

Taplytics (YC W14) Run A/B Tests On iOS Without Waiting For App Store Updates - aboris26
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/yc-backed-taplytics-lets-you-run-ab-tests-on-ios-without-waiting-for-app-store-updates/

======
saurik
OK, so now I'm really confused. Previous times Taplytics has come up, it has
been asked (the first time by me, the second time by someone else) how this
company differs from Apptimize. The second time, the answer came back that the
focus was on "ease of use", requiring only a single line of code for setup.
This is even mentioned in this TechCrunch article as their key differentiator.
However, Apptimize also only requires an almost identical single line of code
for setup.

Now, Apptimize additionally documents using a line of code to define a test,
but that seems to be only if you choose to use their programmatic API: they
also have their own similar visual editor that lets you make these changes,
and it even works for Android as well. The one difference on this front seems
to be that Taplytics also lets you define goals from the visual editor
(Apptimize currently requires a line of code for each goal). This is an
important difference to the user (primarily because it means the goals can be
defined "on the fly"), yet is frankly a pretty minor difference to the
implementation.

To be clear: I mean to say that from the perspective of the people who
implement these two products, if you already have the complex visual interface
setup to make arbitrary changes to the view hierarchy, detecting a button
click is a no-brainer: it isn't a massively different "focus". (Also, I always
want to underscore that if you have a different "focus", it needs to be
something your competitor wouldn't also claim: I doubt anyone would claim not
to focus on "ease of use" ;P).

So, part of the reason that I was curious about these differences is that
multiple of my friends either do currently or have in the near past worked for
Apptimize (and they have some options or equity or something in that company).
When I first saw Taplytics show up on HN, I pasted a link to them, and they
seemed to have not heard about this company before: they, like me, learned
about it from these recent couple "Show HN" posts that were made.

Today, however, I see that Taplytics is a company backed by Y Combinator,
apparently W14. Apptimize is also a company backed by Y Combinator, but S13.
Taplytics has a much better website (sorry Apptimize ;P), and has the
aforementioned "define goals from visual editor" feature. Apptimize supports
Android in addition to iOS. Their pricing is described differently, but
actually seems to be based on similar fundamentals (Apptimize is trying to get
more money out of larger companies, being a key difference).

My confusion is thereby: if Y Combinator is backing both of these, why are
they competitors (I'd almost even argue to the point of being slightly
deceptive about benefits), and seemingly somewhat unknown to each other? While
there is some overlap, there is probably a lot of stuff that doesn't overlap
(if nothing else, Android support and the website): why does Y Combinator have
them separate? If Y Combinator were "just" an investor, then I could see it as
"hedging bets", but I've been under the impression that Y Combinator is more
"hands on" with its companies, which to me makes this seem more awkward.

Of course, I know that in the past, Y Combinator has backed multiple companies
in the same overall space. A great example of this is "travel search".
However, the tools provided by these companies actually were very different:
Hipmunk had a gantt chart and agony calculations, Flightfox was about crowd-
optimized pricing optimization, Adioso was about flexible destinations and
only really supported leisure travel... these were all very different
companies with very different markets and very different interfaces. That is
not the case here.

I can see a couple reasons, but I don't really like either of them. 1) Y
Combinator wants to aim for multiple buyouts (which seems like a potential
conflict of interest with its founders, who might have hoped to be more unique
in their space to command a larger end sum). 2) In an uncharted market, it is
more important to educate the user that they want this kind of product at all
than to want a specific offering, and brand diversity is valuable (but you can
simulate that with multiple brands over the same product, the same way that
real product companies have always done).

Clearly, however, I don't know much about Y Combinator's internals, while I've
invested in a couple companies I don't understand the details of being a VC or
an incubator, and I only sort of know what is going on even at Apptimize as
I've kind of purposely avoided knowing too much (maybe my read on everything
going on there is poor, for example). I thereby would be fascinated if someone
who knew more about these kinds of issues, or how this kind of situation plays
out at Y Combinator, would be willing to provide some insight into these kinds
of competitive incubations.

~~~
pg
_if Y Combinator is backing both of these, why are they competitors?_

We talk about this in the YC FAQ:
[http://ycombinator.com/faq.html](http://ycombinator.com/faq.html)

Companies we fund often end up competing. It's inevitable when you fund
companies as early as we do, because even if they had different ideas coming
in, they might both pivot onto the same spot. (That happened with Homejoy and
Exec for example.) Our policy is simply not to tell the companies in question
what the others are doing. So far we haven't had a problem.

------
saurik
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7039509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7039509)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7134354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7134354)

------
dmur
It will be interesting to see how Apple reacts to this, if at all. I don't
believe what they've done is strictly against App Store guidelines, but a
change in the functionality of an app after it is reviewed could be cause to
pull it from the store. I'm sure this is something Taplytics has considered,
I'd be interested to hear their thoughts on this.

~~~
mathrawka
Apple has been authorizing apps that do this from the beginning. Anything with
a Web View can be changed to show content that would not pass the review.

They will continue to do what they have done, if they discover something that
they do not approve of, it will get shutdown.

~~~
dmur
Your conclusion is probably correct, but it's misleading to suggest Taplytics
is doing the same thing we've always been able to do with web views. They go
further than that by allowing teams to change (aspects of) the native code.

~~~
mathrawka
Changing the logic and UI of an app after it passed review has always been
possible, and has been done in the past. Web views was just the simplest way
to do it in the past.

Taplytics just turns that into a hosted model that you pay for monthly instead
of rolling your own version.

------
mrmch
Important to highlight that Taplytics is just 1 (ish) line of code to
implement, which makes it incredibly easy to get setup.

I chatted with Cobi about this before, but being able to segment your A/B test
based on the install source (paid vs organic) would be seriously cool.

------
ramanujam
Capping the price at $150/mo isn't really a wise decision. If a big customer
like MLB wants to use Tapalytics for their iOS app which i assume has millions
of MAUs, you will still be forced to charge them $150/month because that is
your top most tier and it comes with unlimited MAUs.

In the long run, there is a good chance that a significant portion of your
revenue might come from enterprise customers who would be willing to pay you
multiples of the $1800 ARR. Adding an enterprise/custom quote as the top most
tier is a vey common practice. Looking at the pricing page of similar
companies (Kissmetrics, VWO, Optimizely, Mixpanel) might help.

~~~
pratkar
A classic case of underpricing your SAAS product. Maybe their pricing is up
for revision just like Apptimize did a while back!

------
sleepyhead
I don't do native development but doesn't this already exist?

~~~
revetkn
Yes, there are other similar products that have been around for a few years
like Artisan

~~~
pratkar
Appiterate (appiterate.com) was around even before Artisan!

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robjama
Congrats on the press guys! Big fan of the product.

