{"id":44336,"date":"2023-10-20T15:35:14","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/dont-use-downloads-as-a-measure-of-success-app-pioneer-cody-bunea-says-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:35:14","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:35:14","slug":"dont-use-downloads-as-a-measure-of-success-app-pioneer-cody-bunea-says-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/dont-use-downloads-as-a-measure-of-success-app-pioneer-cody-bunea-says-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t use downloads as a measure of success, app pioneer Cody Bunea says – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Mobile app developers and businesses need to stop focusing on downloads as a measure of success and instead build something that people will want to use repeatedly, Carnival Labs co-founder Cody Bunea says. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bunea co-founded the first iPhone app company in the world in 2007, and was \u201cmaking apps before the App Store existed\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He\u2019s now the CTO of Carnival, a Wellington-based mobile marketing automation startup that has worked with the likes of HBO, CNN, Oreo and One Direction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Speaking at the Lean15 conference in Wellington, New Zealand, Bunea likened the emphasis on downloads without trying to retain users to trying to continually fill up a leaky bucket instead of fixing the actual holes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cMeasurements of mobile apps are still a little bit in the dark ages,\u201d Bunea says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve gone into a meeting with an agency and asked what success looks like for the app and the answer is, \u2018oh, we want 250,000 downloads\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBut downloads can be a bit misleading. It\u2019s just a historical number, you can\u2019t do a whole lot with it, you can\u2019t tell too much from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A vanity metric<\/b><\/p>\n

Getting someone to download your app is like receiving a \u2018like\u2019 on Facebook, Bunea says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s someone that has done one thing at one point in the lifetime of your app,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t measure the impact on your business and it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re making money. When used in isolation it can be a bit of a vanity metric, a show-off metric.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Success should instead by measured by active users and engagement, meaning developers and marketers have to create a product that makes people download it and go back to it, he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can buy downloads but you can\u2019t buy loyalty,\u201d Bunea says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWork on the quality of the app to ensure your users actually stay around.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Snowballing to success<\/b><\/p>\n

At the conference, Bunea also discussed the early days of app development and Carnival\u2019s rapid growth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The startup has \u201csnowballed\u201d since its launch, and has now developed 15 number one apps and has offices in New York.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The company was bootstrapped until a $2.4 million investment round in 2013, something which Bunea says was necessary to rapidly expand the business.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBootstrapping was hard and slow,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d recommend bootstrapping for as long as you can and I\u2019m glad we bootstrapped as long as we did.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBut we came to a point where we believed there was a window of opportunity for this startup and we were just taking too long.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

StartupSmart attended Lean15 as a guest of Positively Wellington Tourism.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mobile app developers and businesses need to stop focusing on downloads as a measure of success and instead build something<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}