January Quixey Challenge Recap

January 23rd, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Culture | Quixey News | Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

Thank you to everyone who made last week’s Quixey Challenge the most epic challenge yet, and a special congratulations to all the winners!

For those of you who don’t know, the Quixey Challenge is an opportunity for top engineers to fix a bug in 1 minute and win $100. We run the QC once a month. This month, 396 of the best engineers in the world (many from CMU, MIT, Palantir, Dropbox and other engineering powerhouses) took the challenge and 101 people won.

Here are a few key stats from Thursday’s Challenge:

  • Over 10,000 people came to quixeychallenge.com on challenge day, with an average visit time of over 6 minutes
  • Approximately 25% of people who took the challenge won
  • QC was on the front page of Hacker News for 10 hours
  • Every 4 seconds, someone took a practice challenge
  • Over 50% of wins happened in the last 2 hours of the challenge
  • The fastest winning time was 7 seconds
  • The average winner took a total of 15 minutes to qualify for the challenge, enter the queue and solve the challenge

Compared to our last challenge in December, we did a few things differently:

  • We made it harder to qualify. Instead of requiring contestants to solve one practice challenge in under a minute, we required them to solve three practices in any amount of time. We think the new requirement set the bar higher for contestants.
  • We offered a $50 bonus to anyone who referred a winner. Out of the 101 winners, 55 were referred. Surprise, surprise - smart people know smart people.
  • We had four operators. Last time we only had two operators, and the queue became an unwieldy 2-hour wait. This time, we doubled the number of operators and cut our peak wait time to 15 minutes. The average wait time was only 2 minutes. The result: 396 engineers took the January Challenge, compared to 197 in the December Challenge.

Our improvements worked – the January Challenge was our most successful one yet. Thanks to everyone who played and referred their friends!

We’ll keep representing the Quixey team’s passion for algorithms by running another challenge next month. Make sure to check Quixey Challenge later this week when we start the countdown to the February Challenge!

The Best-Kept Secret of CES

January 13th, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

We just got back from our first ever Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

At CES we learned a little secret: it’s not really about what happens on the floor of the convention center.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with CES, it’s the world’s largest tech tradeshow. CES takes place every year in the Las Vegas Convention Center, transforming it into a nerve center of the latest tech products, ideas and deals.

This year there were 3100+ exhibitors, ranging from Samsung to Intel to Ford to TLYT, and it took up three separate conference halls in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Over 150,000 people flock to this tech mecca every year – consumers, buyers, press, exhibitors, advertisers and the rest of the tech world. The event spills over from the multi-million-square-foot convention center and takes over the entire city. Every hotel, restaurant and cab line is booked. Not to mention, every night, companies try to one up each other by throwing lavish suite parties and hosting bands in private clubs.

The press tends to hate on CES, mostly because of the logistical nightmares of attending an event this big. This year was no different. As you can imagine, it was an absolute madhouse – too many exhibitors, too many people and too much news. It was nearly impossible to walk from point A to point B, and it was nearly impossible for companies to stand out.

People often complain about the CES chaos, but they’re missing the point. CES isn’t just about the exhibits and the newest and coolest gadgets. It’s about what happens when people aren’t at the exhibits, behind closed doors, in private showrooms and executive meetings. The event is really about the deals that are made by the world’s largest tech companies. There are an insane amount of deals because CES is the only time every major tech executive is in one place.

Apple is famous for not being among the countless floor exhibitors at CES, but Apple is definitely there, in private meetings. Microsoft, which has always been a huge mainstay at the show, has decided to follow suit and announced that this year would be its last major keynote and exhibit presence.

We were fortunate enough to experience the real CES. Most of our partners were at the tradeshow, so we had back-to–back meetings every day. We sprinted between the Cosmo, the Aria, various meeting rooms in the convention center and dinner meetings. So many meetings, so little time.

It was awesome. We were able to make more progress in four days at CES than we would usually make in a month.

Here’s our takeaway from CES, and a piece of advice for other startups: if your partners are at CES and you plan on going, set up meetings ahead of time. If you leverage the conference correctly, it can be a fantastic opportunity to make deals happen.

