Software Entrepreneurs Must Go Mobile-First Or Die

Editor’s note: Roger Lee is a general partner with Battery Ventures.

Seven years ago when the iPhone was first introduced, smartphones were a novelty. Now they’re the default method of computing for most people. As of late last year, Americans spent 34 hours a month on their mobile devices, compared with just 27 hours accessing the web via a computer, according to Nielsen.

This mobile-first mindset has also deeply permeated the enterprise. Some 95 percent of knowledge workers own smartphones, and they reach for them first to do all kinds of tasks – from email and document sharing/management to meeting planning and videoconferencing.

Smartphones and tablets are also rapidly entering business sectors such as construction, shipping, manufacturing, healthcare, real estate, education, law enforcement, fleet management and others. Most people have noticed field workers using mobile devices equipped with industry-specific apps (everyone from rental-car agents to home contractors) to complete tasks on the go.

As Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff recently said at a technology conference: “Today I run my business from my phone; I could never have imagined that a few years ago.”

So for enterprise software entrepreneurs, this platform shift has massive ramifications on product roadmap, product design, hiring, go-to-market strategy and pricing.  In other words, it impacts everything.

If you’re building an enterprise-software company, mobile must be core to your product strategy; it can’t be an afterthought or add-on. And you must build an elegant, easy-to-use mobile app, because employees and consumers far prefer mobile apps to mobile websites. U.S. smartphone users spend 86 percent of their time on mobile apps, vs. 14 percent of their time using mobile browsers.

Mobile-first
One example of an enterprise startup getting it right with mobile is Clari, a CRM software company. At right, a screen shot of the clean, great-looking Clari Daily Brief – perfect for a sales rep on the go whose smartphone is his or her primary computing device.

There’s also PagerDuty, a company that alerts IT professionals to potential problems via SMS and email. Also in the market is CoTap, a mobile-first messaging system for workplace teams—sort of like WhatsApp for business.

These companies and others illustrate a few key precepts that entrepreneurs should keep in mind when trying to build a mobile-first product and mobile-centric company culture.

Pick one platform to get product/market fit. iOS and Android are very different environments and, as a resource-constrained entrepreneur, you need to pick one. Be conscious of the types of devices your end customer will be using and think through the pros and cons of each platform (e.g. Android is easier to release/iterate in the early days as you are searching for product/market fit, while iOS can be easier to monetize). Once you have made your platform decision …

Hire dedicated developers for that platform. You will need a dedicated team of three to four engineers/designers for either iOS or Android. These folks are tough to find, but you don’t have a choice. To build an A+ mobile app, you need a dedicated team that is solely focused on building in iOS or Android.

Design, design, design. You only have a few minutes to convince users your mobile app is valuable. If they have to spend 2-3 minutes struggling to understand how to use it, you’ve likely lost them for good. A great mobile app is intuitive from the first minute a user taps on it. But designing something so elegant is extremely difficult. You need great designers and lots of them. Make sure an experienced designer is one of your first few hires, or ideally part of the founding team. Then, aim to hire one designer for every three to five engineers going forward.

Think through workflow and how it impacts the user experience. This is stating the obvious, but the way people use smartphones and tablets is vastly different from the way they manipulate keyboards and mice. Instead of relying on clicks and text entry – the standard for enterprise desktop apps for decades – you’ll need to design mobile workflows based on taps and swipes. Depending on your mindset, this can be either scary or liberating. Embrace this design constraint and you will be surprised at what is possible.

Don’t overbuild. Another key to success with mobile apps is to keep it simple. Don’t build in too much functionality, and make sure the user can get real value within three to four swipes/taps. Most incumbent software vendors have not figured this out, as they take their year 2000-era software playbook and cram in too much functionality, yielding a bloated and difficult-to-use product. Don’t fall into that trap. Keep it simple.

Decide if your app plays a standalone or support role. Just because people vastly prefer to use smartphones over their PCs doesn’t mean there aren’t some work tasks that still require a computer. Startups like Accompani are getting this balance right. The company, which makes relationship-management software, can fulfill on-the-go use cases over customers’ mobile devices but accomplish batch-processing type tasks — clearing out your inbox, prepping for the next day full of meetings — on a PC or tablet. 

After all, programming, graphic design, writing, creating presentations and other jobs are still mostly done using keyboards and large screens. Figure out if your mobile enterprise app is for a task that never, ever needs a computer, or conversely, if it needs to work in conjunction with a desktop application. Everything from how you design the mobile app interface to whether you need mobile-desktop sync will depend on this critical distinction.

Even if you didn’t start your company as a mobile-first business, there is still time to make this massive pivot. Facebook did it – moving from a consumer, desktop-based website to a mobile-first app – and changed its entire revenue stream in the process. If a huge company like Facebook can do a mobile about-face, your smaller enterprise software startup can, too.

