robjama

Thanks for the shout out Jeremy! InstaMatch deserves it's own post. Learned a lot from those early days.

Step 9: Write a comment on HN about the Medium post that you wrote.

Apple does a good job of highlighting apps in their TV ads and we were fortunate to end up in one of them. I wrote this piece to share my behind-the-scenes experience. Hope you find it interesting/useful.

Hey I'm one of the guys behind Next Keyboard.

Not sure what you're referring to. We started working on Next in the summer before Blackberry Passport was released.

The lack of gesture/swipe typing.

Congrats on the press guys! Big fan of the product.

That was actually the original idea. To use math questions as an alarm style but we opted to go with the Shake to wake option to get people moving in the morning. Plus it's more tactile and goes well with the other alarm styles of slapping the phone to snooze and flipping the phone over to turn off alarms.

Hey, We'd love to see and hear about your side projects. Share them here.

I couldn't disagree with this more. It really depends on the product and market!

IF you know people will want your product. OR are going after a mass market with a better X OR need to get up the App Store charts (hit based apps)? THEN aim for a huge hard-launch. A big product launch in this case is pretty much mandatory.

IF you are not sure people will want it OR are searching for product/market fit THEN defer launch.

Always launch! Depending on the product/market sometimes you go big other times you fly low with a soft-launch.

Following this formula might get you a post or two but are those reviews going to get you up the charts? Nope, not at all.

- If your goal is impact and reach...you should be analyzing the traffic of the blogs you're contacting. A lot of those sites probably only have a few hundred readers. A review on Gizmodo & TUAW would probably be 10x more effective than mentions on all of those sites.

- We sometimes tend to forget that the R in PR stands relations. So build those relationships don't just spam. - Get to know bloggers (do your research) and get them to know you well before you go pitching (add value, send them tips, get to know them on twitter and IRL)

- Intros are also very helpful. Have a friend who got a review on insert blog name? Ask him to make an intro since he's established himself as someone who's made something newsworthy.

PR is kind of like trying to get a job. You could blast out 50+ generic resumes + cover letters and hope someone calls. Or you could do your homework, choose the top 3 companies you really want to join, get intros and do something remarkable to get noticed.

Agreed! I'm a huge proponent of side-hustlin'

I started my second company on the side while I was working at a large software company. On top of the full-time corporate gig I had recently gotten married and was expecting my first child. My first app launched only a couple of weeks after the birth of my daughter which was perfect because It was partly inspired by her (it was an app for kids). The app ended up doing really well on the App Store cracking the Top 50 overall list. After a few more months of hard work I was able to leave my job and haven't looked back since.

Side hustles are like tricycles...it's the first step to learning to ride on your own.

Taxes are actually a good problem for a business b/c it means you're making a decent profit. Most businesses probably don't end up paying any taxes b/c as they say most businesses fail (don't make any money). Turn that objection into motivation to start a profitable side-hustle!

Yup, it's called making iOS apps.

Beautiful work! This project definitely needs some publicity...did you think about putting it up on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/)?

Nothing beats pen and paper in my opinion. As for software I use 2 Do on my iPhone on the go - http://www.2doapp.com/