How to Hack the App Store and "Cure" Snoring: Hibermate's Chris Thomas
If Chris Thomas ever writes a memoir, one chapter will have to be "How Google Instant Changed My Life."
Thomas was Googling "earmuffs" when the search engine's autocomplete came up with "earmuffs for sleeping." Not the too-cold-to-sleep kind of earmuffs, the too-loud-to-sleep kind. The only search results were ear plugs.
Contents
Snoring: "A Huge Problem for Couples"
How to Hack the App Store
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Thomas works in online marketing, so he probably pays more attention to Google Instant than most people. For those with ears to listen, it's an oracle of market demand.
With a prototype and a patent application in hand, that hint would become Thomas's Kickstarter project. He took Hibermate, a sleep mask with sound-blocking earmuffs, to the crowd-funding platform to raise money for a first batch of 8,000.
Thomas had been thinking about sleep for a long time.
In the early 1990s, he was working nights as a graphic designer for a pre-press company in greater Melbourne. Getting off work at 8 a.m. meant he had to sleep through the day, or at least try to. But his apartment faced a busy road.
It so happened that Thomas's father ran, with his other son, a factory that die cut foam. They made cups to fit Thomas's ears, and with time, sent more for his colleagues on the graveyard shift.
"Originally, it was a headband with some foam over the ears. I sold that for about 10 years. But people complained that it didn't block enough sound."
That was version no. 1, and for 20 years, it did the trick. Version no. 2 -- inspired by Google -- is more ambitious.
Now 47, married and a father, Thomas raised more than $110,000 in his Kickstarter campaign last summer. Celery has helped him take tens of thousands more in orders. By the end of the year, Thomas will quit his day job to run a sleepware company with thousands of clients around the world.
"My father was an engineer," Thomas said. "In the factory he used to run with my brother, he would invent all kinds of electrical bits and bobs that would make machines run better. Over the years, I had these crazy ideas where I'd say: "Oh, I should try that." Hibermate is the first invention I've seen through end to end. I don't think it's ever too late to mix things up a little bit."
Snoring: "A Huge Problem for Couples"
The National Sleep Foundation says more than 18 million American adults have sleep apnea. That's another way of saying they snore. You can try stop snoring in many different ways -- decongestants, chinstraps, pillows, mouthpieces, nose armor, wrist bands that apply electric shocks -- when there are that many cures, it usually means that there is no cure at all.
Hibermate's stance is that while snoring may not be stoppable, one's bedfellows don't have to hear it.
"We got an email just yesterday from a woman who said she hasn't been able to sleep in the same bedroom with her boyfriend for three years because she snores and he's a light sleeper," Thomas said. "We had another from someone who got engaged and moved in with their fiancé and said they're thinking about breaking it off because of the snoring. It's a huge problem for couples."
In America, there are about 40 million people who work night shift every day, Thomas says. Members of the military, who may sleep several to a room, have also placed a lot of orders.
"One of the best bits of advice I've ever been given is 'Make meaning, not money,' " Thomas says. In this case, he hopes meaning will mean saved marriages, and fewer mistakes on the job, and a more rested fighting force.
How to Hack the App Store
One of the main lessons Thomas has taken away from his work in SEO is that the App store is hackable. And since everyone else knows how to game it, you should, too. Here's what you do:
First, choose the right keywords. If you jump on your phone right now and start typing in keywords that relate to your idea, you see the app store make suggestions. Take those, and use them liberally in the title of your app, but don't go bananas. Get it right before you submit, because you can't update the title of the app ever again.
To get the long tail, you type in your main key word -- say, augmented reality -- and after it you type each letter of the alphabet, one after the other, to see what suggestions you get for "augmented reality a," "augmented reality b" and so forth. Then take the 4,000 words of copy you're allowed to describe the app, then sprinkle you keywords there as well. Use all the tags.
Apps' ranking in the store doesn't seem to be influenced by the rating of the app by users, but it is influenced by download velocity, so you need social media and other mechanisms to drive people to download it en masse right after it gets posts on the store. If you have a download page on your site, like brandname.com/download, then redirect it to the app store to add that traffic. If the app's ranking starts to rise, it takes care of itself.
[Ed. note: One last method to increase the downloads of your app, aside from organizing a mafia of your friends to do it, is to update the code every two weeks, even if you don't change much. If you send in some minor improvements, the app appears in the list of recently updated apps, and customers are reminded to use it. People like what's new. You need to remind them that your alive, and keep the pulse going.]
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Product Design: Cobalt Niche "They made the KeepCup. I told them I needed a soft earmuff for sleeping. A year later, I held a prototype in my hand and I said: 'This is it, they've done it.' "
Patent Attorneys: Actuate IP "I asked them if I'd be infringing on anyone's patent. They said you should be good to go. Once I had the prototype, they filed for the provisional patent."
Mentor: Bob Beaumont
Sourcing Agent: Bluegum "They're accredited with ethical-clothing bodies. We could have got the masks even cheaper, but we chose not to."
Supplier: Baron Rubber "They supply medical-grade silicon to companies around the world."
Startup Community: HUB Melbourne
Local Assembly: Brite Industries "A workshop for folks with disabilities. They do a great job."
Fulfillment House: Shipwire
E-Commerce: Celery "We've raised about $30,000 with Celery post-Kickstarter."
Key Quotes
Why China: "We had a quote to get the mask manufactured in Australia and China. The Chinese were one tenth the price. We had to go with that."
Total costs pre-Kickstarter: Almost $50,000
Click here to learn about Airbrite, an order-processing API for developers. We also make Celery, an easy way for startups to take pre-orders.