You just have to throw out all your old ideas about how users interact with your software and put all your energy into designing a streamlined, elegant, efficient mobile app. It won’t be easy, but it has to be done. Otherwise, your enterprise software company may slowly fade away as a relic of the bygone desktop era.

Bill would require 'kill switch' for smartphones

SAN FRANCISCO: Two California officials have announced plans to introduce legislation requiring smartphones to have a "kill switch" that would render stolen or lost devices inoperable.

State Sen. Mark Leno and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon announced Thursday that the bill they believe will be the first of its kind in the United States will be formally introduced in January at the start of the 2014 legislative session.

Leno, a San Francisco Democrat, joins Gascon, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and other law enforcement officials nationwide who have been demanding that manufacturers create kill switches to combat surging smartphone theft across the country.

"One of the top catalysts for street crime in many California cities is smartphone theft, and these crimes are becoming increasingly violent," Leno said. "We cannot continue to ignore our ability to utilize existing technology to stop cellphone thieves in their tracks. It is time to act on this serious public safety threat to our communities."

Almost 1 in 3 US robberies involve phone theft, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Lost and stolen mobile devices - mostly smartphones - cost consumers more than $30 billion last year, according to a study cited by Schneiderman in June.

In San Francisco alone, more than 50 percent of all robberies involve the theft of a mobile device, and in Los Angeles mobile phone thefts are up almost 12 percent in the last year, the San Francisco DA's office said.

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, earlier this year proposed installing a kill switch in its devices. But the company told Gascon's office the nation's biggest carriers rejected the idea.

But the CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group for wireless providers, says a permanent kill switch has serious risks, including potential vulnerability to hackers who could disable mobile devices and lock out not only individuals' phones but also phones used by entities such as the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and law enforcement agencies.

The CTIA has been working with the FCC, law enforcement agencies and elected officials on a national stolen phone database that debuted last month.

Gascon and Schneiderman have given manufacturers a June 2014 deadline to come up with solutions to curb the theft of stolen smartphones.

"I appreciate the efforts that many of the manufacturers are making, but the deadline we agreed upon is rapidly approaching and most do not have a technological solution in place," Gascon said. "Californians continue to be victimized at an alarming rate, and this legislation will compel the industry to make the safety of their customers a priority."

Smartphones Now Account For 60% Of Mobile Phones Shipped Globally, With Apple Expected To Rebound On The iPhone 5s, Says Strategy Analytics

Global shipments of smartphones are continuing to increase, growing 45% to hit a record 251 million units in Q3 2013, from 172.8 million units a year ago, according to the latest report from Strategy Analytics.

“This was the first time ever that smartphone shipments exceeded a quarter-billion units in a single quarter. Smartphones accounted for 6 in 10 of all mobile phones shipped worldwide.

The smartphone industry’s robust growth is being driven by strong demand for LTE models in developed regions like the U.S. and 3G devices in emerging markets such as China,” said Linda Sui, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.

Samsung is still the leading brand, capturing a record 35% share of all smartphone volumes worldwide. The Korea tech giant’s shipments grew 55% over the last year as it shipped a record 88.4 million smartphones worldwide.

Slowing shipments of its flagship Galaxy S4 was offset by strong demand for its new Note 3 phablet and lower-priced devices such as the Galaxy Y.

Though Samsung shipped over two times more smartphones than Apple during the quarter, Strategy Analytics executive director Neil Mawston expects the Cupertino, Ca.-based company to “rebound sharply and regain share in the upcoming fourth quarter of 2013 due to high demand for its new iPhone 5s model.”

Apple shipped 33.8 million iPhones worldwide in Q3 2013, up from 26.9 million a year earlier. The slowing shipments as consumers waited for the release of the iPhone 5s and 5c meant that Apple grew just 26% annually during Q3 2013, or about half the overall smartphone industry average of 45%. Apple’s global smartphone market share also decreased from 16% to 13% during the past year.

Huawei took the third place spot in the rankings as its global shipments grew 67% annually to 12.7 million units in Q3 2013.

Though the Chinese company’s 5% market share is considerably less than Samsung’s or Apple’s, it still makes Huawei the world’s third largest smartphone vendor. Huawei’s shipments were driven by the popularity of its P6 and G610 models in its domestic market.

“Huawei remains very strong at home in China, but its position is less robust in other major markets like the U.S. and Europe.

Huawei will need to expand aggressively in the American and European markets if it wants to seriously challenge the big two of Samsung and Apple next year,” said Woody Oh, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics.

 The other smartphone brands in the top five this quarter were LG, Lenovo

LG, which shipped 12 million smartphones worldwide for 5% market share in Q3 2013. The Korean company grew 71% annually, making it the fastest-growing vendor among the top five brands.

Strategy Analytics noted that LG’s growth was driven by demand in Europe, but that it still needs to catch up with its competitors in China and India.