Rebound

Stay up to date with shared

content from friends

Dylan Babbs
Founder
dbabbs@uw.edu
University of Washington
ENTRE 432

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In todays age of social media, friends and family members tend to share web links with each other to
present content they enjoy. Have you struggled to keep up with content shared with you? Rebound aims
to cease the issue of content being ignored or simply forgotten about. Rebound is a mobile platform that
reminds a user during a tailored time throughout their day to consume shared content from friends and
family. Rebounds interface is simple all it takes is a quick tap on the friendly red-orange hybrid icon in
an applications sharing window, and a push notification is delivered to the recipient with the content
presented in a full screen reading mode. The recipient has the option to read the content immediately,
whether that be an article, PDF, YouTube, etc., or they can wait for Rebounds idle algorithm to remind
them to consume the information. The core infrastructure and concept of the application is based upon
this algorithm. Using advanced predictive analytics, the algorithm determines a dynamic idle period
throughout a users day based upon device usage data. For example, in the case of a daily commuter,
Rebound identifies the time a user is consistently browsing their phone on social media or other
nonproductive applications during the commute and pushes a reminder notification to the user to
consume unread content.

NEED
Social media is deeply engrained into todays society. Consumers spend hours of their week sharing and
sending friends internet content, whether that be videos of puppies they find cute or political articles
they identify and agree with. Humans thrive off sending content to their friends. In fact, social media has
become such an integral cornerstone of our relationships, nearly 500 million tweets are sent a day on
social media. According to a study conducted by the New York Times Customer Insight Group, 78% of
users who share content do so with the purpose of growing and nourishing relationships1. Humans value
relationships, and we hope to build upon them by sharing content the recipient may enjoy. In turn, the
majority of this content, even if its a cute video of a puppy playing with a doorstop, will give us a new
conversation topic that can be further used to develop a friendship. However, with all the messages
constantly being bombarded onto us, it may be easy to simply forget about a message a friend sent you.
For example, what if you were in the middle of a busy meeting when you receive an iMessage with a link
to a New York Times Opinion piece from the friend you discuss politics with? Chances are you may glance
at the message upon delivery, only to immediately forget about it due to an impending distraction. Youll
have just missed out on content that you may have enjoyed, while also possibly upsetting the friend for
not acknowledging the message.

PRODUCT
Rebound provides a comprehensive solution for content sharing, consumption, and interaction between
users through likes and short messages. Listed below is a walkthrough of the products process:
1. User is browsing the web, social media, or another application and comes across content they
enjoy and have an urge to share the information with a friend or family member.
2. The user then selects the friendly iOS sharing icon
available within all applications calling upon
the UIActivityViewController. In addition to the default icons such as iMessage or Email, the
Rebound icon is present for the user to share over the Rebound platform (Figure 1).

Rebound

3. The user is prompted to select one or more contacts (via access to the iOS address book) to send
the content to. This view is a familiar interface, similar to the address book selection in iMessage.
4. Content is delivered to the intended recipient with an initial push notification. The recipient has
the option to view the message immediately, or they can simply ignore it. If the recipient chooses
to view the message at the time of arrival, they are directed to the Rebound application where
they interact with an inbox-like interface (Figure 2). This friendly interface distinguishes shared
content between two different views: a focused inbox, with items relevant to the user based
upon their preferences and close friends, or an all inbox, which contains all received messages.
5. However, if the user does not choose to read the content immediately, the unread push
notification disappears from recipients notification pane in order to reduce cluster and minimize
distractions.
6. During a precisely calculated time based upon the recipients user analytics (either a few hours
later, or possibly even another day), the recipient receives the Rebound notification. This
notification arrives a time when Rebound has calculated the recipient is idle or performing
nonproductive actions on their device. For example, if Rebound has learned that the recipient
uses their phone for approximately 25 minutes every night before they sleep at 11:45, Rebound
delivers the reminder notification at that time. The main goal of Rebound is to deliver content at a
time tailored to the recipient.
7. To conclude the process, the recipient is able to view the content shared with them in a full a
beautiful, full-screen, user experience that focuses on the content with minimal distractions.

Figure 1

Figure 2

iOS UIActivityViewController with

the Rebound icon present. Users
have the option to share via
Rebound, just like with iMessage or
Apple Mail.

