July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

AppGratis, the app-discovery engine Apple banned from the iOS App Store last week, has started an online petition against Apple that has gathered over half a million signatures in just a few short hours.

And thousands more are adding their names every few minutes.

Apple yanked AppGratis after first approving its iPhone app late last year and its iPad app just weeks ago, saying that AppGratis violated several of the App Store guidelines. AppGratis vocally disagreed and has been trying to have a conversation with Apple about the ban — unsuccessfully so far.

So the French company, which has raised $13.5 million in venture capital, decided to go public with the fight, posting the petition early this morning. In it, the company says “it knows” it has not violated Apple’s guidelines and that Apple customers should have the final say.

And, of course, that Apple should “think different:”

Last week, on April the 5th, Apple decided to ban AppGratis from its App Store.

Because more than 12 million people in the world use AppGratis, this story has been all around the planet.

In an official statement to the Wall Street Journal on april the 8th, Apple said we violated two of its iOS Guidelines.

But we know we haven’t.

And we have written our side of the story here.

Today we believe it’s you, Apple’s customers, who should have the final word.

Today, you can speak up.

Tell Apple that you think different.

Whether the petition will be successful or not is hard to predict. Apple hates negative publicity like this, and going public is often the kiss of death for developers who have conflicts with Apple. But some have succeeded, as when Apple backed down from refusing to allow Lightning and 30-pin charging connectors on a single charge device after almost killing the POP portable power Kickstarter project.

Over half a million signatures in such a short time is a strong signal to Apple that its users — and the wider online community — are interested in AppGratis being able to live on in the App Store.

“We expect much much more in the next days,” AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat told PocketGamer. ”We needed a strong vote of confidence from our users to keep calm and carry on. And we got it.”

Interestingly, AppGratis’ choice of petition formats is very cleverly selected to ensure at least some form of business continuity if Apple does not relent in this case. Instead of using an online platform like Change.org, AppGratis is asking you to send an email to save@appgrat.is. While there’s no wording to that effect, this would appear to be building up a database of future email subscribers who could be asked to opt into a regular AppGratis email highlighting a free app of the day.

We’ve asked Apple for comments and will update this post with any response.

Image credit: AppGratis founder Simon Dawlat/Facebook

Startups often say their technology will change the world — a claim that seems wildly optimistic at best.

But step into the San Francisco offices of Change.org, the online petitioning site that is arming ordinary people with the tools to start revolutions, and you’ll be swept up by the mission. You won’t be alone. The movement is about 25 million people strong and is growing at a rate of 2 million memberships per month.

Can an individual spark a revolution?

Governments and corporations, they say, will be forced to listen if hit by thousands of signatures on Change.org, an army of Twitter and Facebook fans, and a few well-placed newspaper articles.

I meet Ben Rattray, the company’s charismatic CEO (pictured above), in his corner office. He’s weary from frequent travel: we joke about the “networking opportunities” during the red-eye flight from New York to San Francisco on Sundays. It’s typically jam-packed with tech execs returning from East Coast trips.

Directly behind his chair, a single photograph is framed in an otherwise sparsely decorated room. It’s the face of Molly Katchpole, the 22-year-old nanny who took on Bank of America. In November 2011, Katchpole’s victory was affirmed when 300,000 people signed her petition and the bank dropped its new $5 monthly debit card fee.

This is one of many recent campaigns that caught the attention of the global media. On Change.org, a trio of high school girls secured CNN’s Cindy Crowley as the first female presidential debate moderator in 20 years. One of the site’s members rallied hundreds of thousands of people to put pressure on the South African government to crack down on “corrective rape,” a term used to describe the horrific practice of a man raping a lesbian with the aim of ‘turning’ her heterosexual.

Something has shifted in recent years. Political activism is no longer the realm of the youthful and naive. Obama’s election and re-election were fueled by social media, and protests against SOPA and PIPA were staged on Twitter. Social media has created a culture of transparency that is making a site like Change.org truly effective.

“The strong thesis we hold is that people aren’t born apathetic, they are trained to be,” said Rattray.

“If you show them that their voice matters, you can radically change behavior.”

The company is hiring at a rate of two people per week and forecasts revenues of $15 million this year.

