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Marius Kraemer No. 1 Bitcoin writer on Quora

Berlin

Marius is the most influental writer on Quora about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and all things blockchain. https://www.quora.com/topic/Cryptocurrencies/writers https://www.quora.com/topic/Bitcoin/writers After getting into Crypto in 2013, he has since analyzed numerous cryptocurrencies, knows the Top100 cryptocurrencies inside out and knows the differences, advantages and disadvantages between them. You could say, Marius is the most knowledgable consultant about all things blockchain. That's why Marius has been consulting Top100 cryptocurrencies, ICOs and individual traders, to pick the best coins for their portfolio. Previously, Marius has built 30 apps over the past 3 years, which have reached over 1.1 million users altogether. He received his B.S…

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Entrepreneurship

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Android

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Member since April 2013

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Reviews 4
Answers 20

DB

Many thanks. Very worth the money. Marius's knowledge of the space is encyclopedic and his discussion is very efficient.

Source: Clarity David B Aug 2, 2018

CG

Very useful information. Thanks for your time Marius.

Source: Clarity Charles Goodall Mar 23, 2018

CP

great call. assisted with next clarity on next steps.

Source: Clarity Chris Pisarski Jun 14, 2017

RL

The call I had with Marius was excellent. He has a tremendous amount of insight into the various online and offline ways to grow an app's user base. His approach is friendly and collaborative as well. I highly recommend hopping on a call with him if you are an early stage mobile app business. He knows his stuff!

Source: Clarity Richard Larson Oct 6, 2014

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Clarity

Marius Kraemer

Berlin

Marius is the most influental writer on Quora about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and all things blockchain.

https://www.quora.com/topic/Cryptocurrencies/writers
https://www.quora.com/topic/Bitcoin/writers

After getting into Crypto in 2013, he has since analyzed numerous cryptocurrencies, knows the Top100 cryptocurrencies inside out and knows the differences, advantages and disadvantages between them.

You could say, Marius is the most knowledgable consultant about all things blockchain.

That's why Marius has been consulting Top100 cryptocurrencies, ICOs and individual traders, to pick the best coins for their portfolio.

Previously, Marius has built 30 apps over the past 3 years, which have reached over 1.1 million users altogether. He received his B.S. of Computer Sciene and Business from the University of Sydney and his M.S. of Information Technology/Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sydney.

$4.17/min

7

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4 Reviews

18 minutes
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Entrepreneurship Fundraising Start-ups Marketing Strategy Android Mobile applications Guerrilla Marketing Bitcoin Cryptocurrency blockchain

Call me to talk about

Having built over 31 apps myself so far, some with over half a million downloads, I can tell you exactly what is important in building an app regarding figuring out what the Minimum Lovable Product is, how to designit, getting traction and more.

Entrepreneurship, Thinking Big

Having lived in the 3 ecosystems Sydney, Silicon Valley, Berlin for 1-2 years each, I could make a good cross-section for myself of how young founders need to think bigger.

With lots of copycats in Germany, I see how many founders are spending years on copycats, small ideas and things they are not passionate about.

For that reason, I will tell you how you will not create a $10M company, a $100M company, but I will tell what you need to do in order to be able to build a $1B company. Even if you don't build a $1B company, you should start with that, because you need to shoot for the stars if you want to land on the moon.

Android Development

Having built over 25 Android apps, I can tell you everything about how to develop an Android app, what things need to be considered and what the current trends are

Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies & Blockchain Expert

Marius is the most influental writer on Quora about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and all things blockchain.

https://www.quora.com/profile/Marius-Kramer

After getting into Crypto in 2013, he has since analyzed numerous cryptocurrencies, knows the Top100 cryptocurrencies inside out and knows the differences, advantages and disadvantages between them.

You could say, Marius is the most knowledgable consultant about all things blockchain.

That's why Marius has been consulting Top100 cryptocurrencies, ICOs and individual traders, to pick the best coins for their portfolio.

Previously, Marius has built 30 apps over the past 3 years, which have reached over 1.1 million users altogether. He received his B.S. of Computer Science and Business from the University of Sydney and his M.S. of Information Technology/Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sydney. Edit

Answers 20
Reviews 4

Answers

Marius Kraemer answered

Is Parse the best and easiest to manage backend for user accounts, IAP tracking, custom push, analytics and user data sets?

Indeed it is. Notable competitors were Stackmob, Buddy, wheras Stackmob was acquired by PayPal and subsequently shutdown (https://gigaom.com/2014/02/12/bye-bye-stackmob/) , whereas Buddy is still in the field with $3.6M of funding.

Looking at these competitors, they pale in comparison with Parse, which bascially has been given unlimited resources through the $80M acquisition by Facebook. This manifests in the fact that Parse has decreased its pricing vastly, because they are more looking to build an ecosystem of apps instead of making money. That's the advantage of using Parse over competitors.

