NewOfferings

The APP Company is official - Apple doesn’t make it easy on iPhone developers!

Posted on 30. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

As many of you know, I formed a new company and am in the final stages of launching a new app for the Apple iPhone. We recently realized that our Apple Developer agreement was not registered with our official name in the contract. How could it have been? We initially were christened as ‘The iPhone App Company’ but Apple didn’t allow that for trademark reasons. Lucky for us, ‘TheAppCompany.com’ was available and actually works out better since we will be making apps for all popular mobile platforms.

So it shouldn’t be too difficult to change the name in the contract. Right? Not right! The first hurdle is contacting Apple. The developer portal on the their website lists no contact phone numbers so we used the email form on the website. Fast forward a week and we still hadn’t heard from Apple. We did some searching around and after about an hour of surfing from page to page and reading how everyone agrees that there isn’t a phone number we finally found one. It’s clearly very, very difficult to get this number because a guy from Scotland answered the phone on one ring and was extremely helpful — he must not receive many calls!

I gave my new Scottish friend my reference number from the email I sent and he explained how it can take weeks to get someone to read the email, but now that I’m speaking with him I’ll jump to the front of the line. He was right, because that day I heard from a rep that the change is being processed and today I was asked to fax the appropriate documents to prove that we are in fact who we claim to be. Three days later and I received the official notice. THE APP COMPANY is now an official iPhone developer!

I’ll give you more details shortly about the app. You can visit theappcompany.com for a bit more information. Be sure to read the ABOUT page to learn about my fantastic partner Jason Moskowitz.

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The Most Expensive Spreadsheet Ever Written?

Posted on 13. Apr, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

I recently came across a Twitter post on the most expensive spreadsheet blunders of all time. You can see the article here and here (I couldn’t find a next page on the first article — go figure!).  Some of these mistakes are quite amazing such as a simple error costing $24 million!  Can you believe that?  Well I could!

Way back in the mid-1980’s when I was an investment banking associate for Dillon Read it was my job to run the analysis for all of our bond transactions.  Many of these deals were several hundred million dollars each.  I was trusted to develop the spreadsheets which were the basis for computing all of the particulars on many of the deals.  I can remember having Managing Directors breathing down my back demanding that I give the okay that the deal could close.  It was a high pressure position, and luckily, I had the guts to ask my superiors “Do you want it now, or do you want it done right?”  Well, I never made a major mistake, but I did witness several mistakes which cost our firm over a million dollars!

The Most Expensive Spreadsheet Ever Written

The article got me thinking about the most expensive spreadsheet ever written, or in other words; what is the most that a spreadsheet ever sold for? Back while I was at Dillon Read my largest client was the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA is responsible for all of the subways, buses and toll bridges in NY along with Metro North and the Long Island Railroad. Dillon Read was one of three investment banks workiing for the MTA at the time, and the Finance Director wanted to have a competition among the three firms to build a financial model to manage their eight billion capital plan. They were planning to sell dozens of bond issues over several years and this model would have to keep track of everything. I won’t bore you on specifics here, but I built the model in Lotus 123 and translated it to Excel a few years later. MTA selected the model and paid us $400,000 for it! What’s more, we received more than our normal share of bond deals because of this spreadsheet. I don’t have specific details on our increase in fees, but I would guess that my firm received at least another $2-3 million because of the spreadsheet.
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What Constitutes a Great Idea for a Web-based Business?

Posted on 31. Mar, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

What Constitutes a Great Idea for a Web-based Business? It has to be unique, right? The market must be huge! There needs to be a great way to monetize the idea so investors can earn back their investment in 3-5 years. The business should fall in a sector where there are many well-capitalized firms to potentially buy it. Of course, the hot ideas need to be in alternative energy. Isn’t that what everyone is talking about?

So which of the above do I think are the most and least important? [...]

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Stop Wasting Our Time With Boring Presentations

Posted on 30. Mar, 2009 by ScotRobinson.

I have both given and sat through many presentations over the years. Prior to committing to the web full-time in the late 90’s I was an investment banker and financial adviser to both private companies and state and local governments. I have been a member of Tech Coast Angels, a SoCal investment group and have sat through more presentations than I care to remember. I’ll let you in on a secret.   Most presentations S-U-C-K.  The audience is sitting around, twiddling their thumbs and counting the minutes until the presentation ends.   I’ll let you in on another secret.  Almost everyone in the audience WANTS to be blown away.  They are looking for the presentation team to hit a home run.  To make an impact.  To tell them something they don’t already know. To pitch an idea which so unique and clever that they can’t wait to hear more.

I’m not going to give my thoughts here on what I think makes for a good and clear idea that works and is fundable.  That’s for another post.  Rather I want to discuss why I believe most presentations fail. [...]

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