In this interview, I want to find out the scope of the opportunity for buying and selling mobile applications. Eric Owens is one of the founders of App Business Brokers, a brokerage that specializes in listing established businesses for sale with a focus in the mobile space.
Throughout the interview we cover
- Why some app businesses sell for a few months revenue whilst others can sell for up to 24 years net
- Where the opportunity seems to be in the mobile space today – which platforms, which type of apps and which audiences.
- How to best monetise a mobile app, to boost an existing business or to rejuvenate an existing poorly performing app.
Right click here to download the entire interview in MP3 format, or alternatively use the player below to listen to it in your browser.
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Audio Transcript
Eric: Doing great, yeah thanks for having me on here Justin, I appreciate it.
Justin: No problem at all. I originally met you through the A List having come across several relatively large mobile app businesses that you are representing and it always seems a little bit rude to pry at the time but could you tell me a little about yourself and how you got started online and how you came to where you are today?
Eric: Yeah, definitely. I originally was an engineer by background. Did manufacturing engineering, industrial systems engineering stuff for some manufacturing, a manufacturing company. Even then, I worked in corporate America for about five years, I always knew that I wanted to have my own business and did my own business stuff at the side. When I first got out of university and started working I thought I wanted to have my own manufacturing business and then I got into it and realized that was a really tough business and that there must be easier ways to make money. I started looking to the internet, that was back around 1997 then. Wasn’t a ton of stuff on the internet but it was starting to grow so there was at least some opportunity to put up websites and get traffic and make money and stumbled around with that for a couple of years.
Had a few of my own small internet businesses on the side that did okay, made some extra money with it and certainly learned a lot doing that.
Justin: If you don’t mind me prying, what kind of … I think everybody went through a stage where they did things like travel or they ran as an affiliate, what kind of things were you working with when you first started out?
Eric: One was actually a piece of tax software for a particular niche and had a partner who on the project, who had the idea and we just went and got it developed; got the software developed, set up the marketing materials. We had some contacts in the particular niche that we got to promote so kicked it off using basically affiliates and doing retro partners and did some other minor traffic generation things to keep traffic going to it.
The other stuff was mostly content type sites. For a while we did the ads and stuff back in the day when it worked and we actually didn’t do it exactly like a lot of people did. We did some where it was mostly … it was actual content like content that we had written by real writers. Certainly not super high quality but it worked to get traffic and generate money that way. So the ads and stuff and then the rest was we did a couple of niche domaning type of sites around getting people to register their own personal names and really it was affiliate based because we didn’t’ have our own registration company or anything.
Justin: Sure.
Eric: Just spent the time looking for particular niches where we thought we could get traffic and get some marketing materials that would resonate with the audience.
Justin: That’s cool. How did you then pivot into App Business Brokers, how did you get started on that side of the industry?
Eric: Definitely it was kind of funny. I ended up leaving corporate America and started an internet marketing kind of training and publishing business with a couple of partners. My partners they were really good on the sales and marketing side of stuff and I was good on the business and project management side of things and they were horrible at that so it was a good combination for us all to team up. We took that business from zero to about I think around $3 million bucks a year over the first three years. I got kind of burned out on that just in terms of dealing with a bunch of customers and dealing with the daily operation stuff after a while; more life-style business stuff.
During that process I sold off … I had at the time I think three small internet businesses. I sold those off. I happened to have one of my high school friend who was in New York City and had a ton of angel investor contacts that happened to be looking to buy internet businesses so through my network of contacts and the internet marketing, internet business space I just went out and started lining up deals and kind of fell into brokering internet businesses, it’s one of those things I’m like, “Hey this is fun” and I knew the ins and outs of internet businesses and figured out how to present those to investors and buyers in a way that made sense to them.
Justin: It sounds like you’ve got a pretty unique skill set. Most, I’ll say this, at least most entrepreneurial types, especially people who are tech entrepreneurs tend not to have the organizational and project management skills. They’re more sort of either marketing or tech driven so it seems like you’ve certainly managed to fill a skill gap there in terms of what you were doing previously and probably what you do now for App Business Brokers, right?
