Little Bird Tales is an interactive storytelling site that lets kids create digital books. Inspired by mail book kits, and brought to the web, it lets children create stories and share them with other people. I spoke to Michael Klem, one half of the team behind the website, to find out what inspired them and what others can learn from their experiences.

What is Little Bird Tales?

Little Bird Tales is a storytelling site created by two parents who wanted to help kids create digital books they could easily share. Kids can easily upload or draw pictures using an integrated digital art pad, add text and record their voice to each page. Then, they can share their Little Bird Tales via email, embed them to websites or download MP4s to a number of devices. Some teachers have created DVD compilations of their students’ Little Bird Tales for the year and given it to parents as an end of year gift.

How did you come up with the idea?

When our daughter was 4, she got a book kit as a gift. She loved drawing the pictures and we were charmed by her story, but to get the book, you had to mail everything in and it took a long time to get the finished product back. Also, extra copies were expensive, so sharing her story with distant family and friends was cost prohibitive.

We knew it would be easier and to share it using the Internet.

We put together a quick prototype and thought it would be really cool to add an audio track of our daughter’s voice telling the story. The result was totally endearing. It added a whole new level of depth to the story. It was our “Ah ha!” moment.

Once we had a finished product with audio and shared it, the feedback from family and friends was overwhelming and several parents wanted to know what we used to make it. Since there was no website out there that quickly, easily and inexpensively created what we had, we took leap of faith and created it ourselves.

How long did it take to get Little Bird Tales off the ground?

It took almost a year to develop the core elements of the application and to design the site. Smaller tweaks and upgrades have been added and continue to be added as we gain more users and receive more feedback. It took about 2 years from the time it went live for it to gain any traction and, now, finally, it’s catching on!

What was the most difficult aspect of setting up the business?

Finding the time and money to get it started. We have young children and have full time jobs, so we didn’t have a lot of spare time to focus on development. We found a company to create it for us, but discovered, even then, it was far more labor intensive and expensive than we anticipated.

Every word, from slogans and mission statements to instructions and “green tips” was written by us. And decisions regarding everything… colors, button placement, button looks, and of course, the functionality of the application, were ultimately made by us. We also had to test the application, log problems and sometimes fix the bugs.

Translating our wishes to other developers was a little challenging, but fortunately Mike’s background as a developer made it easier for us to communicate what we wanted. We were also lucky to have a great team of developers who were really enthusiastic about working on Little Bird Tales, so we felt encouraged and motivated each step of the way.

What applications or tools do you find most useful for your business? Why?

Google Analytics for helping us track and analyze traffic patterns on our site. Social Networks for getting the word out and learning about other sites and tools that pertain to our site. Version control software. Help desk software. I tried several freelance sites and found Elance to be the best. Besides being a good resource for outsourcing, I also found it better as being a resource to stay abreast of new ideas for the web. I have found so many interesting sites I would never have come across otherwise.

Can you tell our readers a bit about your business model?

Our business model originally was to have different subscription plans to sign up with. However, we realized that if no one knows who you are, they are less likely to pay for your services. In the end, we just wanted people to use our web site, so we made it completely free.

We are working on several new features and will be using Apple’s iTunes model, charging a nominal fee, for things like MP4 downloads and new features and tools. We were originally hoping to appeal to families with small children, but our focus shifted to teachers and educators, since they have become our largest, most enthusiastic and most prolific audience.

What has been your biggest success?

Discovering how many ways our site is being used by teachers to help students learn to read, create reports, practice a foreign language and of course hone their writing skills. We are very proud to have so many teachers and students using and benefiting from our site.

What have you learned along the way?

We’ve learned that creating a successful web application is not as easy as it looks! We’ve also learned how to interpret Google Analytics and how to use Twitter, not just to promote our site, but to improve it. Twitter discussions and topics are a treasure trove of invaluable information and resources. Ads, PR and marketing do not always work and can be very expensive.

What piece of advice would you give to someone setting up their own startup?

Providing excellent customer service is vital to gaining customer loyalty. Address problems and critical assessments with solutions as soon as possible. Be open to ideas, suggestions and comments from others. Say thank you, and mean it.

Do you have plans for expansion?

Yes, in the immediate future we plan on creating more features for our most ardent supporters… teachers! We hope the easier, faster and more fun we make it for students, and the more tools we give teachers, the more they will use it. We have other expansion ideas in the pipeline, but we’ll save those for the “update” interview.

