Mob4Hire wins 2 out of 5 Investor Choice Awards at Vancouver Angel Forum

Last week, we were honored to receive not one, but two, out of the five investor choice awards at the 26th Angel Forum in Vancouver: "Best Company with Revenue" and "Best Presentation." This is great recognition of the journey we've been on, the progress we've made and the opportunity that we have in front of us.

We are, of course, in the middle of raising a private round of financing. If you're interested, please contact investor@mob4hire.com for more details.

During the day, we were treated to several presentations, one of which focused on Investment Trends from V.C.s' and Angels in Canada. The thoughts were encapsulated nicely by Boris Wertz on the Techvibes blog. In fact, in addition to the "re-thinking" of section 118 which makes it more complex for U.S. investors to put money into Canadian, I would also add the challenge of getting B.C. investors to put money into Alberta companies: B.C. investors enjoy a 30% tax credit ... for every $1,000 they put into a B.C. high tech company, they get $300 back on their tax return. I guess that's why us Alberta companies try harder!?

The most human moment of the evening goes to Mike Volker, who won the award for BC Angel Investor of the Year ... speaking about recently departed Don Ricks. Don apparently was a shoe-in for the award ("investing $50K in over 30 startups"), but his biggest legacy was Mike's testament: "When Don was with us, he was a great Angel investor. Now, he's a great Angel."

Thanks to Bob Chaworth-Musters for organizing great day!

The Curse of the One Star

Mob4Hire CEO, Stephen King, spoke at the BlackBerry Developer Conference this week in San Francisco. His topic "User Feedback and It's Role in Making Great Mobile Software" was well received by the audience. CNET Blogger Jessica Dolcourt was in attendance and reflected in her post: "A single-star rating for an application on a review site or storefront can severely limit its chances of getting downloaded, and therefore of making money."

"This is the curse of the one-star," said session speaker Stephen King (not that Stephen King)

In a related article, Stephen's post on market research community site MRWEB.com reiterates "Fear the One Star," correlating customer loyalty to mobile app revenue.

Our preliminary research shows that users are most comfortable with seeing at least 4 star ratings in mobile app stores before downloading

At the end of the day, while user feedback is important, developers shouldn't rely on paying customers to design their application architecture, especially if mistakes are prone to frustrate the user.

Testing software for crashing as well as usability BEFORE the app is released isn't just a "nice to have" ... it's vital in an increasingly crowded app marketplace where discoverability is becoming a big issue.

Mob4Hire and Flurry team up for one-two punch testing and market research

We're excited to announce our new partnership with Flurry Analytics out of San Francisco:

Mob4Hire, the leading crowd-sourced mobile application testing solution, today announced an agreement that combines Flurry mobile application analytics with the Mob4hire global community of testers, making both qualitative and quantitative user behavior data easy to access in order to make mobile software better.

In other words, analytics such as the ones Flurry provides tells mobile app developers and advertisers "what" the user does in your apps. The Mob4Hire community tells them "why" they did what they did (and what else you need in your app / what can you do better?).

Sean Galligan, Flurry vice president of business development has this to say: “We are excited to partner with Mob4Hire to deliver a powerful, joint offering that helps developers improve their applications and grow their mobile business.”

Mob4Hire CTO presents at Symbian SEE 2009

Application Development John Carpenter Mob4Hire

Mob4Hire CTO John Carpenter was in London last week at Symbian Exchange and Exposition 2009 presenting our favorite topic: User Feedback Techniques to Make Great Mobile Software.

In other words: "Don't Crash. Don't Suck. Get Sticky." :)

John says that the room was packed and the talk was well received ... a sure sign that everyone's mobile software is going to starting getting better!