Eric: Yeah, yeah definitely. It’s been … yeah a lot of our clients exactly that we help … when we help them sell their businesses nowadays yeah definitely. People who are usually really good on the sales and marketing side and maybe not the other part of the business side so definitely.
Justin: Sure, so is there any [crosstalk 00:05:46]
Eric: We’ve been doing business brokering for about I think the past eight years now, maybe almost nine. Around … I think it was around three years ago now almost, there was a young guy who approached me about selling his mobile app business. At the time I think the whole app store was maybe two years old but there really hadn’t been much action until about the past year before this young guy contacted me. He kept telling me all about the business. I mean it was [inaudible 00:06:14] where he was literally only spending like five – ten hours a week on it. It was making him around $50,000 a month and growing. But at the time I was like, man it’s only got a year history behind it. Most of our buyers are looking for stuff that’s got two – three years of history, nobody knows where this mobile stuff is going, but he was very persistent. Finally we were like all right we’ll give it a shot and listed it.
Took us probably a good three or four months we did a lot of self education on the mobile space to learn about it and then basically trained buyers to teach them more about het mobile space, because there was a learning experience. After a few months we actually found a buyer for it and got a deal done for him on that one. Then he had two other app businesses with a partner that we sold right away after that. Then kind of been just like knocking down dominoes since then through our network of contacts, just going through and doing deals.
Another one too where it was kind of like, hey here’s an opportunity, it’s not exactly perfect but we’ll go with it and see what happens. I’m certainly glad that we did.
Justin: I’ve got this … compared to other online brokerages you consistently have solid businesses with sometimes with $1 million plus price tags. I guess the question is what makes you and App Business Brokers different? How do you manage to attract these huge listings?
Eric: I think a few factors go into play on that and one is definitely the network we’ve developed over the years, coming out of the internet marketing space and having developed a big network of contacts there. We get literally almost all of our business through referrals or people coming to us, so that’s a big part. Then another part is I guess probably too how we go about doing business. Me and my partner, Mike Kemski that I have right now, we … some people talk about it but it’s sometimes challenging to do but we literally every single day we work on … we set it up where each party walks away like they won in some way. If we can’t do a deal like that we just won’t take it on, because we’ve tried it before over the years and bad things end up happening. Those are a couple of factors and then another is we have a … it’s a small team that we have but it’s definitely dynamic with basically complementary strengths. I’m good on the overall business project details; my partner’s really good on the positioning the business for sale and creating some really nice prospectuses to get in front of buyers. Then we have a couple of other guys on our team that are really good in terms of talking with buyers and figuring out what they’re really looking for and then lining up things that match up for them on that.
Then the … I think the other part of it too is just myself and my business partner both, we’ve owned our own internet businesses so we know the ins and outs of them and can help on the client side, on the seller client side, help them spot things to fix up before we go list it. We’ve also consulted on some other even bigger businesses outside the space in terms of marketing or generating traffic over the years. We’ve seen a lot of different internet businesses and a lot of different traffic generation methods, so we can like I said spot things and communicate with sellers and buyers in a way that maybe some other brokers can’t.
Then on the mobile side we’ve really over the past couple of years done a ton to educate buyers and sellers in terms of what to look for, what to avoid so I think we get a lot of people coming to us that see us as trusted advisors. Then we give a lot of personal attention to sellers and buyers.
Justin: Let’s talk about selling mobile apps because it’s a very contentious issue right now. I believe part of the problem’s is in what’s possible and what’s not possible when you’re selling apps made for IOS devices which is, obviously is a huge part of the market at least in the Western world anyway. Can you help sort of clarify the practicality of it all?
Eric: Yeah, definitely. I think you’re probably mostly talking about the transfer of tangible …
Justin: Sure.
Eric: When the transaction’s done how do you actually, as a buyer, take possession of the apps and effectively …
Justin: It’s my understanding at the moment is that you can’t. If you have a developer’s accounts which he needs to have an app in the app store and you have maybe ten apps you can’t sell one of those apps. You have to sell the entire account right? You can’t transfer the app and all its ratings to another developer’s account or am I just completely confused?