CES isn’t just about the floor exhibits. CES is about the people and companies who come together to get deals done, to pave the way for yet another year of great products.

A look back at 2011 – Launch, Growth and Insanity

January 6th, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

2011 was a huge year!

The year started with three of us crammed into one 10′x10′ office on University Ave in Palo Alto. We were in the prototyping phase.

By the end of January, we were preparing to scale, and it was time for a bigger office. We headed to Mountain View and set up shop in a medical lab building. We constantly joked about stealing liquid nitrogen from one of the labs (obviously, we never did).

In March, our seed funding closed. Tomer and Liron (our founders) had been working on Quixey for a year and a half, so funding was a big deal. Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors led the round. It was then time to release our product to the real world.

On April 7th, we launched our private beta and got our first TechCrunch article. When the news hit the press, the office was filled with excitement. We all stared at our screens, watching the beta account registrations and search queries. That was just the beginning.

Things started moving incredibly fast. By the end of April, there were six of us. By the end of May, there were ten of us.

In May, we sponsored TechCrunch Disrupt NYC, launched out of private beta, and our first round of summer interns arrived.

The summer was dedicated to growth, product development and partnerships.

In August, we raised another round of funding, outgrew our office and moved back to Palo Alto.

The current Quixeyplex

The Fall flew by. We sponsored another TechCrunch Disrupt, signed some partnerships, spoke at conferences and got some great press. Today we’re 22 people and moving fast. As a matter of fact, it’s just about time for a new office.

It was a great year. Here are a few of the team’s favorite moments of 2011:

Gabe Hendel
Business Development Account Manager
“Before we launched at TechCrunch Disrupt, we lived in the office for three days straight. We took the couch, turned it into a pullout bed and took turns sleeping for a couple hours at a time.  It was wonderful to see us all push each other to achieve a common goal. It was then I knew I had joined a team, not just a company.”

Pre-TechCrunch Disrupt, coding the static site

Jeff Fan
Design Lead
“My favorite moment was when I thought Liron was eating a giant chocolate lollipop, but in actuality, he was eating an entire hamburger patty off a silver knife. True story.”

Jake Orrin
Director of Business Developement
“One of the funniest moments of 2011 was trying to have a serious conversation with a CEO of a major search company at TechCrunch Disrupt while there was an ecstatic man dancing in a money machine behind him.”

It looked something like this
Eric Glover
Engineering Fellow
“In the early days of Quixey, at a VC pitch, we sat down and the VC mentioned he was having trouble finding apps for his kid. He asked Tomer (our CEO) to try searching, “games for 3 year olds.” We’d never tried a search like that, and all of us in the room were afraid we might get embarrassing results. The results were perfect, and everyone’s eyes lit up thinking, “these guys rock.” It was such a rush of emotion, opening a demo to a VC, letting them search whatever they wanted and trusting the system.”

Julia Lipton
Director of Marketing and Communications
“My favorite moment was at our Series A funding party at Innovation Endeavors when I looked around the room and saw our entire community under one roof. All the partners, investors, advisors and developers were having a great time, and people were looking to Quixey to do big things. That was just the beginning.”

Series A Funding Party
Dan Smolkin
Community Manager (an over achiever, he sent in three)
“The 30 Days in Pictures project was one of my favorite “moments” (actually 30) because it inspired me to capture something unique and interesting about Quixey every day. The project was an opportunity to seek out and create meaningful moments on a daily basis across the teams.”
Day 26: Our CTO updating the team on the Quixey Challenge
“I also remember quietly setting up a massive bouncy house in the back yard, trying to go unnoticed. Once it was fully inflated, I went into the office to find Tomer and Julia and told them, “I need you to come outside with me, right now.” Everyone jumped for joy (literally) when I opened the back door.”

“I’ve enjoyed making a ‘special moment’ for everyone’s birthday in some way. My favorite (aside from Liron’s Steak Cake Surprise) was setting up the search Easter Egg for Julia’s Birthday while she was abroad. It was incredible to see how everyone in the company banded together creatively.”