The inbox interface provides an

intuitive experience, similar to the
iMessage inbox. The icon from the
content provider appears to the left
of the senders name and article
subject line.

Rebound

Figure 3
Rebound employs a full screen
reading interface to eliminate
clutter and focus on what the user
came to the app for: the content.

Additional features:
Onboarding & User Accounts: Rebound provides a seamless 30-second onboarding process. Users
are prompted to enter their phone number as their login key. This phone number still remains
private. Upon entering a phone number, the user is prompted to enter an SMS code sent to them
in order to verify they own the number associated with the login (similar to a service offered by
Sinch2). In addition, the user is prompted to allow full access to their address book in order to
interact with friends.
Focused Inbox: The main view is divided into two inboxes: focused and all. Focused inbox
provides a lean view, with only relevant content being show to the user. An additional parameter
for the focused inbox filters messages from close friends or family.
Like, Reply, & Archive: Recipient has the ability to like the share, meaning they enjoyed the
content all with just the swipe of a finger. They also have the ability to reply to the send with a
short message below 140 characters. The like or reply is delivered to original to the original sender
via push notification.
Google AMP Project: Rebound favors content from Googles open-source Accelerated Mobile
Pages Project3 in order provide extremely fast page load time. Rebound considers using Facebook
Instant Articles4 in the future if the platform becomes open source.
Privacy & Safety: Only those with a users phone number can send a user content. Rebound also
allows the ability to block individuals and flag specific content as inappropriate. Once a specific
piece of content is flagged a certain number of time, the content is blocked from the platform.

MARKET OPPORTUNITY

Persona 1: Malik

Persona 2: Iman

Malik is an undergraduate Accounting and

Information Systems major at the University of
Washington. Malik is constantly browsing ESPN
watching the latest sports clips and highlight. As an
avid sports fan, Malik enjoys sharing clips with his
friends, but he finds they cant always watch the
content he shares with them immediately. Using
Rebound, his friends are reminded at an idle time
during the day to watch the content shared with
them. Just like his friends, Malik also is sent other
sports videos to watch. Malik is a consistent
commuter to campus everyday on the bus at 9 AM,
so Rebound has recognized this time as his target
consumption period. At this time, Malik is
reminded to check out the shared content and
spends commuting time doing so.

Iman is an undergraduate Informatics and Political

Science major at the University of Washington. He
has a friend, Matt, who he shares technology
related articles with and also has a friend, Tyler,
who he shares political articles with. Iman reads
the news everyday from a range of sources like the
New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other
online blogs. Iman would likely fall in uptown
individuals demographic. When he finds a
particular article or topic interesting, hes going to
want to share it with his friends, hoping they enjoy
it as well.

Rebound


There are no active direct competitors to Rebound The platform is a unique venture to mobile devices.
Apples iMessage does provide an option to set a 5-minute reminder for an unread message. However,
this feature is very limited compared to Rebounds advanced.
24 interviews were conducted during market research (Figure 4). Each interviewee was described the
concept and features of the application while also being shown a prototype. When the interviewee was
asked if they would be interested in using the Rebound application, 2 out of 3 respondents stated Yes.

Figure 4
Market research interviews.

GO TO MARKET STRATEGY
Rebounds go-to-market launch is September 25th, 2016. The application will be spread initially through
social media and web advertising in order to gain traction. However, Rebound relies on a virality function
within the application to help spread. As mentioned in the product specification, Rebound gains access to
the users address book during the onboarding process. Combining the address book information with a
verification of the users own phone number, Rebound is able to identify other active Rebound users in a
users address book. When a user shares content with friends, they have the option to share it with
anyone in their address book. If the user sends it to another Rebound user, the normal process
notification and reminding process follows through as planned. However, if the user decides to share
content with a friend who is not a Rebound user, an SMS is sent to the recipient with the message: Your
friend, John, has sent you a Rebound featuring a New York Times article. To view it, please download the app at
http://appstore.com/rebound/. Reply STOP to stop. (Figure 5). This method greatly helps Rebound spread
between networks of friends.

Rebound

Figure 5
Flow chart describing process for users inviting friends to Rebound.

