Everpix - Every Possibility...Never Pivoted

Everpix was an innovative and catchy application.  Due to its ease of use and "set it and forget it" mentality, there was droves of users who enjoyed all the features in its premium version, and had good enough premium features that people would pay $5/month for the photo application.

One of the most popular features of Everpix was the "memory lane" type feature, which showed people what they did one year prior by sending their photos of that particular day to their email.  This unique feature is now used in popular mobile apps such as "Memoir" which connects to all your photo sources and makes it easy for you to share memories from different time periods with your friends.

However, even though Everpix looked promising for a while in the eyes of the investor, there were a few red flags that Everpix did not notice when they were trying to grow their company as a startup.

Red Flag 1: Did not think of the customer and only thought of development

During the time of growth for Everpix, the founders were focusing on developing smaller features that were part of their larger "grand plan" for the application.  Instead, they should have capitalized on the new users they acquired and keep the application as is and focus on strategic pivots where they could bring in more users.  Another great tool would be to use your early adaptors as a sound board to see how they could continually make the application better and more innovative.  In a world where mobile photo applications are around every corner, they needed to be able to stand out above their competitors.

Red Flag 2: Did not focus on growth

After two years of being in operation, Everpix had 55,000 users.  However, the Everpix team focused on development instead of marketing and getting new users on their existing application.  New features are nice, however you need users in order to bring in revenue to cover your costs.  If Everpix decided to focus on growth of users rather than expanding the already popular application, they may have been able to grow a larger subscription base, lower their development costs, and increase their profit margins.

Red Flag 3: Continued to pull in funding without a clear direction/pivot

One red flag of Everpix was their fundraising intake.  VC's were continually giving Everpix funding to help them make it from month to month with their costs.  However, the funding did not have a purpose.  Where funding can be very helpful for a startup, the funding should also be used to help with the growth of the company, not helping it stay above water.  The founders of the company continued to receive funding, even though they knew they were on a downward slope without any plan for a pivot.  Funding at this time should have been focused on user growth, and not additional development for new features.

Red Flag 4: Should have considered buyout options at first sign of potential downfall

Everpix had a golden ticket out of their growth problem.  In 2011, Everpix was in acquisition conversations with both Dropbox (relatively new at the time) and Facebook.  Everpix decided to decline these offers, and focused on an even larger acquisition option possibly down the road.  Where the goal of being able to become a billion dollar company on your own is the best possible scenario, Everpix was an excellent acquisition option for big companies.  Both Dropbox and Facebook had enough capital, user base, and personnel to help bring the application from a user base of 55,000 to millions of users.

Post Everpix

Everpix was the start of the photo application movement.  Since the fall of Everpix, mobile applications such as Instagram have been acquired for large sums of money and have seen explosive growth because of the acquisitions.  If Everpix made a few different decisions to focus on growth and understand their strategic acquisition potential we all might have an additional photo application on our smartphones today instead of Instagram or Snapchat.

Education Technology - A competitive landscape that is a diamond in the rough for new startups

In my previous post, I wrote a how-to guide to choosing the correct device for your classroom.  One of the key components to choosing a device and probably the biggest player in actually getting the devices is always surrounding one word: "funding".

Funding for technology in classrooms has increased year after year, and as it becomes more prevalent, schools will start implementing technology in the classroom as a line item on their budgets.  In 2014, nearly $1.9 billion was spent on education technology and 2015 is looking to hit the $2 billion mark.  With this increase in spending, is also going to spark a new competitive landscape that will be readily primed for new startups.

Education Technology - How to choose the best devices for your school classroom.

Technology in the classroom is nothing new when walking around the hallways of any school.  From kindergarten through high school and especially into college you see an increasing number of electronic devices all being used to help increase the students educational experience.

Studies have shown that the utilization of technology in the classroom has helped increase test results and student interaction in classrooms.  For example, University of California Irvine medical school saw their students get 23% higher test scores on their national exams when they were equipped with an Apple iPad.  In addition, Auburn Maine shows that Kindergarten students scored higher on literacy tests when using iPads in the classroom.

So if you are looking to implement technology into the classroom, then of course you want to pick the best device for not only your students, but also your budget.  To help educators out, I have created  some guidelines to look for when choosing what type of device to select, what you should be looking for in regards to a provider, as well as tips to assist you with future planning.

Top considerations when choosing either a laptop device or a tablet device

So if you are looking to implement devices in the classroom, there are few things you are going to want to consider prior to choosing your device.