Startup companies are an exciting sector of business, and watching them grow is as interesting as being a team member making it happen. For example, the hit HBO series Silicon Valley has viewers like us well entertained by the shenanigans these entrepreneurs get into. By observing humorously how important the group’s creative solutions move their business forward, other startups can learn from the clever ways these characters get around tricky situations. Though Silicon Valley is a work of fiction, the scenarios these tech geeks face are quite common in startup culture, especially in technology. Forming a leadership team, honing the idea, getting funding, you name it; getting a startup off the ground and into a profit earning place is not a task for the faint hearted. As such, many startups get buried in the ever-growing startup graveyard, yet others become household names and keep the startup dream alive for everyone. Here’s a few startups with stories that caught our attention. Some have launched into celebrity success, others are young and growing, but all share the similarity of an interesting idea. AirBnB In 2007, a couple of dudes in San Francisco couldn’t pay their rent. The dudes, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, looked around their apartment and decided to rent out their air mattresses, which they did to three people for $80 each. Thinking they might be on to something, the dudes invited their engineer friend Nathan Blecharczyk to build a site, AirBnB, and launched the project at SXSW. Unfortunately, the idea gathered little attention and the team was back to square one trying to figure out how to pay rent. The 2008 presidential election was around the corner, so they had an idea that could raise money for the fledgling business as well as make ends meet. They decided to make presidential themed cereals, Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains, which they sold at campaign parties at $40 a box. They ended up raising 30,000 from the clever cereal effort, and invested the cash back into the idea they were determined to work. Revamping their design and positioning, AirBnB finally did gain traction, and is now valued at over $10 billion dollars. ReviewBuzz Beginning from the closet of his home in Vista, CA, Mike Montano started and launched a successful home services company that grew to a multimillion dollar business. Yet around 2010, online reviews started to become a noticeable factor in the SEO game, and a big reason internet shoppers would choose one company over another. Montano knew customers weren’t just looking for any ole plumber to walk into their house, they were searching for a service professional they could actually trust. He realized online reviews were a way of proving his guys were worthy of trust, and started to encourage his team to ask for reviews. From there, he began to showcase those reviews as social proof for customers looking for help - and realized he was onto a solid idea. With that idea Montano started ReviewBuzz in 2012, a tech company that helps service companies get more 5-star reviews organically. The core of the business is to make it easy for service professionals to request reviews, and for customers to write reviews online. Only 3-years old, ReviewBuzz has grown beyond home service businesses and has helped companies across a range of industries earn more than 150,000 5-star reviews on sites like Yelp, Google, Facebook and more. Organically! Dropbox The file sharing world in 2008 had certainly progressed beyond the floppy disk, yet was dependent on saving to flash-drives or emailing files. Two MIT computer science grads, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, left the giant MIT network of computers they were used to, and went out into the mainstream norm of how most users stored on computers. Already growing tired of this system, one day while on a public bus Houston realized that he forgot his USB-drive. That moment was the last straw, and he started creating what would later be a cloud-based file sharing system, Dropbox. Steve Jobs of Apple learned about the product, which piqued his interest to such a degree he offered for Dropbox to join Apple. Houston denied the offer, determined to build the business on his own. And build the business he did, as the company is now estimated to be worth over ten billion dollars and employs over 700 people. HandUp One cold San Francisco night in the winter of 2012, Rose Broome was walking down the street and noticed a homeless woman. The woman was sleeping on the street, shivering in the dark. The image haunted Broome as she wondered why, given all of the advancement in technology, this woman was still in a position of living without a home. Broome wanted to find a new way to give to the homeless as a result. Broome partnered with her friend Zac Witte and created HandUp, a startup company that utilizes crowdsourcing for the purposes of helping homeless people get off the streets and into a better position in life. The app allows people in need to team up with local nonprofits to post their story, photos and videos to request donations that will help them get to a place that will help them off the streets. HandUp has been able to raise money from people like Eric Reis, Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff, and companies like Google, Twitter, and - tying it all together - Dropbox. These stories are just a few, and proof that any range of creative ideas can result in startup success. Have a story you’d like to share? Post in the comments below.