Liron’s birthday steak cake surprise
Tomer Kagan
CEO and Co-Founder
“My favorite moment was either our launch out of private beta at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC or our Series A celebration dinner at Il Fornaio. Both were times where I could look around and easily see us as a team.”
Launch day at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC –  7am May 23rd, 2011
Dor Carpel
Business Development Associate
“My favorite Quixey moment from 2011 was our launch at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. Up until that point, we’d been working hard, and yet were not allowed to show off our accomplishments. Seeing how positively people responded to our technology ended up being inspiring and invigorating.”
Our Packed Booth at TechCrunch Disrupt

2011 was great. Now it’s time to put our heads down and get back to work. 2012 will be epic!

How to Make a Killer App

December 23rd, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in App Trends - (0 Comments)

This post was written by Julia Lipton, Director of Marketing and Communications.

With millions of apps, why do certain apps become popular? How can developers build killer apps?

We’ve found that lots of super popular apps have three things in common:

    • Leverage social platforms
    • Avoid the first start problem
    • Design a great user experience

Let’s use Spotify, which gained a large share of the US streaming-music market shortly after its launch, as a case study.

Full disclosure: I’m a Spotify addict (but I’m not being paid by them, despite what my co-workers might say to the contrary).

Leveraging social platforms

Developers should take full advantage of what social platforms have to offer. Spotify did – they took advantage of the Facebook platform for the US version of their app. Their logic was simple: since all your social connections are on Facebook, they could build the ultimate social music experience there.

Before Spotify, a slew of other apps vied for a piece of the social music streaming space without leveraging a social platform as a means of growth. For example, Last.fm created a social experience within their destination site because Facebook wasn’t around when they launched in 2002.

Last.fm’s social registration process had too much friction. First you had to create an account. Then you had to download a desktop app that tracked what you were listening to. Then you had to convince all your music-sharing buddies to do the same. Finally, you had add your friends’ usernames to your Last.fm friends list.

By leveraging Facebook, Spotify cut out almost all these steps and tapped into Facebook’s massive audience to build a community of their own. I didn’t have to convince my friends to join, because my friends were already there.

Today, trying to create a social music-sharing app without tying into a social platform seems crazy. No wonder Last.fm added Facebook Connect in June and built an app on top of Spotify’s platform in late November.

Avoiding the first start problem 

It doesn’t matter how great your social product is if people don’t use it. But if your app depends on having a large network of users to be compelling, how do you get initial traction? The answer is that you can attract users to your product by building value for individual users.

Even if none of your friends use Spotify, it still offers a compelling value proposition: an unlimited source of free streaming music. You can listen to full albums, create your own playlists, subscribe to other people’s playlists and listen to online radio stations. If you build an app with this kind of value proposition for your first users, you can bootstrap to the critical mass of users you need to achieve a network effect.

Even if your app isn’t social, it’s important to think about how it’s going to gain initial traction. Don’t launch your app until you have a solid go-to-market strategy.

Designing a great user experience

We’ve all heard that “the customer is always right.” In the app world, the user is always right. If users aren’t returning to your product, it doesn’t mean they don’t “get it.” It means your product isn’t sticky enough.

Apps need to be simple, intuitive, easy to use and enjoyable. Spotify isn’t the first app to have playlists, radio channels, social sharing, artist biographies and a huge music library. But it’s the first app that made these things into a great user experience by being easy to use and seamlessly social.

Spotify is only one of many app success stories. If you can manage to leverage social platforms, avoid the first start problem, and design a great user experience, you can propel their level of massive growth for your own app.

[Infographic] – The Mobile App Ecosystem

December 15th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in App Trends | Functional Search | Functional Web | Press - (3 Comments)

Since we have the world’s largest database of apps, we thought it was about time we crunch the numbers, and share some information with the world. We hereby present the first ever Quixey infographic!

We are obsessed with apps, math and everything else infographics. So stay tuned, and let us know what you’d like to see in the next one at @quixey and facebook.com/quixey!

Check out the full story on TechCrunch, “If Freemium Is In, Then Why Do Paid Apps Still Reign Supreme?“

Making the Smartphone Jump

December 9th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in Culture | Favorite Apps - (0 Comments)

This post was written by Dan Smolkin, Quixey’s Community Manager.

