The Flinch{.broken_link} by Julien Smith

Highlight 1:

“You can’t settle for reaching other people’s limits. You have to reach yours.”

Highlight 2:

“Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

OK book, easy to read but maybe a bit too repetitive.

Anything You Want{.broken_link} by Derek Sivers

Highlight:

“Starting small puts 100 percent of your energy on actually solving real problems for real people.”

Good read! If you’re want to start a business, and you think you need a round of funding, and a team of experts and advisers this book is for you, haha. Clearly a book I recommend.

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data{.broken_link} by Charles Wheelan

This is a good book that does what it says, Charles explains the basic statistical concepts to smart amateur without too much math.

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Leo Babauta and Tim Ferris discuss if goals is good or bad for us as individuals.

Leo think that the problem with goals is that it’s the end point, if we pursue a goal, and regardless of what we learned from it, or how much fun we had on the road, we feel that we have failed anyway and move forward.

Tim disagree. He thinks planning is important and that goals gives something to strive for.

They discuss, among other things, that goals is a part of Tim’s routine, why Leo has experimented with releasing goals and how it worked out. They also talk about learning to accept failures as part of the human nature.

Interesting discussion between two inspiring guys.

Tim Ferriss vs. Leo Babauta on Goals from Leo Babauta on Vimeo.

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Best workout session ever?

For us average Joes and computer geeks who sits all day maybe these exercises are better suited

Office Exercise: Yoga at Your Desk

On the same topic…

TED Talk with Chriopractor Eric Goodman on posture, the spine, hips, and choices you have everyday.

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I’ve made an iPhone app. I wanted to learn the basics and experiment with trial & error and understand the principles around app/iOS development. I experimented with Xcode, did some programming in Objective C to reconnect to the interface after events based on the data and user input. Objective C is an object oriented programming language, which I worked with before in PHP and primarily in Ruby.

The app, Red iGone as it was called, was an anti-red-eye app that was available on iPhone, iPad and as a web service. It is no longer available more than as open source.

Quote from a review:

Red iGone could be the perfect example of a online single purpose tool. It not only focuses in a area of expertise, it truly only does one thing. It removes red eyes from any photo you upload. That is it.

When I got involved in the project was the service already there as a web service online and was completely free to use. My friends Sean and Victor wanted to develop the service further and develop a mobile app and asked if I was interested to catch on. There was a relatively high use in the online version so the potential existed that it would be fine. There were not so many competing apps in the Appstore. It was just to get started! This was in March/April 2010.

When I got involved in the project was the service already fully operational as a web service online and was completely free to use. My friends Stefan and Viktor wanted to take Red iGone to next level and develop a mobile app.

There was a relatively high use in the online version and there were also not very many competing apps in the app store so it was promising. It was just to get started! This was in March/April 2010.

Might be worth mentioning that at that time there was no red-eye reduction in iOS4 and Apple’s native camera app.

Red iGone app description

Red iGone is simply the easiest way to remove red eyes out of photos. In three simple steps and a matter of seconds, you can turn an image ruined by red eyes into a fantastic looking photo. That’s it. We are not trying to solve every single problem on this planet, we just want to remove red eyes from your photos.

Features

• Remove red eyes in three simple steps
• Save the improved photos to your camera roll
• Share the photos on Facebook and Twitter directly from the app

The apps for iOS cost $9, while the web version was still free to use.

My responsibility was the interface and I made new views for the different steps and a new icon/logo. There was never a masterpiece design-wise but it was still better than the competition and was good enough to validate the concept and the app idea.

A few months later (we did it part time and on weekends) the first version was done. At the end of April, we launched the iPhone app and later in May we launched our iPad app. With great expectations.

There was no giant traffic or a big number of downloads, but not zero, and it was fun to have made a first version and we got a couple of reviews which was a fun read.

Then something happened that was not really to our advantage. June 21, 2010 (I remember it like yesterday, haha) Apple launches iOS4 with an enhanced camera app, with support for red-eye reduction.

FUGH! was our reaction.

A few months went by and it never became a super hit in the number of downloads. Revenues were about the same as the operating costs of running the apps (the actual work was done in our web app) so on Friday 3 February 2012 we decided to shutdown Red iGone and open source all the work we had done.

