Team Karmies will be releasing it first app into the iTunes App Store by February 1, 2013.  The app is ready, but we have a few tweaks to make then we’ll release it to the world via iTunes App Store.  Ahead of its release the team has been making business development and sales calls on 3rd party messaging apps and universities.  A constant in this process is “can I see the app in action.”  We don’t have a fully functional app and our potential partners and customers can’t download the app from iTunes to run it through its paces.  John Keats once said “nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”  So how do we overcome this…?

First, we have mockups of the app that were created in Adobe Illustrator.  These images show the app, step by step, performing the tasks we are selling.  We’ve used the same illustrations to explain the functionality of the app to our developers.  The illustrations have proven invaluable when talking to our potential customers, partners, developers and investors.

Backing up the illustrations is the limited functional app.  Even with its limited functionality we can demonstrate that we have overcome the technical challenges associated with developing the app.  People can see that the emoticons are interactive, we can hide images and text within an emoticon.  Illustrations and an app that can send and receive messages, including interactive emoticons, so far this is really cool.

Our resumés round out the package.  We are able to illustrate our capabilities and communicate a can-do team of experienced entrepreneurs.  An app is a virtual novel of code that can do something.  It takes a team to turn a vision into code into a business into a way that changes behavior, entertains and makes our world a better place to live in.

These three components are the arrows in our quiver.  Our quiver is made from our story.  Describing an app is clinical - inorganic - but wrap it in a story and it comes alive.  I’ve read many articles written by entrepreneurs that built and sold companies in the tech space that say the story is the key to attracting top talent and outside capital.  So, out pitch, wether to investors, customers, etc., is our story that weaves illustrated functionality with a dream, operating shell of an app with emotional crescendos and lows and accomplishments with the shared sacrifice of a devoted team.

Is this effective, well, as of today we have a our first customer.