Eric: No, you’re dead on. We’re hoping that that’s something that Apple will change in the future. For being such a cool consumer company on the public side of things, on the developer side they’re very onerous in terms of what they’ll allow, what they won’t allow. It’s almost like the developer program is set up more for like a … like the traditional software model where people have their resellers and licensees out there selling stuff and it’s all very controlled.
Right now definitely the easiest way to do it for … where like you say you … you can if you really wanted to just sell the app in source code, but it loses a ton of the value, that’s the only transfer method and Apple will tell people, hey you can transfer it and what they mean is you can take it down out of one developer account and then put it back up in the other one and basically start over; which if the app’s producing revenue and downloads and reviews and has a user base obviously that kills the value for a buyer, so not very practical. The easiest way to do it right now is where basically the buyer acquires the whole developer account and for total simplicity purposes they actually also acquire the company entity that is attached to that developer account. It’s not the best way in terms of how buyers and sellers want to do the transaction but with Apple right now that’s the [siren noise 00:12:16] to actually get it done and have it all go seamlessly.
We did just work on one deal with Apple where instead of doing it with the entity transaction method we did … we were able to do it with an asset method and so kind of we went through a bunch of stuff with them and have a proprietary work-around. We’re 99.9% of the way there; just have one last thing to make sure that it definitely works.
Justin: When you say asset method you mean literally just transferring the actual app as opposed to the entire developer account?
Eric: No, it was still the whole developer account but it … didn’t have to use the entity method where the …
Justin: Right, okay where they sell the company with it.
Eric: Yeah. Because of our … as you know when you acquire the entity there’s definitely some potential liability issues for the buyer. With app businesses it’s a little less risky in that regard because usually the seller’s are just purely doing app business stuff. They’re not doing anything else weird like running real estate transactions or anything through the entity. We were able to get it done with a pure … because it was done as an asset based transaction the buyer did acquire the whole developer account; so not just the single apps but at least a way to get around having to use the entity transaction method which we’ve never been able to do yet. We’re excited at least that little more flexibility on the Apple side.
Justin: Fingers crossed for you. I know Apple can be … Apple and Google are two most rigid, sorry Apple, Google and PayPal are three of the most rigid companies I’ve ever had to deal with. But that’s another rant another day.
Eric: Yes, Google’s tough on the internet side. On the mobile side they’re pretty cool.
Justin: Yeah, it’s a bit of a contradiction really [crosstalk 00:14:06]
Eric: I know.
Justin: … because they’re quite free thinking. Android doesn’t have sort of all the restrictions that Apple has but the impression I get is that paying users tend to mostly be on Apple’s platform so would it be realistic to stick to just buying Android mobile app businesses? Is the market both large enough and well developed to make that a feasible plan?
Eric: Historically you’re dead on right. We’ve seen with the paying users tend to be way heavier on Apple than on Android, I mean dramatically. IT seems like though in the past six months or so we have seen some people where they have had some really strong success on the Android side of things. We have one client right now we’re looking to do a deal with they have … I can’t see what their app is because we haven’t listed them yet but if they … it’s a game but not a super popular type of game. It’s kind of like an average ordinary type of game and they’ve been consistently doing well for the past three years. To the tune of they’re making $500 grand a year and more and have tens of millions of downloads. But they’re definitely the exception to the rule. I think in most part parts still right now the people … or the buying … or the paying customers are way heavier on the Apple platform, but I do see a shift. We just had some younger guys approach the other day where they had gone from zero to doing about $30 – $40 grand a month on Android in just six months.
Justin: So is there, do you notice a major difference in the way developers monetize apps between iTunes and Android? I would imagine app purchases are going to be sort of IOS’s market and mobile advertising’s going to be primarily how people would monetize things on Android. Is that the case or is it kind of far and wide?