It was a really fun time, and instructive, I learned something new I never tried before. I didn’t get rich but I had fun with my friends and I got a basic understanding of how it works to develop a mobile app for iOS.

If anyone is interested is everything we done ​​available on Github here: https://github.com/teamdevify/Red-iGone

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In this blog post I will tell you about the beginning of my career as an entrepreneur. The date is May/June 2009 and it is one of my first assignments in my first company. I along with a small team isulates us in a conference room to work out how we will reach out to customers in the noise among other gaming companies. It’s the beginning of a long collaboration and a fantastic journey.

The assignment

In May/June 2009 I came in contact with a person who was Social Media Manager for a new and young gaming company. An energetic and smart person named Razmus. We had some mutual friends and had previously had some sporadic contact via Skype about tech stuff like servers and web hosting. Razmus knew that I recently quit my job to start my own business.

Razmus himself had recently started on the gaming company, first as a consultant, but later as employed with the job of putting the company on the map of world wide web.

Things had gone fast for the company. In two years they had a large number of users and the core of their business was going well. Due to the the rapid success they had fallen a bit behind in their web presence and marketing.

That’s where I came into the picture.

Razmus had gone through a couple of pitches with various ad agencies and varying results. Something was missing, it wasn’t good enough, this must be something good, something really good. It struck him that he could probably do something better on their own, along with a few others.

Razmus got quite free hands and great confidence internally. So one day he called me and asked about my plans to come and if I had the possibility to visit them for a few days to see if we could work together.

Without hesitation I said yes.

Full of ideas

Razmus booked a conference room for a few days a few blocks from their head office with the mission to establish a web presence for the gaming company.

Myself, along with Razmus (web genius), Kim (design genius) and Leon (tech genius) we shut ourselves into a conference room for two days. Two days where a lot of time was devoted to whiteboards, storyboards, wireframes and what was technically possible.

We came up with two ideas, priority #1 was to start a blog where customers and sports fans were able to follow what’s happening within sports and the gaming world. It was a prerequisite for gaining a web presence at all.

Idea #2 was slightly more crazy but a necessity if we were to reach out in the noise among gaming companies. They had previously decided that they would promote themselves as the “crazy” game company where you could win on almost anything. Our idea was to let anyone make suggestions on what they would like backing and then would any of these suggestions become real playable odds. We called the campaign for “My Odds Idea”.

After two days in the conference room, we felt satisfied and happy, we had a plan. We had a couple of ideas that Razmus would present internally. I went back to Stockholm again.

Project start

A few days later Razmus called me with positive news. The company’s management liked our proposal and we got the green light to get started. However, the schedule was tight. Really tight. A week later, I was at their office. Kim had started on the design for the blog. The blog was no longer a blog, rather a blog platform with support and content for four languages. WordPress became the choice of platform, the best web software for blogs.

Three weeks later we launched the blog in several languages. But the campaign site for idea #2, “My Odds Idea” was not quite done.

I probably worked 50-60 hours a week in maybe three or four weeks and I still felt that I needed more resources to be able to deliver on time. It was pretty hard to do everything as a solo developer.

The guy I asked, I had only met once before, during my teaching at the University of Kalmar. But my gut feeling was that this guy is smart and has the courage to work hard towards a deadline. So I called Erik and asked if he could help me, and the answer was yes. A few weeks later we launched the campaign “My Odds Idea”.

The response was great, both from the customers, fans and the management. We were starting to get momentum on the web. We began to appear more and more on the web and in social media. Razmus made ​​a fantastic effort who held together the entire project team who had worked hard, and under pressure, for over two months.

The result

Two months later, after Razmus had called me for the first time we launched two relatively large web sites for Betsafe.com. A blog portal and a campaign site. What I didn’t know then was that this would be the beginning of a fantastic journey in my career as an entrepreneur. Overall, we made about 10 campaign sites and some of them became very very popular and it’s fantastic that we managed so successfully in such a small creative team.

I worked with Betsafe.com and Razmus for over two intensive years. I’m glad I got involved in the early days when they were 20-25 people and got to experience an incredible journey until they were 150-200 (?) employees and eventually acquired by Betsson.