GROWTH
Upon Rebounds launch, potential pivots and additional use case research for Rebound will begin.
Rebound has the capacity to enter two more areas in the industry: chat bots and enterprise applications.
Chat bots are all the hype in 2016; Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple all have their own platforms for
artificial intelligence and assistants that the Rebound service can be integrated into. Most recently, both
Facebook5 and Apple6 have opened up their Messenger and Siri artificial intelligence platforms,
respectively, for developers to build upon. The feature possibilities are endless for both these platforms.
A Rebound integration into the Facebook chat bot will allow users to send content through the Facebook
Messenger, and still enjoy the benefits from Rebounds reminding algorithm and feature. Integrating
Rebound into Facebook Messenger may present itself as a threat to the longevity of the platform, but the
core feature of the product is the algorithm, not the standalone iOS application. As long as the algorithm
stays intact with the product, the platform can be expanded towards any relevant third-party platforms
to enter as many different markets and users as possible.
Rebound has potential to enter the B2B and enterprise platform market. As a consumer application,
Rebound may face difficulty with growth and traction. Rebound has plenty of use cases in their consumer
setting. As seen with personas Malik and Iman, both individuals have different friend groups to share
content with throughout the day. It may be a rude gesture to ignore a message sent by a friend, however,
there is nothing but a minor social construct in place which states conduct about electronic
communication; nothing binds a user to replying and nothing stops them from ignoring a message.
However, when engaging in a professional environment, coworkers and business professionals are
required to acknowledge messages sent to them. A potential pivot or new use case for Rebound is an
internal business messaging application with the possible integration of existing enterprise applications
such as Slack, Outlook, or Yammer integration (all currently allow third party applications to be
integrated). A private messaging service with the Rebound algorithm would provide a reliable
communication medium within an organization. The idea of improved internal communication most
definitely would appeal to an organizations leadership.
As noted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal in the Acquired podcast, consumer applications constantly
face the issue of poor user acquisition upon launch7. Its a difficult feat to gain an initial amount of users
one of the more difficult problems consumer applications face is never quite arriving at the hockey
stick. In contrast to consumer-facing applications, B2B solutions are an attractive industry to enter

Rebound

because the sales team just has to land a contract in order to guarantee revenue and usage. Landing a
contract is the key to making a startup survive, in addition to it being a lower risk plan compared to
relying on individual user acquisition in the consumer ecosystem.

FINANCIALS
Revenue: Rebound employs a freemium business model8 for generating revenue. Once the user hits 50
total sent and received messages in a 30-day period, they are prompted for a $1 in app purchase to
continue using the application. Rebound plans to capture revenue from users who are very much
invested into the app and who will easily pay $1 per month to continue using the application. Using
Apples in-app payment SDK, purchases can be made quickly, with ease, through the tap of a thumb or
the input of a password. Rebound also provides minimal advertisements in the user interface for
additional revenue. Advertising revenue comes from Google Mobile Ads SDK integrated into the
application.
Expenses: Anticipated costs include the one-time Apple iOS Developer fee ($99), and projected server
costs beginning at $120/quarter (linearly increasing with the amount of total users). Marketing costs are
directed towards Google Adwords advertising and Facebook mobile advertising.
The founder is not paid a salary. Profit is reinvested into the business.
Download & In-app Purchase Projections
2016