Barefoot Solutions was brought on by the team at Headfirst to build a custom web application capable of managing every aspect of a high school baseball players life as they make their way through the often confusing recruiting process. Named the College Admissions Planner (CAP), this application integrates Headfirst's extensive consulting experience into an automated system that interacts with each student to form a fully customized planner complete with reminders, insider tips, and even an application progress matrix to ensure that no detail of their athletics, academics, or applications is overlooked. From customized off-season fitness routines to parent email updates, CAP was designed to ease the minds of all those involved in a baseball athletes transition to college. Students log directly into their profiles to create, edit, and review their customized planner.  When they first log in (and at other specific intervals) the CAP application asks students a set of questions and uses their answers to build a multilayered college admissions and recruiting plan. Another important tool within the CAP application is one of Barefoot Solutions previous projects with Headfirst, the HCAT locker.  The HCAT locker is an online searchable database with articles that Headfirst's experienced team has compiled over the years to help students wade through the college admissions process. CAP was developed using the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and offers full integration with a payment gateway as well as content management tools to make for easy updates moving forward.  Both teams at Barefoot Solutions and Headfirst are extremely excited about the potential of this application, and look forward to seeing the impact it has on the lives of aspiring athletes.

You have an idea for the next hottest app, but don’t want to sell your left hand to finance it. Depending on the type of app you want to build, there are ways to go about monetizing without irritating your users with ubiquitous advertising or hidden charges. Some apps are driven to make a profit, making it easy to figure out how to cash in. Other apps are just for fun or add utility, and therefore require a little more effort to seamlessly integrate financing opportunities. Here are some ideas to help you figure out what will work best for you. Pay for Download This is clearly the most straightforward way to make money on your app. Simply charge users to download your app. The beauty here is if you have users, you will be making some money the second they start using it. The downside is that mobile users are used to finding apps for free, and therefore seek out free apps. If your direct competitor offers a similar service and their app is free, guess which app your potential user is going for? Do take note however that if you do go the paid app route, Apple and Google take 30% of all revenue for paid apps or in-app purchases. Advertising While advertisements aren’t necessarily a favorite method of monetization, it is still a common strategy that can be combined with other initiatives to increase cash flow from apps. In March 2014, it was found that click-through rates on iOS mobile ads increased fivefold over last year and for Android, click through rates increased 3x over. This is good news for advertisers and even better news for mobile app developers, who can prove now more than ever that including a mobile ad is mutually beneficial to both the developer and the advertiser. Native ads make this even more helpful, where the ad follows the function of the UX, naturally integrating the ad with the app experience. Critics of this method argue that only the most popular, top apps make much money on advertising, however including ads along with other means of monetizing could be a good hybrid solution. In-App Purchase Freemium Service If charging for the app right away isn’t the solution you’re looking for, freemium provides a solid alternative choice. By allowing users to download the app for free, they are able to get to know the services you provide without the upfront investment. From there, having some of the core functionality unlocked introduces the user to the main purpose of the app while encouraging brand recognition. However locking premium features entices the user to take advantage of further options if they choose to. For example, many gaming apps use the freemium model, enhancing the users’ experience with small upgrades throughout the game like extra lives or new levels. Another example is Spotify, an internet radio service on the freemium model. While any song can be listened to when using the app on desktop, the mobile app can only play music on shuffle mode for the free version. A premium upgrade is required for access to any song, any time on mobile. The premium upgrade also removes all audio advertising from the listening experience. Paid Apps with Paid Features Another way to combine freemium and paid apps This is a hybrid of the freemium and one-time paid app model, charging the user for both the app download and additional premium features. This monetization method is not without criticism, with arguments that if the user must pay to download the app, the app should therefore be considered paid in full. However if done cleverly, this model can, and does, work well. One example is Flightradar24, a flight tracking app available for $3.99. Once downloaded, users can purchase upgraded features like information on arrivals and departures and custom alerts, with these features ranging in price from $1.99 - $4.99. While this seems expensive, this is in reality a great way for users to experience the benefits of the app, while not having to pay closer to $10.00 for features they may or may not use. Selling Data Developers have insight into user behavior. User behavior is solid gold for marketing teams, providing yet another way that developers can make money with their app. Excellent examples are lifestyle apps such as fitness counters or check in apps, giving real data on how people spend their time. Understanding where they go, what they do, and how they prefer to live their lives gives advertisers valuable information on what kind of products the public would like - and even how to best market it. To make an app profitable, developers need to understand their audience and how they can provide enough value and earn enough revenue. How will you monetize your mobile app?