Final words

I want to thank everyone I worked with at Betsafe, mainly Razmus, Karl, Kim, Leon and Niclas which I at times worked round the clock with on certain projects. I particularly remember the work with Gumball 3000 and the FIFA World Cup in 2010. I also want to thank Henrik and Pia-Karin for confidence as well as Erik and Jonas who supported me with development when I haven’t had time or enough knowledge.

I am forever grateful to you for giving me such a memorable start to my first company which is now put on hold for the benefit of my focus on my new company RevRise.

And some screenshots on what we have done…

Betsafe Driver Betsafe Gumball Coverage Betsafe – Quicktip

Razmus and me on a Christmas party

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A few months ago I started with some new habits.

You can read about them here: Good Habits

The routines

• Go to bed in reasonable time (before 11pm)
• No social media before 8am or after 10pm
• No snoozing
• Write daily
• No second screen when watching TV
• Meditate for 2 minutes every day

Routines would become daily habits

As you can see there’s a quite long list with new routines. When I wrote the post I had managed to make the most of them for 10-20 days, at a time, not simultaneously. It turned out to be too short time to successfully make all of them into daily habits, among other things, which I will return to.

Honest with myself

Let me be honest. There are only two routines that I succeeded to make into habits:

go to bed at a reasonable time and to write daily. The latter is largely thanks to my blog challenge, 100 posts in 100 days. The others I failed. And it’s no wonder, in hindsight it was pretty naive to think that I would manage to get so many new routines into habits simultaneously.

“My normal” was changed

There was simply too much that was changed at once, too many new habits, and some external positive things I didn’t see coming.

In late November last year we won 100 000 SEK for the hottest startup on IDD. Which meant that my focus was changed, I shifted direction and became more focused on my work. I failed my new habits due to “my normal” was changed too much. And it’s common and not a personal failure. I think it’s important to see it that way.

I failed my habits, and that’s OK as long as I know why. Failure is learning.

Pressed pause

So I pressed pause. I don’t do all these routines daily, I can’t, it’s not possible. There is too much that’s adjusted in “my normal”.

I do two, for me new habits right know. I go to bed at a sensible time and write daily. Besides that, I’ve also chosen a month without alcohol this February. That’s enough, it’s perfectly adequate and a challenge for me.

I failed to get all the new routines into habits, but that’s OK, I know why and I’ll learn from it. Failure is a learning tool.

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There are many of us who knows we need to get in shape but don’t have take that last step and take the time and get workout into a habit.

I’ve been there myself. I skipped the workout… I had no time, too much work and no motivation or energy were some of my excuses.

I have located three approaches that made ​​it easier for me to get workout into a habit.

A lot is about lower the bar and make the workout you are able to do, on a daily basis. The best workout is the workout that is done at all.

1. Remove any obstacles

Make your workout accessible. You don’t need to go to the gym, sig up for a spinning class or buy new clothes or equipment. Remove the alternatives that prevents you from the workout and make sure you do something you like and can do anytime and anywhere.

2. Make it easily accessible

Instead of doing your workout at a gym, in the woods a few miles away, in a crossfit box or other particular places, choose a exercise you can do anywhere. Do exercises using your body weight, walk at a brisk pace, doing chins at the playground, running up a hill or stairs. Customize your workout to where you are.

3. Split your workout

Start in small steps. Spread out small portions of exercises during the day. Avoid escalators and elevators. Run on the slopes or stairs on your way home, do some push-ups before a meeting, get off a station a few blocks before your office and walk the last blocks etc. Be creative!

Rules

If you see these approaches as rules you have a good chance to get workout into a habit. As a bonus, I give you some tips on a few exercises you can do at home with no additional equipment.

Five exercises you can do at home with just your bodyweight

Pistols

Jumping Squats

Jumping Lunge

Burpees (panting guaranteed)

Mountain Climber

Push-ups (is underestimated, vary the width between the hands)

Jackknife

Good luck!

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You should follow me on Twitter here: @jonashyse

The majority of my Twitter and Facebook feed today has been about one thing.

Facebook buys the messaging app WhatsApp for $19bn.

Someone has even created a tumblr blog with things that are cheaper than the WhatsApp.

The best reading on the acquisition is, however, this: The real reason Facebook just paid almost 10% of its market cap for WhatsApp

I have spent the evening at a meetup on pricing strategies for SaaS businesses and heard lessons from three exciting companies whom one of them has been bootstrapped for five years and basically doubled their turnover basically every year since start. A different journey and truly inspiring!