Where do you see Little Bird Tales going in the next five years?

We hope it will become a staple in classrooms and computer labs all over the world and eventually find it’s way to more home computers, too. We have users in 90 countries and we’re gaining more each day. We hope to expand to many languages and to add features that will make it easier for children to connect with the world around them in a rich and meaningful way. Ultimately, our goal is not just to capture the voice of childhood, but to amplify it.

Thanks Michael – we’re looking forward to seeing what the future will bring, and for that “update” interview!

This week we’re diving into the world of mobile apps to look at a new application that makes it possible for you to make your own – Cabana. Cabana is touted as “hardcore apps, without the hard part,” and its makers have even gone so far to claim that Cabana is like WordPress for mobile apps. Let’s hear what Reeve Thompson, Director of Behavior at The Department of Logic and Behavior, has to say about it.

Reeve Thompson Presenting at Launch 2011

Photo: (cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.snapfoc.us

What is Cabana?

Cabana is a mobile app development platform that makes it easier for people to make mobile apps. We believe anyone should be able to make a mobile app with little to no programming, and Cabana’s mission is to make this possible. Cabana is a very visual, drag and drop environment for making apps where you put app pieces together to make your app. However, unlike many template based approaches Cabana is totally customizable.

How did you come up with the idea?

We come from the videogame industry where we’ve spent the past 15 years building tools to enable non-programmers to author complex content. We looked at the mobile app space and felt that many of the techniques we were employing for game making could be applied to app development. We created Cabana to shift the core of app development away from hardcore programmers and into the hands of the app visionaries even if they don’t know how to program.

How long did it take to get Cabana off the ground?

We’ve been developing the concepts and the design of Cabana for over two years, and originally planned to have Cabana be a standalone downloadable application. However last summer we looked at HTML5 and felt the time was right to make Cabana a browser based application and essentially threw away a quarter million lines of code. We’ve re-written Cabana from the ground up since then.

What was the most difficult aspect of setting up the business?

Because we’ve had such a strong vision for the product it hasn’t really been that difficult to build the software itself. I think our most difficult challenges lie ahead as we build our community and work to meet the needs of our users. We feel that’s always the most challenging part of launching a product.

On the Launch 2011 website Cabana is touted as “the power to create apps, just like WordPress made it possible for everyone to blog.” Can it really be that easy to make a mobile app?

We truly believe it can be. If you had told people 15 years ago how easily they could make a website I doubt many people would believe you then. We feel that same type of advancement is going to occur in the app space. Is Cabana all the way there yet? No. It still requires what we call “procedural literacy” to get most apps built in Cabana, but we’re working hard to smooth out the rough edges and make Cabana more and more accessible to a wide range of users.

What applications or tools do you find most useful for your business? Why?

Metrics are vital to the success of a company trying to build a community, and we knew early on that we would need to find good solutions to track how our users were interacting with Cabana. We use Mixpanel and Geckoboard to monitor and visualize the data we collect from our user community. We’re also really excited about tools like Test Flight and AppStores that make the distribution of apps much easier.

Can you tell our readers a bit about your business model?

One of the core ways we want to make app development accessible is to let people get in and start playing around with Cabana quickly and easily. For this reason we did not want to require people to pay to start making their app and made signing up and using Cabana free. The core of our planned business model is “pay to publish”. Once a user has completed their app and they want to release it to the public, or just share it with their friends, that’s when they pay for Cabana. We’re going to have a base publishing fee depending on which platform you are publishing to, and then we’ll put together a “parts list” showing any components that you used that are not available for free. We think people should only pay for the functionality they use in their app. We may also roll out premium accounts at some point in the future, but our initial step is focused on the pay to publish model.

On your blog you talk about following the Lean Startup movement. Can you tell our readers a bit about what this is, why it’s important and what it adds to your business?

We’ve tried to incorporate many aspects of the Lean Startup movement into our development efforts, but still have a long way to go before I’d consider us a true lean startup. We’ve made it a priority to get out of the building and speak to customers to try to better understand their needs, and have worked hard to determine which features are truly justified by our customer development, and which don’t fit into the concept of a minimum viable product. It’s been a challenge because a product like Cabana requires many many features just to work, but we’ve tried to trim back the features as much as possible. We do practice continuous deployment though, and think that’s really improved the quality of the product overall.

What has been your biggest success?

We’re the most happy when we see an app that a user has created with Cabana that we didn’t think was possible. We’re still in private beta, so we don’t have a ton of users, but we’ve been continually impressed by what people have created in Cabana.