Eric: No, you nailed it. We’ve not seen a lot of people so far do much on the Android side in terms of in app purchases or other monetization methods. It’s mostly like you said advertising based. We’ve seen some people do well with paid apps like premium apps doing the free and premium model on Android. But definitely most of the revenue that we’ve seen of the people that do well on Android has definitely been advertising based. Then on Apple stuff has been way heavy on in app purchases and paid apps.
The one thing we have seen with Android is definitely it seems to be there’s more hardware options out there for people. That people can do more things like with household appliances and cars and watches and other handheld devices that they are getting more attraction and probably have more users now that have a higher disposable income type of user base than they have in the past.
Justin: I suppose that’s because you’ve got Android running on more than just phones and tablets. You’ve got a lot of new set top boxes, TVs. One of my appliances have Android on which surprised me it was running Android. I think you’ve got cars that run Android as well so I suppose that opens up who you can market the app to, to a whole new kind of audience.
Eric: Yes, definitely.
Justin: I’d like to get your opinion on valuations for mobile applications because this is something I really can’t seem to get to grips with. I look at sites like Apptopia and this isn’t to dig Apptopia because I love what they’re trying to do and I like the fact that there’s a dedicated mobile marketplace but most of the valuations on there to me personally seem crazy when compared to web based ones. I guess there’s advantages like the fact that you’ve got almost an immediate speed to market without having to wait in Google’s sandbox for you to start ranking. There’s also the issue that mobile apps typically have a shorter lifecycle. Do you have a sense of a model for valuing a mobile app business that you can share?
Eric: Yeah, at least some of the factors have definitely been more … I mean I know in my event, a very analytical mind, and I would prefer to have just a dead on super simple way to go about valuing them. We do have kind of a point system that we developed to produce valuations that they end up being pretty accurate in terms of where we see deals coming back, in terms of offers coming in and it’s really … part of it I think has just been the market where it’s a really, almost like, way back in the internet days like a Wild West type of scenario where …
Justin: It still is the Wild West right? Have you been on Flippa lately?
Eric: Some big deals that people have done in mobile and some valuations that are like just definitely out of whack in terms of the normal ROI stuff. The internet business had a thing that we always see deals inevitably end up getting done somewhere in the ballpark of one to three times approximately on the trailing 12 month’s profit. Somewhere in that range in general inevitably.
On the mobile side we’ve gotten deals done anywhere from one times gross revenue up to 24 times gross revenue because there have been some companies who want the technology in the apps.
Justin: Twenty-fours time gross annual revenue?
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Justin: Wow.
Eric: Yeah, that is definitely not the model that we’ve seen. I mean probably in the past six months or so I think buyers on the mobile side have gotten a lot more smart and are going way more revenue based in terms of how they value deals. We always like to … we stay in tune with the market and what people are looking for and how they’re valuing stuff. These ultimately, as you know, it’s only something’s only ever worth what someone’s willing to pay for it.
Justin: Sure I appreciate that. If I had a mobile app which I purchased off someone and hypothetically say it’s a mobile game which generates revenue through in game advertising. Are there any sort of factors that will generally increase the value of a mobile application? If that’s [inaudible 00:20:15] think … thinking about it I know games are quite a limiting example but can you just give me any sort of general idea as how I go about improving or increasing the value of a mobile app that I own. Is there anything that buyers tend to eat or tend to really look for?
Eric: Yeah, definitely and this is how we definitely … the factors that go into our valuation. We at the history of the revenue of downloads and largely looking for consistency. In some niches it’s not possible. Some apps definitely spike up and down and there’s always some minor seasonal factor just with the nature of the Apple App store around the holidays and also seems to during the summer months sometimes. But the consistency of the revenue downloads and then the user base in terms of how active it is, because we get some people who … it’s great if you’ve had a million downloads but none of those people ever come back and use the app again and you’re trying to use an advertising model it’s not going to work long term so … Then the other factors we put into it is if it’s on an uptrend for revenue and downloads. Then a couple of more recent factors we’ve been seeing buyers ask for is people seem to be trending towards looking for more higher quality apps and away from some of the more churn and burn type of apps I call them where they might be like gig apps or …
Justin: No more i-farts?
