amiga, however I never had the ambition to become a full time developer.
During that period I started my first business, and after that many more. Technology mainly formed my career and the companies I shaped (and sold) throughout the years. Practice makes perfect; I gained experience and knowledge in building platforms and the ins and outs of running a company.
The quantity and quality of the App ideas that came my way made me work out the idea for SellanApp; a place where app ideas connect with crowd funding and developers to make App ideas happen.
The Ingredients
The ingredients were all there, I just needed to come up with a good recipe and a great partner that believed the same as I did. I first found Milan and together we shaped the team.
The name
SellanApp is inspired by the name Sellaband. This platform launched in 2006 and this is where, in my opinion, online community driven curation really started.
The concept
Crowd funding is the new buzzword in town. Kickstarter was the first platform that successfully showed the world that everyone could have a creative project funded.
The creative
Everyone can have an App idea. Ideas to make our everyday life more productive, fun or social. But having an idea doesn’t mean you have development skills or money to hire a developer.
The developer
There are developers all over the world, from big studios to the the talented individuals hacking in their attic. All looking for the ‘the next big thing’ to build.
The App Store
The insanely successful distribution channel for Apps, which makes it possible for everyone to sell and distribute mobile apps globally.
The recipe
Now mix all these ingredients together, than add some great spices like our great prototyping tool co-developed by our friends at Hot Apps Factory and our unique way of matching App ideas with developers and what we get is SellanApp.
It is in Private Beta now, and we’re proud of it.
SellanApp connects App ideas with crowd funding and developers. An App idea is mocked up using our free iPad app, uploaded and a crowdfunding campaign is created on our website. Pre-screened developers can watch the campaigns unfold and select an idea for development. Once the app is accepted by the app store, any revenues are then shared by us between the pledgers, the idea producer and, in some cases, the developer.
So with SellanApp you can:
- Have your App idea socially proved and refined and then get the development funded without spending a penny;
- Profit from the fact that all people who pledged on your App idea will be your first ambassadors driving your App Sales and the revenue you receive;
- Help App ideas become reality by pledging on them and get rewarded or even receive part of the revenue the App you pledged on makes;
- Join our pool of developers. We will start working with larger studios having a track record to get things going. Later we will start working together with smaller studios and individuals too.
For the first time global creativity meets global development capacity and the pledgers will make it all happen!
The proof of the pudding
Thousands have already subscribed and we have received App ideas from producers and emails from developers from around the world.
We believe we are ‘up to something’, and now… we invite you to make this happen.
If you have an idea for an App, want to support great App Ideas and get rewarded, or if you want to develop Apps and get paid the amount you find sufficient and receive praise from the community, then join us now by downloading our iPad App or by signing up.
We are in private beta and after signing up you will soon be invited to get full access to our platform. Within weeks we hope to get rid of the waiting list and provide immediate access to everyone.
Download our iPad App or Sign Up and start making the best App Ideas Happen!
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