21 questions with Neil and Frank from UrbanKite
If you got the Mobile Industry Review newsletter last week, you’ll have been the first to read this Q&A interview with the founders of hot new mobile location & recommendation service, UrbanKite.
(If you’re not on the list, sign-up here for this week’s distribution on Friday.)
I’m pretty impressed with the UrbanKite concept. Have a read and see what you think:
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1. Who are you and what’s your background?
UrbanKite has four co-founders.
Neil Pepper, for last seven years I have been Mobile Client Architect for a well known photo upload service, architected and ran the team responsible for the Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone clients.
Frank Sykes, lead the first online job matching system 12 years ago and ever since has been applying technology in inventive and approachable ways, working with large organisations such as PwC and smaller Entertainment companies.
The 2 remaining founders wish to remain anonymous for now, but work for 2 competing leading search companies.
2. What is UrbanKite?
UrbanKite is a free LBS currently for iPhone and Android devices that allow people to quickly find places around them based on tips of local experts. They can then add their own tips for those places and others, becoming experts of their local area. UrbanKite has been developed with other social networks in mind, allowing users to post tips to their Twitter account or Facebook so their network can pick up on their tips. Not only is this suited for mobile but all the tips and user profiles are available on UrbanKite website making it easy for none mobile users to look up businesses friends have recommended.
UrbanKite also makes great use of built in features of the iPhone and Android devices to help the users find the places including annotated maps, routing and soon augmented reality
3. Do we really need another reviews system?
UrbanKite does not aim to be another reviews system but rather a way to quickly share and get tips about physical places. Of course it can be about restaurants and bars, which is one area where timely local knowledge can make the difference between a good night and a disaster with your date, but it can also be about anything else (for instance while waiting for your plane at Gatwick you can leave a tip in 30 seconds from your mobile to let other travelers know that the train shuttle between South and North terminal is out of commission and that they need to budget additional time to take the replacement bus…). The fact that we leverage Facebook and Twitter means also that we make it easy for you to share these tips beyond the realm of UrbanKite with your entire network.
4. Where did you get the UrbanKite name from?
The idea of the name UrbanKite is that each user is a specialist of an area so they can “fly their Kite to make others know about businesses they like!”. But to create UrbanKite’s name we took best bits from other apps that best describe what it does … see if you can figure out which ones.
5. Tell us why we should all rush out and start using UrbanKite?
UrbanKite can be useful to you now wherever you are as soon as you install it. No need for a big community to be useful. At the minimum it will tell you all the various businesses / places of interest around you. Once people in the neighborhood you happen to be in start using it, you can see which of these businesses / places have their favour (think Digg for physical places) as well as easy access to the conversations / tips about these places. What’s the killer dish on the menu at this restaurant? When is the happening night at this club? Which hairdresser to avoid at this salon? etc…
Of course we make it super easy for you to share your tips / comments as well: No sign up process. No forcing user to enter credentials or create an account. No waiting until the app is launched in your area (we leverage the extensive Google local API which gives us unprecedented coverage virtually anywhere in the world). And if you want to start writing tips yourself you can leverage your existing Twitter or Facebook credentials to do so and share them with your existing network. We then automatically add a link to this business in your tweet / newsfeed item so non UrbanKite users know instantly what you are talking about.
6. I notice you’ve adopted both iPhone and Android platforms. What’s stopping you from developing a Nokia or Blackberry application? The simple answer is nothing, we chose iPhone and Android platforms initially because they have easiest route to market through their stores, have a limited number of handsets to test on, have a rapid development process and a proven track record of rich touchscreen LBS service apps. When UrbanKite has proved itself successful on these devices we will port to other platforms that have devices with build in GPS.
7. What was the best thing about developing on iPhone & Android?
Cheap in terms of time to develop feature rich applications and cost to create and distribute. Also with a small subset of devices on each platform, testing was kept to a minimum, with other platforms a wide range of screen size/orientation/ability/power etc make testing a huge issue.
8. What was the worst thing about developing on iPhone & Android?
For me when developing the iPhone version using Xcode on the Mac, coming from a PC background using Windows Xcode has a lot to live up to, although the slick integration of the IDE, emulator and on device debugging does make up for poor editing and window management on a mac.
9. When did you go live with the app and what kind of feedback have you received? What’s got more traction for you? Android or iPhone?