Eric: Right. The stuff where people they open it up one time and use it and then they’re kind of done with it. Buyers seem to be looking more now for little higher quality apps. Maybe have some better code and technology to them. Then the other big thing that can increase the value for people is if they do build out a network of apps and they already have them tied together in some fashion for cross promotion. Just because buyers … one of the big factors I’ve seen for people now on the buyer side is if there has been an app business that’s been up and around for awhile they definitely see their value in buying something versus starting something just because it has gotten a lot more difficult to compete from a starting standpoint in the mobile space. Very few people now can just come up with an idea and throw it up there in the App Store and it’s going to do awesome on its own. Buyers are looking at it and going okay, I can buy this app business that’s got a core set of apps and a user base then we can … and there’s some revenue coming in and some active downloads then we can use that as a base to grow from. Definitely good factor there.
Justin: Excellent thank you. Do you have any opinions on Apptopia? Obviously I’m guessing you know Apptopia and you’ve seen their site. Have you got any sort of opinions on how they’re going to do long term with the model that they’re operating, the marketplace model?
Eric: Yeah, definitely. We know these guys, we’ve met them in person and we actually refer them business all the time. We get sellers coming to us with smaller app deals that just don’t really fit in our wheel house but are perfect for Apptopia. They definitely have more buyers that are looking for the more like single app transaction stuff. People are just looking for app and the code and they’re going to take and do something with it. They’re great guys. They’re definitely great at what they do. I love that they’ve gotten some bigger new investors involved like Marc Hubin. That was cool to see.
Justin: Very much so.
Eric: They have kind of a different model than we do where we’re almost doing kind of like lower scale M&A type of work and they’re definitely going for the marketplace approach and smaller transactions. One difference too, we definitely do … we’re self-funded. We [inaudible 00:24:00] our business and they have outside investors so they’re able to do some little different things than we are. Definitely different business models. The one thing in this market I just … it’s definitely hard to say what’s going to happen long term but they basically serve a segment of the market that we don’t and are doing a great job at it.
Justin: Okay cool. You know nowadays I find the benchmark of a company that’s been funded; it used to be they had one of those cool cartoon explainer videos and then everyone started to get the whole sort of stop-motion cartoon explainer video now it’s any company that has a really cool live video with real actors, you know they’ve just been funded probably because they’re so bloody expensive. I Noticed Apptopia when they got the notification of funding that they had this really cool humorous video; yeah, that’s definitely a sign they’ve got money now.
If one day you were me, we already share the same hairstyle and facial hair so it’s not that farfetched, but if one day you woke up you were me and you decided that you’ve had it with websites, you wanted to stop buying mobile apps for your portfolio, where would you recommend that I start? What would my ideal strategy be?
Eric: The thing I always do when we’re talking with buyers is figure out what the end game would be in terms if we’re going to try to go really big and grow out a bigger business and sell to some larger company or if we’re just going to go acquire apps and use it almost like a little mini investment type of strategy where they just throw off money. More that way then we would know how we could go into it in terms of how to buy, how to structure deals and what kind of offers to make. So it would depend on the short term and long terms goals but if we needed to replace some income level we’d just figure out what cash flow we needed. I think one thing I would say in the mobile space is that it seems like probably somewhere around, like we want to have some capital in play like around the $100,000.00 ball park whether we were going to go build something or buy something.
Then I always like the kind of like renovation approach myself in terms of looking at stuff where maybe someone got some app up and going but they’re either … there’s some [inaudible 00:26:25] on the table either on the monetization side or on the marketing side. We have seen some deals come across our table like in the $25,000.00 to $50,000.00 range but it definitely seems like it jumps up really quickly to $100,000.00 and up. It seems like people, once their apps start getting some success, they start dealing in the ballpark of $30 to $50,000.00 a year or so in revenue and then they can command $100,000.00 selling price.