Having used Parse for over 8 apps now, I can say that it only takes 1 hour to understand the documentation of one platform, however, there are some things that were not solved well with Parse.

Firstly, you can only query for 1,000 results maximum. If you want more results, you will need to run the query multiple times or you will need to make a work around.

Secondly, you cannot query for GeoPoints with in an inner query. That means, you can't put a query that queries all users in a certain area into another query and use the matchesQuery("objectId", query) command for instance.

These two quirks I don't understand why they are not fixed, but apart from that Parse is working really well and enables startups to set up their backend really, really fast. I've built messaging apps with a backend within 24h with Parse.

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Backend Development

User Interface

Mobile applications

Marius Kraemer answered

How does the dating app Hinge market and acquire interest before they enter a new city?

They are getting interest through their traction in other cities. Since they are already in 20 cities and have approximately half a million users if you look at their Android app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.hinge.mobile.android), they can simply wait until one city "tips".

This might also just be a strategy to artificially use scarcity since it works sometimes, such as with Mailbox(http://www.nirandfar.com/2013/07/psychology-of-scarcity.html).

I think it doesn't really matter if they launch city after city, as they have $8M in funding and can just spend $5,000 on Facebook Ads and get 1,000 user in one city within a day. The effect of scarcity makes sense, if you are new and if you're a hyped startup such as Mailbox used to be. On the other hand, it makes sense if you don't have the resources to launch in many cities such as Uber, because they need the drivers first.

I can also schedule a call, where I can tell you more about this as I've done a lot of apps and have a social network myself with Tennis Buddy.

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Online Dating

Mobile Marketing

User Acquisition

Marius Kraemer answered

How much should it cost to develop this IOS app?

I'm a an app developer from Germany myself and having built 31 apps over the last 3 years, some with more than half a million downloads, this app should be pretty simple to build.

If the questions are stored on the device, I can build this app for iPhone (native) for $1,300 for you if you want. If the questions come from the backend, I could build it for $1,900 for around $2,400 if you want to add push-notifications to your app.

We can set up a call and I can help you with the requirements of your app.

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Mobile applications

App Development

iOS Development

Marius Kraemer answered

I have a great idea for a mobile app. If I can fund the prototype then how do I seek investors?

3 years ago you could raise on an idea, 2 years ago you could raise on a prototype, today you need at least 5,000 users as a B2C startup or $5,000 in revenue as a B2B startup before you can raise.

Being a mentor at the Berlin founder institute, we see a lot of startups going through these stages. Let me know if you want to chat further about this, I would be happy to tell you all my knowledge.

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Mobile applications

Funding

Marius Kraemer answered

What are the options for white labeling my mobile app?

1. Talk to a lawyer who can write you a proper licensing agreement.
2. Charging should be around $10,000 per year or $50,000 one-off fee if you are scarce for money. It could also be $50,000 per year though, but this depends on how big of a budget you think the licensee has. Try to find that out indirectly in a call with them.
3. If someone can only pay you $5,000 per year or less, I wouldn't do it, since your rebranding, bugfixing costs are higher than the $5,000.

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Mobile applications

bootstrapping

Marius Kraemer answered

How much potential value does a startup need to have in order to attract VC funding?

1. If you are growing by 2,000 users or $1,000 per month.
2. If you have a very high tech idea and are a very good marketer, such as Theranos, Magic Leap, Tesla.

But you should normally start with Angel Funding. VCs aren't suitable for pre-traction startups for a multitude of reasons.

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Seed Capital

Venture Funding

Funding

Marius Kraemer answered

Are there any examples of games or apps that have a k-factor (viral coefficient) of more than 1?

Snapchat, Yik-Yak, Instagram probably, but not Secret. Secret used paid-mobile installs including installs by Indian farms to drive up their app store rankings.

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Social Games

Mobile applications

Growth Hacking

Marius Kraemer answered

How can you strengthen the relationship between co-founders of a business?

It's called co-founder bonding and it isn't talked about enough in the startup community. You will see most of those things are not business related at all. It's really the best if your co-founder becomes simply a close friend. Of course, it's not always possible to make him one of your best friends, because co-founder should be complementary, so they should fill the areas of expertise that the other co-founders doesn't have. So, by definition, your co-founder should be the exact opposite of you. In theory, this would make things a bit, in reality, even though co-founders complement each other, they are not so different after all.

Let's start with the non-business related things that strengthen the bond with your co-founders:

1. Take him for a week-end hike with your friends
2. Go rafting
3. Have your kids and his play with one another
4. Grab a beer with him
5. Learn his humor and adapt to his personality.