Android version launched in late summer and iPhone launched beginning of October. Initial response has been brilliant, similar downloads on each at the moment as Android had a head start but iPhone will be taking over shortly as we are currently being featured in UK iTunes “New and Noteworthy” section. As you can see from a search on Twitter http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23ukite tips are starting to come in thick and fast.
10. Why have you restricted the app to just London?
Unlike other related LBS applications UrbanKite is NOT restricted to any specific locations, users don’t have to wait until we launch in their area. Users can use UrbanKite anywhere in the world from New York City to a small village in Kent. This is because we leverage the extensive Google local API.
11. Who are you looking to do business/partner with?
At this point, we are mostly interested in talking to people who can help us distribute the application to a significant audience. There are many different actors in the eco-system that would fit this requirement, from carriers to large local players like the various local Yellow pages in each country. A partnership with providers of local event listings and local coupons could also reinforce the benefits we could offer to our users. We are also interested in partnering with specific interest sites with strong / passionate communities (for instance, think of mums sharing tips on anything baby related in their neighborhood via their iPhone/android phones while they watch their kids in the playground for instance…).
12. Are you considering in-app advertising?
We are currently working on the best way to provide our users with “useful” location based ads to fund the service. These are unlikely to be traditional ads you currently see in many free applications in the AppStores and will be voucher based. When we start signing up local businesses up we might look at offering the ability to insert paid sponsored tips for instance (clearly differentiated from regular tips of course).
13. What are you using to track app usage statistics?
http://www.AppFigures.com for tracking downloads via iTunes connect
http://www.Flurry.com for tracking usage, user distribution stats etc.
14. What’s been your experience marketing the application? Any tips?
Posting to app blogs gave us good results for Android. Because of the nature of the app people find out about UrbanKite thanks to posts they see on twitter that link to the business page, which has a growing viral effect. We are planning an event/game to bring local people together, which should fuel more local interest which will in turn fuel the viral effect.
15. How are you financed — are you looking for investment?
We have been bootstrapping for now, which has been sufficient to get the beta prototype out and to validate that we are fulfilling a need in the market and have an interesting product. If we continue to see the same traction as in the past couple of months however, we will probably look for seed funding to take the application to the next level and increase marketing / PR activities.
16. What are your top five mobile applications? Give us a line about why each one rocks your world.
– Universe iPhone – Can never remember which stars/constellations are which ? Universe can tell you, on 3GS with compass its even better
– iBomber – iPhone – Great plan view shooter using motion of iPhone, bomb the hell out of ships, gun placements and other planes.
– Echofon – iPhone – Favourite Twitter client for iPhone, keeps me up to date to Twitter
– YBrowser – S60 – Invaluable file browser for S60, if you develop for S60 you need this app.
17. Which UK mobile operator do you really rate?
Let me put it this way you could hear a small cheer over London when Orange/Vodafone announced they will be supplying the iPhone.
18. What was your first handset? What’s your current primary handset?
Neil : Nokia 6150 was my first handset, moved on the so called Matrix phone Nokia 7110. I usually carry a couple of phones around, at the moment I have a Nokia N97 and iPhone 3GS
Frank : My first phone was a 6110! Now have a iPhone 3GS
19. And the best gadget purchase you’ve made this year?
Neil : Just bought a MiniDVR 2 DogCam, for recording Snowboarding action this season
Frank : The new Nespresso machine called Citiz
20. Name three mobile-related companies or individuals that you reckon we should interview in the next edition?
* Daniel Eck – founder of Spotify, because their mobile app is poised to change the way we buy / listen to music – http://twitter.com/eldsjal
* Kei Shimada – because he has some great insights from mobile in Japan – http://twitter.com/kei_shimada
* JJ Rueb – CEO / founder of eBuddy because the mobile growth of their multi-client IM app has been nothing short of phenomenal – http://twitter.com/jjrueb
21. What else should we know?
UrbanKite is still in the early stages, we are continually improving the service, more content is going onto the website all the time and we have a new iPhone version out very soon with the Facebook Connect integration and an augmented reality mode for 3GS devices, we also have many many ideas how to take the service forward and create something really unique, some of these will be directed by feedback from our users. This is only the beginning – stay tuned!
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Neil & Frank, thank you both for taking the time. You can get hold of UrbanKite via: http://www.urbankite.com. I strongly recommend downloading the app right-away!