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I have another blog where I’ve written quite continuously for more than four years. Yesterday I was looking through the posts and came up with an interesting insight.

Common to most of the post I’ve written in the blog is that they are all about me and my personal development. It is a blog about training so it is natural that there will be many posts about me and my workouts, and they are quite egocentric. But there are a few gems where I write about how I learned to get running as a habit and how I went from running a few kilometers to cross the finish line in a marathon.

Life’s most important parts

If someone asks you the question: what are the most important parts of your life?

Many of us would probably answer: family, friends and career.

That’s true.

There are two parts, two dimensions of our life that are important.

Private: friends, family, partners. Professionally: education, work/career.

But there’s a third dimension. The personal part, personal growth: to feel good and take care of yourself.

And almost every single post I wrote in my training blog is mainly about that, the personal part of my life, my personal growth.

I like to see life from three dimensions: private, professional and personal.

I started for instance my first company with the main reason to control my time and be able to work regardless of location. Easier in theory than in practice, but it doesn’t matter, it has proven to be an important and healthy approach.

Business Culture

Personal development is also about culture. It puts a stamp on a company’s culture. And culture is something that is extremely important in a business. Atleast in my book.

Especially in a startup, or a young company in general, is it easier to control and influence the business culture. At an early stage, personal development is crucial, during that period it is the founder(s) who puts the stamp on the business culture.

Incubate yourself

Nisarg Patel, a molecular biologist compares the world’s tiniest organism with humans and startups.

Why can’t we treat ourselves like we treat our startups? Shouldn’t we be searching for our own “business models”

It is a healthy way to look at personal growth. What effect does the things I do on others? How can I change my habits for the better?

Questioning yourself.

— I’ve done this every day for several years now, does it means that it’s the right way? Is it possible to improve?

As I often say, optimize. What can you improve in yourself?

Invest in yourself. Questioning your choices, your habits and your everyday life. Look at yourself from the outside. It is useful and instructive.

Read Treat Yourself Like a Startup (Or a microbe, if you prefer) that Nisarg Patel wrote. Very interesting reading.

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This post originally appeared on the RevRise blog (my startup).

So much happened during the beta period of RevRise Form Analytics. Several mistakes and lessons learned, and therefore also made ​​a lot of progress. Just the fact that we have analysed more than 230 forms on over 60 websites and recently increased the conversion rate by 67% is absolutely amazing. In short, time passes at a furious pace.

This is a brief summary of what has happened since the launch of RevRise Form Analytics 1.0.

New and old platform in parallel

Over 20 customers still using our old beta platform, until further notice it spins in parallel to the new 1.0 platform. Existing customers is transferred gradually to the new platform and will be notified when this is done. We strive to have all customers on the new platform 28th February.

New customers is of course placed on the new platform.

Demo Day

As you may know, we joined a startup accelerator in August last fall, STING FastForward (read my review). The program ended with an invite-only Demo Day with invited customers, investors and media. It was really fun to share what we have accomplished during the fall. The presentation also led to some interesting new relationships. Really exciting!

All buddies from STING FastForward batch.

Customers on board

Since the launch has 10 customers been taken on board and we open up for more through the request demo form.

Some of our customers. We are super proud to have well known brands like these in such short time.

Case study: RevRise Form Analytics helps increase orders by 67%

Be sure to to check out our case study where the conversion rate increased by 67% thanks to RevRise Form Analytics. Learn how Medtryck.com used RevRise Form Analytics to dramatically increase the number of orders.

Read case study →

About RevRise in media

• RevRise leave beta, report 77% increase in conversion rate during beta period
• Almi Invest direktinvesterar i het start-up – 100 000 kronor till RevRise (in Swedish)
• Jönköpingsbor kammade hem storvinst bland Sveriges hetaste startups (in Swedish){.broken_link}
• Interview with Yalantis
• SIME: The startup that will increase your website’s conversion rates with 70%
• Jonas Arnklint, our CTO, interviewed in the UX Podcast
• Jonas Karlsson guest post about STING FastForward (in Swedish)
• RevRise – problem solving tools in the UX space
• The tool that helps you improve online forms

Have a great week! Don’t hesitate to request a demo if you are interested in our tool.

Happy optimizing!

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