What have you learned along the way?

Wow, so much really. I think last summer when we threw away all our code and started again with a focus on the web, that was a big learning point. If felt like the right thing to do, but was also painful at the same time. Looking back I think I learned that you do need to listen to your gut and make the hard calls when you need to. You’ll look back and be glad you did.

What piece of advice would you give to someone setting up their own startup?

I think you absolutely need to be passionate at a deep level about what you’re trying to do. For us that meant being passionate about platforms that enable people to create interactive software. This is a long standing passion for us that we carried through the game industry and led us to create Cabana. If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing you’re not going to make it through all the ups and downs founding a startup will subject you to.

The future seems to in mobile apps. Where do you see Cabana positioned in that?

We believe there is a long tail of app development that is just starting to occur. It sounds really impressive when you hear about the 400,000 apps in the App Store, until you think about the number of web pages that are out there. We think there are whole classes of apps that currently aren’t being created because app making is too hard and too expensive. We hope that Cabana will help change this and will let more people bring their visions to life.

Cabana Team Receiving the Award for Best Design at Launch 2011

Photo: (cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.snapfoc.us

There’s nothing like learning from people with experience. There are thousands of new web start-ups expanding all over the globe in a resurgence of innovation brought about by web and mobile apps. Many of these start-ups fall flat, but others rise to the top. I’m going to be interviewing entrepreneurs from across the world to see what makes a successful startup and what we can learn from their experiences. This week Pen.io founder, Anthony Feint. Pen.io is a lightweight self-publishing tool that recently won best design at the 2011 Launch Conference. I’ll let Anthony tell you all about it:

What is Pen.io?

Pen.io is a really simple way to publish content online. Its a lightweight alternative to more feature rich site builders and blogging platforms, and was designed for people just wanting to quickly share a single piece of content like a recipe, joke or essay.

What distinguishes it from other self-publishing platforms?

The Pen.io platform was designed to be quick. It requires no registration and doesn’t include many features of the other platforms, which makes it really easy to get started creating pages.

How did you come up with the idea?

I was looking for a really simple way for me to quickly share a single piece of content. My only options were to setup a blog, on a platform like tumblr or WordPress, which was overkill for just posting one article. So in the end, I decided to create my own app, which allowed me to do just that – share a single piece of content online, fast.

How long did it take you to get Pen.io off the ground?

The original application took a weekend to build. However, since launching the app in February, and witnessing its huge growth, I work on it full-time. Although the frontend of the application hasn’t changed much, the backend has needed massive amounts of work to support the 100K+ users who use it everyday.

What applications or tools do you find most useful for your business? Why?

As I’m currently based in Australia, my investors and developers based elsewhere, Skype has become an essential tool for communication. The Google suite of apps (gmail, docs, and calendar) are also indispensable

Can you tell our readers a bit about your business model?

Towards the end of 2011, we’ll be launching a whitelabel version of the application. This will give individuals, businesses and organizations the ability to run their own version of the app on their own domain name, with their own privacy controls and branding.

What’s been the most difficult aspect of setting up Pen.io?

Like all web apps, scaling is usually the most difficult aspect. And its the same for pen.io. It’s a daily challenge to keep the application loading fast and making sure its always online. There’s no set method for scaling an app so most of the time its trial and error.

What has been your biggest success?

Winning the Best Design Award at the 2011 Launch Conference was a huge achievement and put the app in front of thousands of influencers and really gave the app the momentum it needed.

What have you learned along the way?

While building Pen.io I’ve learned the importance of being super selective when it comes to adding new features. There is a real temptation to keep adding lots of new features to the app, but I’ve discovered this isn’t what the core users really want and need.

What piece of advice would you give to someone setting up their own startup?

Just go and start it. Pen.io was started in a week with basically no money. Since then, its been featured on all the major tech blogs, experienced amazing growth and is getting funded. It didn’t require a huge launch or years of work. If you have an idea, get it to market as soon as you possibly can – it doesn’t need to be perfect, just launch it.

Finally, I’ve seen some great pieces of writing appear on Pen.io. What’s your favorite?

Its hard to choose just one, I think I have a new favorite each day. This page (The Lake Tahoe Hiking Newton)  is one of my all time favorites as it really shows how much can be done of the platform.

Thanks Anthony! We’re looking forward to seeing pen.io grow even more over the next 12 months.