We’re doomed to repeat history. Wait…what? Isn’t that the point of history to study it so we DON’T make the same boneheaded mistakes. Yes, that’s exactly why you read history books.
Yet, we are in another round of the IT glory days. Read TechCrunch for 5 minutes and you’ll just be shaking your head. What was the .com boom of the late 90s has become the new app explosion of today. Money is flying at companies that have a cool new app with a bunch of users but NO REVENUE!!!
I finally had a chance to use Square in a real world checkout scenario a few weekends ago. My friend and local Ankeny Iowa artist Luke Hubbard held his 2nd Annual Garage Gala. My wife and I stepped in to take care of the check out so Luke and his lovely wife Jen could handle entertaining, talking to guests and mingling with people that wanted to know more about the art.
The one big change for the Gala this year was the acceptance of credit cards. Luke had taken cash, check, and Dwolla in the years past though really, it was just check and cash. I was a bit disappointed, but not completely shocked, that no one used Dwolla, sorry guys. Adding credit this year was a huge step forward and I was quite pleased with the results.
I’ve talked about FlipBoard before. But I’d like to point out that its been reported that FlipBoard has been downloaded 3.5 million times. For those keeping track, I think they have left 3.5 – 10.5 million dollars on the table.
What could your company do with an extra 3.5 million in the bank?
If you own an iPad and haven’t downloaded FlipBoard yet, what the heck are you waiting for?!?! Seriously, this is one of the first apps that I felt truly took advantage of the large real estate that the iPad brought. I’ve written about this one before and I’m going to do it again.
And no, this isn’t all sunshine and freaking rainbows.
The reason that I’m writing this is that recently FlipBoard raised another round of funding with a 200 million dollar valuation.
Recently, I have found FlipBoard for the iPad. If you haven’t seen this product, where have you been. Seriously, they’re even in Newsweek and I just saw them in an iPad ad this evening.
Here’s a demo of the app:
Pretty freaking sweet isn’t it.
And its free! Yes, FREE!
I still don’t get this. Its getting such great buzz around the web, why not charge some money for the app. I get wanting to get a bunch of people using your app and generating growth. But relying on advertisement revenue isn’t always the best plan. Why not get some of that cash in the door now.