
FbStart – A new program designed to help early stage mobile startups - zeeshanm
http://fbstart.com/
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3327
Yeah does anyone remember the facebook App ecosystem?

Remember when facebook was encouraging developers to make apps and then they
jammed them all?

Remember how much time/money and effort 100's if not thousands of developers
lost? Thanks but no Thanks.

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lastofus
As not a FB app dev, what did FB do to screw over everyone?

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ceejayoz
Really, they chose users over developers, which IMO was the right choice. In
the early days of the Facebook Platform, games spammed up feeds with useless
content - games like Farmville would require you to share to get things, for
example. Facebook would take steps to restrict this, and they'd find a new way
to promote themselves at the expense of user experience.

~~~
andy_ppp
I never understood why Facebook let that happen, just give users a spam score
that's displayed on their account page. People would soon stop sending
requests for completely unsolicited things.

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ceejayoz
Facebook rightly puts the burden of compliance on the developers, not the
users. Spam scores would just lead to user experience and customer service
nightmares. "Why does it say I'm spamming?! I'm just playing a game! Fix it!"

~~~
andy_ppp
I think messaging on Facebook could be an excellent ecosystem for a lot of
things. A spam score would work or allowing people who make shitty requests to
be blocked from doing so on the request.

Users know exactly how annoying it is to receive such invitations having
received them themselves.

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patja
Great way to get hooked on a bunch of monthly service fees when the
introductory free period runs out. Reminds me of the Columbia Record and Tape
Club.

~~~
dmcy22
I hate it when that happens too, but I don't think this is will happen in
FbStart's case. We're a program partner and companies who get accepted get a
code they can redeem on our site for 6 or 12 months free, depending on the
track. No credit card is required (at least for our service, not sure about
other partners), so if they decide not to subscribe at the end of the program,
they can just go.

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dataminded
I think what Patja is saying is that after 6 to 12 months the users will have
developed a dependency on your platform and will have to either cough up cash
or replatform.

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dmcy22
Makes sense, but that scenario is true for any freemium model though, not just
free packages like FbStart.

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fnayr
We got approved for the accelerate track, and frankly it's awesome. And they
keep upping the benefits. Parse credits just got bumped to $20K which we use,
so it's like free money. I don't quite get what FB is getting out of this, but
they are certainly earning a lot of developer goodwill.

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Egidius
Kind of ironic that the iPhone in the background header has Google+ visibly
installed, but it doesn't show a Facebook icon

~~~
michaelmcmillan
Reverse image searching that stock photo reveals the rest of the screen, still
no Facebook icon:
[http://i.imgur.com/fnFGbtX.png](http://i.imgur.com/fnFGbtX.png)

[1] [http://measurecp.com/category/mystery-
shopping/](http://measurecp.com/category/mystery-shopping/)

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lnanek2
They could fix their terrible app approval process if they really want more
people on their platform. I tried to fix up a hackathon entry and submit it as
a production app recently, I annotated what every permission was used for,
submitted the review request, and got declined with them stating, "please
annotate what every permission is used for". I suspect they are just paying
people minimum wage in a foreign country to do the reviews nonsensically.
Android is destroying iOS in market share in part due to having an easy to
submit to app store, they really need to take notes.

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al2o3cr
"Android is destroying iOS in market share in part due to having an easy to
submit to app store"

For instance, they are absolutely CRUSHING the "flashlight apps that utterly
pwn your privacy" space.

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Animats
They're rather vague about the details, but it looks like it's all about
advertising credits on Facebook.

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lavamantis
Seems like the FB version of Microsoft's long running Bizspark program.
[http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/](http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/)

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pws5068
I was recently approved for FBStart's bootstrap program.

So far, I've only used the UserTesting.com credits (which are awesome) but I
plan to use the adobe trial

I ran a FB ad campaign once in the past so I'm not sure that I'm eligible for
their ad credits which is the biggest perk in my eyes.

I'd argue it's a good program that gets fledgling apps/companies to build an
early connection with Facebook. That's their ROI; introduce you to FB ads
early and you'll want to use them later

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SwellJoe
For some of these services, I would likely choose to not lock myself into
something that is quite expensive per month after the 3 or 6 months provided
by the program. Obviously, if you were gonna use them anyway, it makes sense
to get them free. But, with subscription services, I tend to think long and
hard before going down that road, if there are one-time cost alternatives.

And, it's easy and cheap for subscription services to give away a few months
for free; it's a proven marketing model, in fact.

That's not to say there's no value here. For people that will use these
services and get real value out of them, it's a win-win; the companies
providing the services get a new qualified lead who will likely turn to a
paying customer in 3 to 12 months, and the developer gets to launch with less
capital invested.

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gfunk911
Wouldn't the best thing Facebook could do for apps be to get their API
breakage and docs under control?

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softdev12
This seems interesting. My initial reaction was "what's does facebook get"
from this. I had originally thought that this was only going to be open to
apps that somehow incorporate Facebook's api (or their wholly owned company's
APIs). So I was surprised to read that it essentially said "no facebook
required". Which seems nice.

The 30 day live requirement is also telling. I'm guessing that facebook can
judge if any initial uptick is occurring and then use this in their acceptance
criteria.

