KASHOO Accounting, all-in on the iPad. / The small business accounting space is crowded and loud. You have offerings that are free, some are web-based; some desktop. But from our perspective being “iPad-first” is our differentiation.

From Tab Times we read: We all know the tablet data. Apple sold nearly 20 million iPads in 2Q2013 alone. iPad growth over first 12 quarters is three times that of what the iPhone was.

Mary Meeker’s recent Internet Trends report was unabashedly tablets, tablets, tablets. And it’s likely these trends will keep hockey-sticking as more and more population segments - from sales professionals to elementary school teachers - continue to adopt the tablet as a primary device. Work and life as we know it continue to migrate towards anytime, anywhere. Always connected, always on.

Given this scenario, we, a startup that builds simple cloud accounting software for small business, are all-in on tablets, specifically the iPad. We’ve made the conscious decision to make the web app the companion to the iPad app, not the other way around as is the norm.
So in a way, you could say we’ve bet the farm on it (aka, convinced investors that “mobile first,” albeit hard, is the right decision). How is that possible, you might be asking? Just what is the rationale? Let me explain...

First of all, it was hard

Convincing a team - let alone a board - that staking our future on a brand new platform (we started iPad app development one month after the device was unveiled) was no easy task. Why not the iPhone? Why a native iPad app versus, say, an HTML5 app? Why prioritize an iPad app over the already revenue-generating web app?

These are just a small percentage of the questions that we had to answer. On top of that, going “iPad first” doesn’t mean we simply had to move the web app to a tablet. It took a complete redesign and a new way of thinking about the user experience.

But at the end of the day, we felt bullish that that’s where our target customer, the small business owners of the world, was headed. We also felt bullish on the international distribution and new monetization models afforded by the App Store. Once we navigated that decision map, we were all in. And that’s an important point: for a company out there trying to figure out your primary platform, don’t just define your customer. You need to anticipate the evolution of their needs.

For us, we saw small business owners adopt smartphones at breakneck speeds. That was a key indicator that the iPad, a device that lends itself to “bigger” small business tasks thanks to features like location awareness, new UI model gestures and powerful cameras, would experience the same adoption, if not more so. We’re we sure? No. But can you ever be?

Perma-connectivity

Let’s stick with this idea of anticipating future customer need. Aside from the fact that tablets are making exponential inroads into the small business community, it’s their always-on connectivity that is changing the way small business owners live and work. It’s the “and” there that’s important. The idea of the 9-to-5 small business owner is antiquated. Work and personal are increasingly merged. And we say that’s a good thing as it affords balance and productivity provided there’s discipline.

Tablets - and the cloud-based apps that can run core business functions - are making this possible. Need to invoice but are on vacation? A few taps on your accounting app and you’re back to reading Flipboard poolside in minutes. Need to tune in to an online meeting while packing lunches in the morning? Thoroughly doable with a tablet. A tablet’s smaller screen makes the user focus on specific tasks. And therein lies the solution one of small business software’s eternal problems: making it easy to get data in the system.

It is this ever-growing perma-connectivity and the greying of work and personal that tablet app developers should pay attention. We see it happening in our customer base - and we anticipate more of it. We also see them migrating away from the stationary desktop (and its even more stationary software). That’s part of why we’re hitching our wagon to the iPad. Which tees up the next point...

Differentiation

The small business accounting space is crowded and loud. You have offerings that are free (with ads). Some are web-based; some desktop. The list goes on. But from our perspective (as you’ve probably gauged by now), being “iPad-first” is our differentiation. That’s what where we’ve planted our flag - and we did so early. In fact, we made this bet on a rather unknown platform: we started building the Kashoo iPad app one month after the device was unveiled.

But that’s just our “all in on the iPad” story. There are bound to be other “how we chose our primary platform” stories out there - tablet or not. Share yours in the comments.

Jim Secord is the CEO of Kashoo - a simple cloud-based accounting app.