Crowd-funding platform for free/open source SW

Opportunity Analysis Project

The problem

Although freeware and freemium applications dominate the software marketplace, incentives to maintain and upgrade these products are lacking

The solution A platform to help developers identify desirable new features and crowdfund their development:

•  Developers direct users to a request form •  Users submit new feature requests and up-vote

existing ones •  Developers select features for development and

estimate their costs •  Users crowdfund the developer's costs •  When the developer completes the update, he is paid

•  We charge a small fee for the service

Market for applications

•  There are approximately 700,000 apps available in both Apple’s App Store and Google Play

•  There are over 4 million Windows applications

•  Apple's Mac App store has “thousands” of applications

•  A large number of apps are either free or offer a no-cost option, including more than half of all mobile apps

Market for applications The Total Available Market includes all developers who create applications that are iterated

The Served Market includes developers who are accessible through digital channels

The Target Market includes developers with popular freeware or freemium applications

Our ideal customer is a developer with a popular freeware or freemium application who is under-compensated for the maintenance or enhancement of his application

Demand for new features

A quick survey of several popular freeware

applications (PDFCreator, KeePass, WinMerge,

WinSCP, Notepad++, LaTeX Lab, APV Viewer) found

that they generated between 43 and 273 bug reports

and feature requests annually.

One scenario

•  If we hosted 5% of the most popular free mobile apps (top 25% of approximately 800,000 free apps),

•  If each of these apps generated tickets amounting to 15 days of work annually,

•  If the average daily rate for developers is $400,

•  If we charged 5% on top of the developers daily rate,

•  Our revenue would be approximately $3 million annually

Market research

•  We have conducted four surveys - three targeting users of different applications and one targeting developers

•  We have conducted interviews with six developers who were not a part of our survey

•  We are currently scheduling three additional interviews with technology thought leaders

•  We plan on posting a request to fill out our survey on relevant LinkedIn groups

•  We plan on identifying more developers for interviews

User surveys

•  933 users of a free business app "Fill and Sign PDF Forms" were contacted

•  104 of them opened the email •  39 responded to the survey •  A smaller number of users of two other apps were

contacted and 6 of them responded •  Overall response rate of about 5%

User survey results

•  68% would be willing to share in the cost of funding new features

•  Cost-share distribution (amount users are willing to pay):

$0 - $0.99 8% $1 - $4.99 38% $5 - $9.99 8% $10 or more 27% Not specified 19%

•  Maximum amount entered: $100

User survey select comments

•  Charge for the app itself if you want to make money off it

•  I would have to know the features worked as I expect before paying

•  I really appreciate your app, and would be willing to pay for it if it did more things that I needed

Developers survey

•  57 developers were contacted and 4 responded •  7% response rate but count is low •  Developers were generally supportive of the

concept •  Three indicated they would be interested in using

the platform •  Select comment: We've actually considered doing

this ourselves (and have had users beg us to consider the model), so it is not far fetched that we would look into it.

Developer interviews

Conclusions from interviews with developers: •  The platform would not help developers whose apps

have a small number of users •  The category of games might be problematic as

freemium and virtual currencies have found a fertile ground there. It would also be hard to describe a new feature with enough detail.

•  All of developers would accept a crowdfunding rate of 5%

Conclusion

•  Based on the feedback we have received so far, we intend to continue to pursue this idea.

•  We are not making any major modifications to the idea at this time. So far, our research has largely supported our assumptions.

•  However, we will conduct additional surveys and interviews to better understand our customers needs.

•  We will move forward with developing and testing a prototype.