Justin: Okay, so it’s definitely a sort of, it’s not hockey stick but there is a definite jump in terms of once you reach a certain point your valuation kind of shoots up with that.
Eric: Definitely.
Justin: where would you start or App Business Brokers where would you start looking?
Eric: I would look at the top charts and mostly in the Apple App Store but also looking at Google also. Part of that is not necessarily looking at stuff that we would go buy, but look at what’s getting the attention from users and then look at those apps and see what aspects might be the reason that they’re doing well. Usually then we can look at that and then go find niches or actually I would, just step back in that. I would look at some particular niches and then see what the top people are doing well. Maybe some niches that you may have some interest or understand the audience.
We’ve had some clients where … one guy he had just an app that was a programming tool for the developers and he wasn’t making millions of dollars but doing well. Doing $10,000.00 a month in profit very consistently and we’ve had some other markets for apps for people with particular types of food allergies where they’ll probably never be a $10 million a year business but they sit there cranking out $15-$20 grand a month in profit really consistently. I would look at those kind of niches just because they tend to be less competitive and versus going after the gaming market and things like that where’s there a ton of competition. Then within those niches just look at the ones that are doing well. Then look for the people outside, probably the top two or three and approach them because they’ll probably be good targets.
Justin: Cool. You mentioned renovation early on being sort of one of your faves. If you did have an existing app that you purchased and it was a number 11 or number 12, it’s doing okay but not doing excellent. Have you got any tips for how you’d monetize that or how you promote that app to get a better return on your investment?
Eric: One of the easiest things is that, and that we’ve seen our clients do on a consistent basis that always works well is … or one of the mistakes that we see people make is that they get a little bit of attraction and then they kind of fade out because they don’t have any kind of update planned or tasked for the app. It’s funny too because there’s this amazing free tool that people can use to see exactly what their customers use and it’s just looking at the user reviews. That’s one thing. Really looking at these reviews and really looking at that. I think people who have done other business stuff before probably have a better appreciation of that because it’s basically live user feedback that you can then use to build out a map of updates for your product. Use that as apriority and put out consistent updates, even if they’re small and not a huge version update. If they’re small updates but consistently putting out updates. Just from that one thing we’ve seen people keep their user base engaged and grow the business.
One of the new things that we’ve been seeing people to do and we’ve been encouraging them to do for quite a while is building an email list from their users. That way they can use that for additional ways to get user feedback but also that it’s an extra marketing tool that can promote their own apps and also do cross-promotions with other developers to generate more traffic.
Justin: Would you do that through an email opt in through the app itself?
Eric: Yeah, that’s where we’ve been seeing most people do it. I know there’s definitely some tricks to doing it. Some other people have made, in some niches you can have some stuff on your website that gets people all sort of going and interacting with the other website as well in terms of another way to capture people’s email addresses.
Justin: Sure, okay cool. You’ve represented more good businesses than I’ve had hot dinners. What’s been your favorite listing so far and what made it a good app? I’m in England so I have a lot hot dinners because it’s always freaking cold here, but I mean what’s been your favorite listing and why, what’s made it such a good business for you?
Eric: We just got done, I’ve got to keep the name of it confidential, but it was basically a mobile app business where they had a suite of photography and video utilities and some other just basic utility apps that were really popular with users. I just … they were great tools and people … the users liked to use them and kept using them so it had a high quality user base. The owner was going to use that to put out a bunch more. They had the right idea, put out a bunch more similar apps and just use that as a base to grow from.