Th fbstart program seems to be some sort of way for facebook to get a grip
into the very early stage mobile ecosystem. Primarily for their acquisition
strategy (think early instagram, whatsapp, etc.). It also seems like a direct
competitor to the accelerator programs?

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zeeshanm
> Th fbstart program seems to be some sort of way for facebook to get a grip
> into the very early stage mobile ecosystem.

I think so, too. I just submitted one of our apps and it literally took less
than 10 secs. And they were like submit any other app too you may have.

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simi_
People who are baffled by:

* "what Facebook could gain from this?" (must be an evil ploy, yada yada)

* what seems to be a wordpress blog

* the free photo (in spite of Facebook's stock photo deal)

* the G+ icon on the iPhone

* etc

are missing the simple fact that Facebook is not a single giant apparatus of
propagating the One Way from top to bottom, but it's instead a conglomerate of
regular Joes (and Joannes) like you and me, except smarter on average
(probably). It's a good sign I'd say that some of these people care about
startups, and get OK'd to start scruffy 20%-style projects such as this.

As I always say about Facebook: I deeply dislike their product‡, but the
company is friggin' awesome.

‡ _too much noise and unethical shit to put up with for questionable value_

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michaelmcmillan
The 'baffled' responses in this thread actually present valid arguments,
unlike your response.

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wiradikusuma
I'm sorry for being a bit OOT, but does anyone have a list of these kinds of
things, sort of like "goodies to grab when I start my startup somewhere in the
near future"? E.g free AWS/Google Cloud credits and stuff.

Not the one like $10 voucher, at least few hundreds or thousands. Cash is king
esp in early stage, but you don't want to cut coupons as it'll distract you
from building your product.

~~~
dmcy22
Check out the deals page on F6S:
[http://www.f6s.com/deals](http://www.f6s.com/deals)

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Alex3917
Is there a company that is pre-packing these benefits packages for startup
accelerators? Most of them look suspiciously similar to one another.

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dmcy22
Not that I'm aware of. We're a FbStart partner and have been on the partner
side of these kinds of benefits packages a few times, and each time, we worked
directly with the organization that was giving away the packages (Facebook in
this case).

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michaelmcmillan
I was hoping they provided more information regarding the IPR if you were to
be accepted to the program.

My first impression was that the site itself did not seem official (by that I
mean in direct affiliation with Facebook). AFAIK Facebook often reuse the same
design/colors on the their projects (documentation, available positions, FAQ
and so on), however not on fbstart.

~~~
surreal
Official (and several months old):
[https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/05/14/fbstart...](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/05/14/fbstart-
accepting-applications/)

~~~
michaelmcmillan
I do not claim it is not official. Just making an observation from my first
impression of the site. Considering they are asking me for personal
information I would _at least_ like to unconsciously be aware that they are
affiliated with Facebook.

Yes, I see the irony in that last sentence.

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charlangas
For a company with a market cap of almost $211 billion dollars, and a deal to
use Shutterstock photography in their advertising, it's odd to see that they
chose a free (and overused by startups who can't afford stock photography)
image from unsplash.com as their header picture.

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AVTizzle
I don't think that'd odd at all. There's nothing wrong with that image. It
does it's job perfectly fine, despite high market cap or fancy partnerships.

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clarkm
I couldn't help but be distracted by the dark line behind "early stage" \-- it
looks like a strikethrough.

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primigenus
It would be very interesting for our company to get involved with this at a
partner level as we often work closely with startups during the earliest
stages. Is there anyone from Facebook here who can get me in touch with the
right people to discuss this? Thanks!

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imaginenore
Even $60K is such a ridiculously small amount, what do you do with it? It not
even enough to hire a junior developer for a year.

EDIT: it looks like they don't want anything in return, so it looks good to
me.

~~~
eculic17
it's $60k in benefits, not actual cash. This is a freebies pack for startups
not an accelerator or seed funding.

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uli
Looks great but where is the catch? Are all those perks free or do startups
need to give away equity or something like that? (I'm not a native speaker so
I maybe miss something here.)

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surreal
Doesn't look like there's any equity involved. I suspect this is a way for
Facebook to spot "the next big thing" as early as possible..?

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valarauca1
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, which roughly means "Beware of Greeks bearing
gifts."

One doesn't build a multi-billion company by giving things away.

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smacktoward
Maybe a modern version: beware of geeks bearing gifts?

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valarauca1
The saying is almost 2000 years old [1], so I think if somebody wanted to
modernize it they've had the chance :P

[1] First writing appears in a text from AD 49

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tuxone
Curious thing the site lacks of og meta tags

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zeeshanm
Yes - it's built on top of Wordpress VIP. Seems to me they are simply
interested in curating a list of the next next big apps.

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untilHellbanned
A Wordpress blog, what is up with that?

A way to show that it's not just about sucking us further info the Facebook
vortex?

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thewarrior
What's in it for Facebook ?

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elmin
The ability to buy these companies _before_ they cost a billion dollars.

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billconan
what's the catch? they only talk about benefits, what do they want in return?
fb isn't a charity.

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vskr
What does Fb get in return for this?

