Mr. Bala Sundara Raman, Co-founder, Ideophone, has over 10 years of experience in information extraction and retrieval, for web & mobile. He has built key products at Yahoo!, Ziva, and InMobi before co-founding Ideophone, a Startup which built mobile apps for commuters. He currently works at Zettata, a Bangalore /California based next generation e-commerce search Startup.

Today’s App economy provides a wonderful spring-board for programmers to build companies turning ideas into Apps, but a vast majority of these Apps fail to get traction. This session is positioned to help sort and discuss the factors that have resulted in failed Apps.

“Apps – What Not To Do?” described the journey of Ideophone – the Startup with a large vision, several Apps and a platform that targeted commuters, gained 120,000 users, tackled world markets, got a lot of press, but eventually failed.

Several key takeaways, questions and tips that are especially relevant to App-based Startups.

1) Developing the App is the easy part, but is your Startup sufficiently prepared for what comes after?

2) Is your vision bigger than the capabilities of the team? Bite only as much as you can chew.

3) Do you have a business plan? It is important to go through this exercise upfront and push yourself to address critical aspects that impact your business

4) If there is insufficient traction, pivot and pivot early.

The last slide read “Make mistakes, but not ours. All the best!”. Well Said!.