Google Chrome becomes a 'picture-in-picture' app | TechCrunch
Instead of opening the user’s actual browser or a WebView, Custom Tabs let users remain in their app while browsing.
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Instead of opening the user’s actual browser or a WebView, Custom Tabs let users remain in their app while browsing.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known caller ID service, is the latest to take this approach with its announcement that it will now allow customers to use its AI-powered Assistant to […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Kajabi, the video and web hosting platform for content creators to sell online courses, announced Thursday the official launch of its no-code branded mobile app offering, letting users host their own customized native app through the App Store and Google Play.
Kajabi already has a mobile app for hosting online courses, but this new product allows creators to control the user experience and interact with customers in a new way. Creators can customize their app’s icon, login screen, layout, and content, including the welcome screen, explore page, push notifications, custom links, carousels featuring online courses, other in-app purchases like bundle offers, and more. There’s also a separate AI chat assistant that can be trained to answer questions and is integrated into the app.
“Our North Star has always been to increase commerce for creators,” Sean Kim, Kajabi’s chief product officer and former head of product at TikTok, told TechCrunch. “Whether we’re helping you make your first dollar, reach profitability, or reach financial freedom, all of our resources are pointed towards this goal. The branded mobile app is the latest product we offer that helps our customers increase commerce, as well as reach their businesses.”
Branded apps were highly requested among creators, and according to Kajabi user data, 62% of creators believe that a branded app is crucial for their businesses. Fifty-five percent said they’re willing to pay up to $100/month for a custom-branded app.
Kajabi has been testing the product with over 800 beta users. As of today, it’s available to all Kajabi users.
Compared to the traditional app development process, which can take six months and cost upward of $60,000, Kajabi argues its offering is a cost-effective solution. Kajabi develops already-done apps that can go live in weeks, saving creators both time and money. This is a reassuring proposition for creators who have previously invested in app development that didn’t meet their expectations.
One Kajabi client, nutritionist Raquel Britzke, told us she spent $10,000 building an app that ultimately didn’t perform as she hoped.
“I tried doing my own app before and I was not successful. It’s so much work and I spent so much time and money to make the app. … I have thousands of people that use [my] services, so we need to make sure that the app works for a large number of people,” she said. Now Britzke can quickly bring existing customers over to an app that’s powered by Kajabi and optimized to handle all her instructional videos, she explained.
Though more affordable than the standard app development process, building a branded app with Kajabi is still an investment. Only creators with existing courses on the platform can buy the add-on, which ranges from $89 to $199 per month. The higher-priced plan comes with a Community feature where customers engage with creators in live video calls and chats, attend meetups, and complete challenges.
Kajabi offers three subscriptions: Basic ($149/month), Growth ($199/month), and Pro ($399/month).
Currently, Kajabi only supports the sale of courses as one-time purchases, not subscriptions, but that will soon change. The company is also planning to offer community and coaching products as in-app purchases. (It’s also important to note that Apple and Google charge 30% for all in-app purchases, while companies making under $1 million annually are only charged 15%.)
Additionally, the company says it will continue to improve and add features, and all apps will be automatically updated. While Kajabi doesn’t support coding customizations, it’s planning to add customizable widgets that can be integrated into the app. Other features in the works include offline viewing, interactive quizzes, and personalized experiences.
The company joins many other competitors in the no-code app-building space, including Wix, which charges $200 per month for its branded app; Bubble, which charges between $29 and $529 per month; Vidapp ($389); Passion.io ($297); and Thinkific ($199), among others.
Have you noticed the massive gap between consumer and business apps on your phone? While consumer apps are both beautifully designed and easy to use, business apps are simply painful to use.
A European startup is developing a suite of B2B apps that are designed for mobile first because phones have become the main computers for most people. And they’re calling their company … the Mobile-First Company.
When you download an app from this company, you can create an account from your phone (that’s not always the case for B2B apps) and perform everything from the device in your pocket. Too many companies that offer B2B tools treat mobile apps as companion apps and second-class citizens.
But the European startup doesn’t want to re-create Salesforce, Asana or Workday on mobile. Instead, the company plans to focus on small and medium businesses and address their needs one app at a time. Small companies don’t need a complicated enterprise software solution. They need one app to perform a set of tasks extremely well.
And the Mobile-First Company has plenty of ideas, such as building an app to create a quote, or another one to track expenses, or an app dedicated to managing the inventory in your workshop or small warehouse.
“The idea is really to build a suite of applications. It will not be an all-in-one app and that will be the main difference with other players. We don’t believe in the all-in-one model because people are scared of technology,” co-founder and CEO Jérémy Goillot told me.
Ignacio Siel Brunet, the co-founder and CTO of this new project, previously worked as VP of Engineering for Pomelo, a fintech infrastructure company in Latin America with 200 engineers working for the company.
While Siel Brunet is more experienced with the needs of large companies, he has also seen how B2B apps don’t work well with small businesses. “I know how to help big companies solve big problems. But on the other side I had this problem with my family. They own a furniture company but they have issues with invoicing, inventory, etc.,” he told me.
Many small companies simply rely on consumer apps to fill their needs. “They use Instagram as the showcase, WhatsApp as the CRM, a personal bank to run their financial aspects,” Goillot said. “Our DNA is to keep this B2C style of applications with this friendliness and mass-market appeal while also solving problems.”
The Mobile-First Company’s first app is Amoa, a mobile app to track your inventory. For instance, many garages rely on spreadsheets to track the number of spare parts they currently have in stock. But workers don’t usually spend their workday in front of a computer.
With Amoa, they can open an app, add parts by scanning a barcode, add other information such as pricing details, and start using the app as the source of truth. When they pick something up from the shelf, they can remove the item from Amoa and move on.
Even if you don’t sell goods, managing an inventory can be useful. For instance, if you’re a wedding photographer, you might want to create an inventory of all your camera lenses and gear to make sure that you don’t leave anything behind. Similarly, nurses want to make sure they have everything they need before driving to the first patient.
Amoa may or may not work. The idea is that the Mobile-First Company will develop, ship, iterate and kill ideas that don’t work so they can focus on the most promising ones. In my discussion with the founders, it felt more like talking with a casual mobile gaming company than a B2B software company. Eventually, the company plans to monetize the most promising apps with premium features that you can unlock with a paid subscription.
That’s because Goillot already knows a few things about product-market fit, as he previously worked for spend management startup Spendesk as head of growth. He was the fourth employee at the French fintech company that quickly became a unicorn.
When he left Spendesk, he spent some time traveling and looking at tech products and how they’re used outside of Europe and the U.S. “I traveled to Africa a lot, from Nigeria to Ghana and Kenya because I wanted to see other types of products. I traveled a lot in Latin America too,” Goillot said.
“And I was impressed by other types of companies. We are a huge fan of Indian companies — Zoho is one of them. We are a huge fan of Treinta as well — it’s a Colombian company.”
Since being incorporated in December, the Mobile-First Company has raised €3.5 million ($3.8 million at today’s exchange rate) in a pre-seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Emblem — the company is announcing the round today. Many angel investors also participated in the round, including Xavier Niel (Kima Ventures), Thibaud Elzière (Hexa), Jean-Baptiste Hironde (MWM) and Rodolphe Ardant (Spendesk).
Now the company wants to move quickly. “For the end of the year, our goal is to release six applications to have this high velocity of trying, killing, trying, killing to really upgrade the knowledge of the company,” Goillot said.
“We are able to build an application in two weeks. We are able to bring thousands of downloads a day,” he added. So let’s see how long it takes before The Mobile-First Company ships an app that you can spot in the wild when talking with a small business owner.
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