Weekly Reading from LaunchPad Lab

Here’s our weekly recap about new posts, articles we’re reading, and interesting things we find across the web.

Mobile isn’t killing Desktop

http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/05/26/mobile-isnt-killing-the-desktop-internet/

The growth in mobile use isn’t to the detriment of desktop. Mobile is growing to 50% use, but that doesn’t mean that people spend less time on desktops, they are just spending more time over all. They are doubling their time on all computer devices. So many implications!

User-centered design

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/20/8602499/melinda-gates-user-centered-design#b05g26t20w15

We focus on user-centered design in all the projects we build. The basic premise, the article explains, is that people shouldn’t have to adjust their behavior to products. The products should fit into the behavior or the people. User-centered design has a large monetary and social impact on the companies that we work with and this article shows how important it is to global health.

Are Venture Capital funds being disrupted?

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21651248-industry-specialises-spotting-potential-insurgents-faces-some-its?fsrc=scn/twec/disruptersdisrupted

Interest rates have stayed low as the economy continues to grow. As investor money continues to flow into alternative investments such as VC firms, are the VC firms themselves ripe for disruption?

Does your business have automatic churn?

http://andrewchen.co/why-investors-dont-fund-dating/

Dating apps are an important category in the web/mobile world. The important challenge with these businesses is that if you are successful for your customer, they don’t need you any more (churn). Andrew Chen does a great job explaining it in this article. Dating app or not, it’s important to know if your business has built-in churn and to create a game plan for it.

And make sure you check out these great posts from our blog!

Our CTO, Brendan, wrote about how to Code for Change and one of our amazing designers, Monique, shows in detail how she made our animated logo.

Have a great weekend!

Tom Cullen

Co-Founder

Tom, a very proud and active alumni of St. Bonaventure University, began LaunchPad Lab after an eleven year stint running trading firms and building software in the high speed world of finance. He constantly thinks about how to use software to make enormous impact, and he loves working with clients to maximize their potential. Tom preaches design thinking, business innovation strategy, and works a side gig as a superhero (the latter being a great source of joy to his 1 and 3 year old daughters).