The blurry line between profit-making and change-making

And this is where Change.org has faced some criticism. Some say the company has crossed the line between change-making and profit-making; Clay Johnson, author of “The Information Diet” told the Wall Street Journal he has “huge problems” with the site as it is a “lead-generation business disguised as a social-change organization for whoever is willing to pay them for the email addresses.” He continued, “It’s dangerous to monetize ‘change’ because there’s an economic incentive to sensationalize.”

Certified as a B Corporation, the company makes its money through their cause-based ad model. For instance, the World Wildlife Fund might place a sponsored ad on a campaign that supports the environment, or might pay for Change.org to promote an existing campaign. It’s not dissimilar to sponsored tweets or sponsored links on Google.

Rattray claims the company is less concerned with the profit motive than with maximizing impact. To deflect critics, he uses the example of an ongoing engineering project to build a mobile offering that can be deployed in developing countries. This is not intended to make money.

He says Change.org, as a revenue-generating and angel-funded business has been able to offer its employees a competitive salary and benefits. Meanwhile, nonprofits are struggling to hire and maintain talent.

Why work at Change.org?

This week, the company brought on a high-profile CTO, Tom Hughes-Croucher, to lead the engineering efforts. The new hire has a strong reputation in the open-source community, and has worked as a technical evangelist at Joyent and Yahoo.

On the engineering roadmap is a plan to incorporate machine learning so members will be matched instantly to a petition based on their pre-existing interests.

“I’m really excited to be starting at Change.org because I know we have such an amazing opportunity to have an impact on the world here as well as some really interesting engineering challenges that come at the scale we operate,” Hughes-Croucher said.

Still, the company has not been able to lure quality engineers that are interested in a sky-high salary and large chunk of equity. “Eighty percent really care about the equity upside and a massive exit,” Rattray told me. “For the 20 percent that care about the mission, we are the fastest growing company in this space.”

The company has openings in communications and marketing, business development, customer support, and engineering. Check out the full list here.

“Startup culture” is a new series that highlights what it’s really like to work at a Bay Area startup. We’ll be profiling a startup every two weeks. Please send your suggestions for the most rockin’ office spaces, startup happy hours, or company perks via email (christina@venturebeat.com) or Twitter (@chrissyfarr). 

In their efforts to bring disruptive new transportation services to urban residents, ride-sharing startups may be fighting a losing battle.

In the face of hefty citations, Lyft, the mobile app that lets you order a moustache-adorned car to pick you up in a matter of minutes, is rallying the San Francisco’s tech scene to speak up in its defense.

Today, the California Public Utilities Commission issued $20,000 fines to Uber, Lyft and SideCar for illegally operating. Among the charges: a lack of evidence of property damage insurance coverage and evidence of workers’ compensation insurance, and failure to enroll drivers in the Department of Motor Vehicles Employer Pull Notice Program.

It didn’t take long for the community to rally, and urge the authorities to stand down. An email signed by John Zimmer and Logan Green, cofounders of Lyft, has been making the rounds, popping into my inbox twice in the space of an hour.

In the email, the founders made clear that they responded to the CPUC “immediately” and had a positive follow-up meeting.

They also claimed to have gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to their liability insurance. The CPUC requires that licensed sedans carry $750,000 of liability coverage, but Lyft implemented a $1 million excess liability policy.

In their own words:

We respect the CPUC’s role in protecting public safety, and we share safety as our top priority. Lyft’s driver screening process uses criteria based on criminal background checks and DMV record checks that are more strict than any other form of transportation. We also have a higher bar for insurance. We will continue to work with the CPUC to ensure our shared goals for consumer safety are met.

The email pleads for the support of anyone with a vested interest in keeping the sharing economy alive. “Peer-to-peer transportation is worth defending and we stand by our community of mustache-sporting Lyfters,” it reads. The authors link to a petition started by a member of Change.org, the online petitioning site that is frequently leveraged by Uber users in its uphill battle against metro transit authorities.

According to the CPCU, startups like Lyft and SideCar are still not in compliance. “If something happens to a passenger while in transport with Lyft, SideCar, or Uber, it is the responsibility of the CPUC to have done everything in its power to ensure that the company was operating safely according to state law,” Brigadier General (CA) Jack Hagan, Director of the CPUC’s Consumer Protection and Safety Division said in a statement.

“That means that the company has insurance to cover an accident and that its employees are protected and are suitable drivers. I look forward to working with these companies to bring them into compliance with our safety laws,” Hagan added.

Top image // Christina Farr, VentureBeat