Tell us what your company is all about.
Bunndle is a distribution platform and ad network for downloadable desktop and mobile applications. A “bundle” is a collection of apps distributed to the same end user. For example, download one app, get another one. We help developers and software vendors acquire users and monetize their audience by co-promoting applications during the installation flow.
How did you come up with the idea for your company?
I started working on distribution at Yahoo about eight years ago and had the opportunity to touch almost every product at Yahoo because of the exciting growth the company was experiencing. From there, I went to work at a few startups and heard the same story over and over. User acquisition, distribution and monetization for any new company or product is hard. Small companies don’t always have the right contacts or the financials to compete with the big guys, and so they get cast aside when it comes to doing any type of meaningful distribution deals. There is a lot of competition in the market and getting in front of the end user takes a lot of work. Not that big companies also don’t face the problems with user acquisition and monetization. But the hurdle to get a deal done isn’t usually as bad. And the other tools out in the market — SEO, SEM, display advertising, etc. — those don’t always scale when you are competing for an end user’s attention. End users today are very efficient and don’t search the way they used to – say five or ten years ago. We have become masters at blocking out ads which results in a difficult discovery process for new products. There were other services and competitors in the market but I thought there might be a different approach and so I started Bunndle.
To read the original article: Interview with Bunndle CEO, Maxine Manafy (500 Startups company) | How to Write a Business Plan