A few business related things

1. Get him to do favors for you business-wise and non-business wise. It will make him like you more. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2011/11/16/do-me-a-favor-so-youll-like-me-the-reverse-psychology-of-likeability/#6e63dff574a5)
2. Make sure he has enough equity to be emotionally invested in the company. You can have a co-founder that has 5% in the company and he might stick around for 2 years, but if things are going slightly wrong or it's going too slow, he will quit. A co-founder with 40% equity has a much higher pain-limit obviously. So, you need to make a trade-off about equity you keep and pain-limit of your co-founder.
3. Make sure your vision is somewhat aligned with your founders vision. Your visions won't ever be exactly the same, so you need to make a compromise. Make a step towards him isn't a bad idea if the alternative is him leaving the company after a few more months.
4. Have difficult conversations about the business with him. I have seen co-founders that have several things that really annoy them about each other, but they never mention it in order to not disturb the peace. This might work short-term, but long term, you will create a weird atmosphere, where you have to be artificially friendly and can't talk about the things that should really be addressed.

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Start-ups

Marius Kraemer answered

How much can we raise for US market expansion?

The most basic calculation for a company is calculated by year revenue *10. Your company would be worth $40,000*12*10=$4.8M. The first round is usually around 20%, so you could raise $1M. This would make sense and investors would find your numbers convincing.

However, there are obviously also other factors at play. For instance, if you have gained your $40k revenue/month within a year or less, you can point to very fast adoption, so your valuation should be $10M. Then, you can argue that you need a lot of money for expansion in the U.S. and you want to go big and beat your competitors (which you hopefully have) to the market, so that you can seize the $8B global market first.

Then you can argue, that within the next 3 years, you anticipate $40M annual revenue, that's why you want to raise $10M at a $80M valuation.

Ok, now forget about all of these numbers. Understand that investors are led by emotion. They don't understand your business or cannot asses your predictions. Investors aren't engineers. They studied MBAs, never built a business before, then started as an Investment Analyst at a VC firm, after 5 years became partner and after another 5 years became limited partner. However, they never built a business and they couldn't for the life of it if you told them to.

So, you can simply tell them your great ambitions and they will be very excited and tell their boss about it. However, don't be cocky, overconfident or delusional, just be normally confident. The investor must think that he is more knowledgeable than you, more confident. Make it their idea (https://uniquedevelopment.com/blog/how-to-persuade-people-to-do-what-you-want-and-think-its-their-idea/).

They will forget about your current $500k revenue and only think about the $40M revenue within 3 years, on which you can raise $10M at a $80M valuation. This is feasible if you raise in the U.S.

However, if you raise in Europe, you can practically half your valuation if you want to raise within 3 months. In Europe, I suggest to raise $5M at a $30M valuation currently even and you should also tone down you ambitions, such that you estimate $20M revenue within 3 year.

I hope this helped.

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Fundraising

Revenue & Profit Growth

Global Expansion

Marius Kraemer answered

What marketing strategy should I use if I am about to launch a mobile app?

Yes, you can use paid ads, Facebook, Google etc., but it won't get you far if you don't have $100k+ funding.

What you need is something that gives you 100,000 users while spending $0. This is the task of a founder, and it's difficult. Possibilities are Guerilla Marketing, PR-Stunt, Partnerships with bigger brands and a lot more. Let me know if you want to find an idea.

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Marketing Strategy

Mobile Marketing

Marius Kraemer answered

We're an early-stage food delivery startup. Should I start looking for funding on a service that has been proven successful by other companies?

Yes, you definitely need funding, since the food delivery space is a race to the bottom with heavy players already in the space.

This is bad one the one hand, good on the other, because you can raise money on this if there are a lot of people doing it. That means, there is money in it.

HOWEVER. I would not do it in a country, where a big player is already present, you simply can't win. But, you can do it in a country, where there isn't. Would it be possible for you to make it work in Chile, Austria, Serbia, Romania, Belarus, Lithuania, maybe China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Kenya? Many of those are beautiful countries, with completely untapped markets that are just waiting for a player to grab them. It just takes some time to readjust and move to another country, which most founders aren't willing to.

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Fundraising

Raising Venture Capital

Reviews

Many thanks. Very worth the money. Marius's knowledge of the space is encyclopedic and his discussion is very efficient.

David B Source: Clarity

Very useful information. Thanks for your time Marius.

Charles Goodall Source: Clarity

great call. assisted with next clarity on next steps.

Chris Pisarski Source: Clarity

The call I had with Marius was excellent. He has a tremendous amount of insight into the various online and offline ways to grow an app's user base. His approach is friendly and collaborative as well. I highly recommend hopping on a call with him if you are an early stage mobile app business. He knows his stuff!

Richard Larson Source: Clarity

Member since April 2013