On the internet side of business side of thing I actually have one [inaudible 00:32:12] right now that’s been my favorite. It’s a financial related business that publishes training and software for active traders, people that trade stock market or other markets. I think I Like it just because it’s the only deal we’ve seen where it’s been around for like 15 years and very consistently does $2½ to $3 million a year in revenue and nets about $1 to $1.25 million a year, but the owners kept it at that level based on their kind of comfort zone and how they want to match it with their lifestyle. But it’s a business that can be grown way larger, at least three to five times larger. It’s got that huge potential. We don’t see a lot of those where hey you know where they can realistically triple or quintuplet it inside of a …
Justin: Sure, you know speaking to you I’m getting a pretty good idea as to which apps tend to be the bigger picture [inaudible 00:33:10] but definitely [inaudible 00:33:12] apps but I can kind of get a much better idea. I did have the misconception before this interview that actually it would be gaming that would be the place to do your … making another i-fart but I’m getting from what you’re saying that that’s not really the case. It’s actually useful apps, apps that you can understand why people want them. I always look at things, you know you hear about all these random apps that make millions of pounds or dollars and I just think to myself sometimes, why do people even want that? I think they download it out of curiosity.
A lot of the apps you’re describing to me have turned out to be big businesses I can understand why they’re useful. I’m not an expert photographer but as sort of an amateur photographer I can think of a million and one apps that would be useful to have. It would be useful to have that mobile and there would be an advantage to it being an app as opposed to just being a website or an extension of a website. So yeah, thanks I think I’ve got a pretty good idea as to what would make a good app business.
To wrap up what are your goals for App Business Brokers and where do you plan to take it in the future?
Eric: We continue to [inaudible 00:34:19] we still do internet business transactions but we’re going to keep focusing more and more of our time on the mobile space because the people are kind of fun and creative and interesting to work with. In general just continuing to serve our clients and grow where it makes sense and we’re doing more things to add more value to the marketplace. Doing interviews like this and then we’ve got … we’ve contributed some more detailed training to a few of our past clients like Gotting Chamarada [00:34:45], it’s got a course out called app in player, put some training in that and then we have some other clients from the internet side of stuff that are coming out with more detailed courses on how to do internet business stuff so we’re trying to train more people on how to build mobile app business and internet businesses from the start so they can do better and position their businesses to sell early on. But really just continue to come up with new ways to be the number one resource for buying and selling mobile app businesses and keep our … one interesting trend we’ve been looking at is some of the new technology coming out like the touchless technology type of stuff. I don’t know if you’ve looked at that but there’s some new technology coming out that …
Justin: Do you mean like Google Glass or …
Eric: Yeah, Google Glass and there’s some other, I forget the name of it now I’ll have to look at our research files but there’s one … some other things where you can … actually a device where you can use it like on your TV and just like waving your hands.
Justin: Ah yeah, like the X-box connectors to an extent.
Eric: Yeah, so that stuff as it applies to mobile. One other interesting trend we’re still figuring out how we want to be involved in it is the number of people looking for investors in mobile app and internet businesses and on the flip side the people looking to invest in mobile and internet businesses. Especially on the smaller transaction side; there’s definitely investment bankers out there already for bigger deals of course but on some of these smaller deals if there’s a way that we can bring together resources or help serve people in that way in some fashion.
Justin: That’s pretty cool. I’m a real tech and gadget geek so you can imagine I wet myself when I first saw Google Glass. It’ll probably take about three years to get to the UK after it’s been out in the U.S. so I’ll have to take a trip over and get a legal version smuggled in. What I find really interesting is the fact that the whole concept of an app it’s now … you say an app and people just assume mobile but actually it’s more about the active packaging information on the platforms in a way that’s convenient for that platform. I mean in my car I can have BMW do sort of BMW apps and I can have an app in my car and they haven’t come up with anything useful yet apart from there’s an eBook reader which is a bit pointless because I’ve got audible and that will read me eBooks but I kind of think there’s got to be some possibilities where there’s going to be relevant car-based apps just as there’ll be relevant set-top box based apps or apps for your fridge or whatever else is running Android. I just think it’s such a great time that we’re in right now. We’re at the start of a … and we’re kind of a group of people who get it so I think it’s a great opportunity to exploit.
Eric: Definitely.
Justin: Well listen Eric, I’ve taken up enough of your time and I really appreciate you doing this interview so I shall let you go. It’s your morning there right?
Eric: Yes, It’s about 8am here.
Justin: I’ll leave you to get on with your day. Thank you ever so much. Everything you’ve given us has been invaluable and I’ll speak to you soon.