Back in junior high school, I got my first phone: a Kyocera brick phone with a frosted, translucent grey case. By today’s standards, there was nothing special about it. But it was all I could ever have imagined needing. Heck, we had a nights & weekends family plan!

When I had that phone, the concept of checking my email on the fly didn’t even occur to me. My school had just given us webmail accounts with 10 megabytes of storage. That was back in the day when you could just check your inbox once a day.

For the next decade, I had nothing more sophisticated than a phone that made calls and had a built-in calculator. With a prudent set of parents knowing that nice things don’t stay intact long in the hands of a teenage boy, I was stuck with phones from the free section of the store.

Finally, the day came when my contract expired. It was finally time to follow in my friends’ footsteps and make the the smartphone jump.

Going from a phone that just makes calls to a phone that has an app for everything was a culture shock that delighted me with each new app I downloaded. Like the Star Trek communicator, I could simply pull out my phone and everything I needed was at my fingertips.

When I’ve been out with friends, I’ve not only been able to see what movies are playing with the Movies by Flixster app, but also catch the trailers – a great way to avoid watching a dud.

When I forgot my new dentist’s building number, I was able to check my synced Google Calendar easily.

I can keep the newspapers I enjoy reading right in my pocket with the NYTimes and WaPo apps.

And when I’m out running errands, I can seamlessly pay for my coffee with Starbucks’ app and know exactly how much money is on my card.

Best of all, I’m able to take my favorite web app, Pandora, with me to the gym. I can take ownership of my workout music, instead of having to watch Fox News presidential debates on the gym TV.

If you haven’t made the smartphone jump yet, you should. Smartphones make life better.

The Quixey Challenge: Part II

December 6th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in Quixey News - (0 Comments)

We just launched QuixeyChallenge.com – a website dedicated to the Quixey Challenge. If you’re a great engineer, you can win $100 if you solve the challenge before 7:00pm tonight.

Quixey Challenge Main page

UPDATE: This month’s challenge has ended. For a countdown to the next challenge, go to http://quixeychallenge.com.

Quixey Tweet Awards Take 5!

November 30th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in Uncategorized - (0 Comments)
In standard Quixey fashion, we wanted to take a blog post to thank the people who have been supporting and sharing Quixey. This post is dedicated to all the developers who have been sharing their App Pages on Twitter!
The Musical Talent Award
“
Finding cool apps with @quixey, check out Tap Song Free quixey.com/app/50435270/ta…

Marko Markovic
November 28, 2011 1:46:00 PM EST

The Security Award
“
Finding cool apps with @quixey, check out Passwort. quixey.com/app/64045514/pa…

Toni Kaufmann
November 28, 2011 1:46:00 PM EST

The Get Fit Award 

“
Finding cool apps with @quixey, check out Everywhere Exercise – EvEx quixey.com/app/17596082/ev…

Everywhere Exercise
November 28, 2011 1:46:00 PM EST

The Chrome Functionality Award
“
Finding cool apps with @quixey, check out Ultimate Chrome Flag quixey.com/app/39892172/ul… get it here 4shared.com/file/80nroteL/…­037_0.html

David
November 28, 2011 1:46:00 PM EST

The Live TV Award
“
Finding cool apps with @quixey, check out FilmOn Free TV Live Football Sports News quixey.com/app/60961340/fi…

BattleCam.com
November 28, 2011 1:46:00 PM EST

Thanks again to all the developers that make awesome apps! We will continue to support you in any way we can! 

What You Need to Know about the Chinese App Market

November 22nd, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in App Trends | Industry News - (0 Comments)

This post was written by Julia Lipton, Quixey’s Director of Marketing and Communications.

A few weeks ago, I visited China with my family. I’ve always been fascinated by China, so I was eager to geek out in the tech world outside of Silicon Valley. While I was there, I stopped by TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing, spent some time with our Chinese VC (WI Harper – a truly incredible firm), chatted with hundreds of consumers and spoke with lots of VCs.

During my trip, it became blatantly clear that China is a market that developers should pay attention to. It’s the largest mobile market in the world, with the most apps and the most usage. Yet it’s still an emerging market with plenty of time left to get in the game.