2017

Q4

Q1

Q2

2018

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Quarterly downloads

100

150

200

250

400

800

1200

1600

2000

Total downloads
Proj. in-app
purchases

100

250

450

700

1100

1900

3100

4700

6700

12

24

36

48

60

Advertising & Usage Projections

2016
Q4

2017
Q1

Q2

2018

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Daily active users

50

125

225

350

550

950

1550

2350

3350

Daily ad revenue

$0.80

$2.00

$3.60

$5.60

$8.80

$15.20

$24.80

$37.60

$53.60

$71.20

$178.00

$320.40

$498.40

$783.20

$1,352.80

$2,207.20

$3,346.40

$4,770.40

Quarterly ad revenue

Rebound

Projected Income Statement

2016
Q4

2017
Q1

Q2

2018

Q3

Q4

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

Revenue
In app purchases

$9.00

$15.00

$18.00

$24.00

$36.00

$72.00

$108.00

$144.00

$180.00

Mobile advertising
Total Quarterly
Revenue

$71.20

$178.00

$320.40

$498.40

$783.20

$1,352.80

$2,207.20

$3,346.40

$4,770.40

$80.20

$193.00

$338.40

$522.40

$819.20

$1,424.80

$2,315.20

$3,490.40

$4,950.40

$120.00

$156.00

$202.80

$263.64

$342.73

$445.55

$579.22

$752.98

$978.88

Miscellaneous

$99.00

$60.00

$69.00

$79.35

$91.25

$104.94

$120.68

$138.78

$159.60

Marketing
Total Quarterly
Expenses

$50.00

$55.00

$60.50

$66.55

$73.21

$109.81

$164.71

$247.07

$370.60

$269.00

$271.00

$332.30

$409.54

$507.19

$660.30

$864.61

$1,138.83

$1,509.08

-$188.80

-$78.00

$6.10

$112.86

$312.01

$764.50

$1,450.59

$2,351.57

$3,441.32

Expenses
Server costs

Net Profit

Figure 6
Download & In-app Purchase Projections, Advertising & Usage Projections, and Projected Income Statement

Assumptions:
3% of daily active users purchase the 30-day in-app unlimited usage plan.
In-app purchases are priced at $1 for a 30-day period.
Daily active users is calculated by 50% of total downloads.
Daily ad revenue is calculated from 0.016 of daily active users. Projections are derived calculations
from mobile content and advertising specialist Ryan Morel9.
Figure 7
Quarterly downloads
compared to daily active
user. Quarterly
downloads represent
amount of downloads per
quarter, not total
downloads per date. Daily
active users are 50% of
total downloads.

Rebound

Figure 8
Quarterly downloads
compared to quarterly
profit. Losses occur until
2017 Q2. Profit increases
drastically with quarterly
downloads due to
increase in in-app
purchases an advertising
revenue.

Figure 9
Quarterly expenses
broken down by type.
Server costs account for
the majority expenses;
server expenses increase
with quarterly downloads
and daily active users.
Miscellaneous fees
generally stay constant
with the marketing
budget expanding at a
rate of 10% each quarter.

NEXT STEPS
As of spring of 2016, Rebound is still in early planning stages. The founder is enrolled in a combined
Foster School of Business and Computer Science and Engineering course, Software Entrepreneurship.
Upon completion of the 2016 spring quarter (June 12th), iOS development begins, with approximately 20
hours a week devoted to the project. Development concludes September 25th, 2016 and the application
will launch on Apples iOS App Store. The founder will maintain the application while enrolled during his
senior year at the University of Washington.

SAFE HARBOR
The biggest issue Rebound faces is the algorithm design. The iOS application development is not a
problem, as the founder is well-versed in software engineering due to his coursework at the University of
Washington and through the Udacity iOS Nanodegree. The idle algorithm requires an extensive

Rebound

knowledge of advanced statistical and data science skills (machine learning, multivariate calculus, etc.).
During the summer 2016 development period, the founder will dive deep into this topic in order to
ensure the algorithm build can continue as planned.
Secondly, Rebounds algorithm heavily relies on usage analytics from the users device. In order to collect
this data, users must grant Rebound permission to run in the background. Running in the background
allows Rebound to collect analytics, such as location, crucial to computing an accurate reminding time. If
the user does not allow access, Rebound is essentially turned into a defunct application on the users
device without differentiation from another messaging application. In order to counter this possibility,
the user is prompted with a pop-up to provide access during the onboarding process. This pop-up
contains essential information informing them how important it is to give Rebound full access to
background data in order to ensure full functionality and reminding precision. A small majority of users
may refuse to allow access to privacy concerns, but this sample, especially among the millennial
generation, is small enough to not make a difference in user acquisition

LEADERSHIP

Dylan Babbs
Dylan Babbs is a third-year Economics and Entrepreneurship student at the
University of Washington. Dylan is interested in mobile social applications and
hopes to be a product manager for a Seattle tech startup upon graduation.
Dylan has experience in iOS software engineering, UX design, and product
management. With real-world tech industry and entrepreneurship experience,
Dylan has the technical and business skills needed to launch this application.

APPENDIX

1

The Psychology of Sharing, The New York Times Customer Insight Group
https://www.sinch.com/products/verification/
3
https://www.ampproject.org/
4
https://instantarticles.fb.com/
5
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/12/agents-on-messenger/
6
https://www.theinformation.com/apple-opening-siri-developing-echo-rival
7
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/acquired/id1050462261
8
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-the-freemium-business-model-2011-4
9
http://ryanmorel.com/mobile-advertising-calculator/
2

Rebound

10