Launch This Year opened up today, and VentureBeat has 2,000 special invite codes to give away. More on that at the bottom of this post.

Ooomf is an online app discovery platform that also helps app developers make and find users for their apps. Now the company is taking the next logical step: a social step-by-step guide to helping budding entrepreneurs make their mobile development dreams a reality.

“There’s a big problem in mobile,” Ooomf CEO Mikael Cho told me last week. “4,000 new apps are launched every single day. Our goal is to empower the next generation of creators who are interested in building mobile apps … and help them make a sustainable mobile business.”

So Ooomf, which graduated from the FounderFuel accelerator in May 2012 and raised $500,000 in seed funding last year, is planning on providing all the tools developers need not just to build their apps, but also to make money from them.

Launch This Year is a guide and resource kit that includes a launch website, a sign-up page, a press kit, and tools to manage your first users and testers. The site will also put you in a cohort of developers, so you’ve got a virtual team to turn to for help and encouragement. And the site will help with the app store submission process and give you analytics for your app.

“It’s like a personal trainer for the app store,” Cho says. “You pick a day that you want to launch, and we’ll give you a guaranteed step-by-step guide to launching. And if you’re falling behind, we’ll let you know.

In a way, it’s like Codecademy, except that instead of learning to code, you’re learning to build a mobile business. Cho says there are many developers who have built three to four apps that can then sustain a living for them, but there are many more who are capable of building apps and have not yet.

In addition, Launch This Year allows developers to build a community of users who participate in the development of the app — a core Ooomf competency. Not sure which icon to use? Ask the user community you’ve built with Ooomf’s tools. Wondering if the user interface should include custom gestures? See what actual users think.

Perhaps the best part is positive peer pressure:

“You’ll see other people moving along and see things that they’ve achieved,” Cho says. “Which will make you think that other people are doing this and that and oh, I should catch up!”

Invite code for early access:

The site is open for initial users right now, but you’ll need an invite code. Use “venturebeat” to get immediate access.

Image credit: Ooomf

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

How do you promote your app before it’s even launched? Or create buzz around just one more app in a sea of 600,000 others?

One option is Ooomf, the mobile app discovery platform that helps developers find early adopters, invite them into the app creation process, and build a bridge out of app store oblivion. And while Ooomf is all about helping app developers, the Montreal-based company just got a little kick in the seat of its own pants, cashing in $500,000 in seed funding from Real Ventures and BDC Venture Capital, and launching into public beta today.

Source: John Koetsier

Mikael Cho at Grow Conference

I met co-founder and chief executive Mikael Cho at Grow 2012 a few weeks ago, and he’s passionate about helping developers find early users. He likens Ooof to Kickstarter, in that the service creates a bond between app developers and early users — and builds on that as a bridge to commercial success.

The service itself allows app users to find the best existing apps via a curated list of categorized apps.

Or, for apps that have not yet been released, Ooomf gives users a peek into coming releases, which they can request early access to, or get more information on.

Once they’ve become part of an extended team of beta users, developers can start asking questions and gather data. For example, developers might wonder which icon is the best, or what tagline most succinctly captures the essence of their app.

Through Ooomf, early adopters can tell developers their opinions, and developers can then make decisions on future directions with a little more input. Currently, that’s happening via the Ooomf website, but the Ooomf app for iOS will shortly make that available on mobile.

Other app discovery platforms exist, including the Facebook App Center, AppFlow on iOS, YouAppi on both iOS and Android, and MapSaurus on Android.

But I haven’t yet seen an app discovery engine that allows users to become part of the app development team.

Now Ooomf has $500,000 to prove that this is the secret sauce that will drive app discovery and marketing to new heights.

Image credits: Ooomf