But developers in China have to be careful. It isn’t always easy to develop apps there due to competition, copycatting and market fragmentation.

The Market Basics

  1. The sheer size of China’s mobile market makes it impossible to ignore. There are over 850 million mobile users in China. Moreover, mobile internet usage is surpassing PC internet usage.
  2. Android is currently the dominant mobile platform in China. But the majority of consumers say they their next device will be an iPhone, which is relatively new to China. And iOS developers are in high demand.
  3. The market for Android apps is highly fragmented. Unlike the US, where almost everyone uses Google’s Android Market, China has over 70 separate Android marketplaces, seventeen of which have significant user traction. Of those seventeen, nearly all are third-party players. Fun fact: You won’t see China Unicom, Baidu or Google in the top seventeen Chinese app marketplaces. Amazingly, almost every Android smartphone user I spoke to uses at least two marketplaces regularly.
  4. The Chinese are heavy app users. While most countries have increased their app usage (defined as the time spent using apps) by anywhere from 300% to 500% on average over the past year, China has jumped ahead by a tremendous 870%. So what are they using all these apps for? The Chinese are obsessed with local, mobile social and gaming apps (even more than US consumers).

Consumer vs Enterprise Apps

  1. The consumer app market is tough for developers because copycats often publish successful knockoffs overnight. Not to mention, stealing source code is considered a legitimate business model.
  2. If you don’t have defensible technology — and even if you do — you’re running for your money in China. Developers are cheap, and if they can create it overnight, they will.

    For example, a knock-off company owns Groupon.cn and operates it exactly like the American company. There are actually 2,000 companies in China running various Groupon clones for the aggregate buying market.

  3. The market for apps is so large that developers only need a small slice of the pie to be successful – that’s why they keep entering this fiercely competitive market.
  4. The Chinese market is hot right now, and app companies are getting sky high valuations. When I stopped by TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing, multiple VCs told me the same thing: Valuations are high, and a $50+ million series A is not uncommon for an app development company. Protip: If you’re a US developer, consider raising money in China. These VCs seem to think you’re worth a ridiculous amount of money.

Tips for Developers
Everywhere I went, people were eager to give me pointers about developing apps in China. So I thought I’d share them with you here.

  1. The Chinese language is difficult and it can’t be ignored. If you want to enter the Chinese market, you need to support Mandarin.
  2. Not all of China is the same. China is a big country with over 1.3 billion people. Know your target market and have a launch strategy so you can start building a critical mass within key communities.
  3. You have to move fast. If you don’t move fast, someone else will move faster.
  4. Valuations are higher in China. In the past quarter, VC funding in the Chinese market increased by 84%, up to $1.3 billion. According to VCs, many pre-launch companies start with valuations in the tens of millions.
  5. Chinese app developers rarely innovate. Rather, they look at what succeeds in the US market and recreate it locally. Everyone is “the [blank] of China”. (After walking through the Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing, where developers were launching new apps, I can confirm this is definitely true.)

The Chinese market has a lot to offer developers – most importantly, lots of users. Although the competition can be fierce, savvy developers will realize the importance of the Chinese app space as it continues to grow.

We Want More Than Just Static Content

October 28th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in App Trends | Technology Trends - (0 Comments)

Last week, a video went viral that captures how technology is changing human behavior. The video, “A Magazine is an iPad That Does Not Work,” shows an adorable one-year-old girl frustrated by the lack of functionality in her magazine. From a toddler’s perspective, paper is just a broken touchscreen.

YouTube Preview Image

Times have changed. This toddler will never pick up a magazine at the grocery store or buy a textbook at the bookstore. She’ll probably never visit a newsstand or unfold a road map.

In today’s fast-paced world, we want more than just static content, we want the dynamic interaction that comes with apps. For the digital native generation, touchscreens will be the only way to access content, and the portal to the app world.

This isn’t just about the one-year-old girl. We all want more functionality in our lives, and technology is evolving rapidly to meet our needs. It is only a matter of time before we’re all saying, “Remember the days before apps, when things were in print?”