Online entrepreneur pitches for funding for app developer TV series

An internet entrepreneur is looking to raise $25,000 to create a five-part online TV series that will help start-up app developers get their ideas off the ground.

Anthony Agius, co-founder of the MacTalk forums, aims to raise the money via crowdsourcing. A video pitch on crowdsourcing site Pozible has already received pledges totalling $8,600.

Agius wants to run five, one-hour online shows that will enable budding developers to ask questions about their ideas. App developers Matt Comi, of The Incident, Marc Edwards, of Sideways, and James Cuda, of Procreate, are set to appear as experts on the show.

Questions on how to market and develop apps will be submitted via email or Twitter, with the experts giving practical, early-stage advice.

Agius says that he got the idea for the episodes after holding an app developer conference called One More Thing recently.

“Developers are a very sheltered community in Australia – when you look at the number of Australian developers that sell hundreds of thousands of apps, you’d be surprised,” he says.

“We had more than 150 questions in the hour at One More Thing – we didn’t have time to answer them all. Every day I get an email about creating an app, not from programmers but from techies who want to get into development but don’t know where to turn.

“If the funding is successful, we will run the shows from late October to early December – $25,000 covers all of the expenses, there is very little meat in there to make a profit.”

Agius says that many Australian app developers struggle to market their creations to global audiences.

“A lot of Australian developers have a problem in letting the world know they exist,” he says. “That’s the biggest issue the industry faces here.

“You have to get someone in the media to give it a run, in the particular field you are in. For example, if you’ve got a food recipe app, you should go to a food publication rather than just a techie publication.

“The other way is just to make the app very good. Procreate is an app that came out of Hobart that allows you to draw on your iPad. It had very little marketing but Apple noticed how good it was an promoted it on the App Store. Now it has sold hundreds of thousands.

“There is no silver bullet. Developers think they can just put anything out there and it will sell.”

The shows will cover Apple app development, rather than Android. For more information, click here.