Suleman Ali

Loren Brichter made Tweetie, a Twitter iPhone client.  It started as a 2 week side project.  And exploded into his focus for 5 months of his life.  Tweetie is a paid only $2.99 iPhone App.

My favorite parts of the video:

There were a couple inflection points in sales:

1. Press from the Introduction of PEE to Tweetie (Tweetie Fart sounds)
2. Being featured in iTunes as a Featured App of the Week
3. Press around the Tweetie 1.3 App being rejected by Apple
4. Featured on Twitter.com as a Featured App
5. Press around Tweetie for Mac

(Press is powerful, Large companies like Apple and Twitter discover and support applications by individuals!)

Q: Why did you do it when there were so many competitors?

"Loren: It was stupid in hindsight.  It was ridiculously stupid. I never shouldn't have done it.  But i didn't like anything elset that was out there.  And I thought, crazily enough, that I could do a better job.  I think I got lucky."

Q: What do you do about analytics?

"Loren: I don't do anything.  I don't do any analytics.  I know people do...I don't really feel comfortable with it.  For the iPhone app, all I really know is how many people have bought it."

Kudos to Stanford University for having a class that gets students to build and publish iPhone apps, for inviting Loren to speak, and for posting this on YouTube.

What do you think Loren should do next to take Tweetie/his company to the next level?