Appspiration

I n my  previous post , I briefly mentioned what led me to quit my full-time salaried job with Motorola and jump into the world of entrepreneurship. The year is 2013 and I was starting off as a Solopreneur. I was skilled in developing Android apps as well as the technologies required to build a backend (server). But to grow the business, more had to be done. This is what I ended up doing, step by step: iOS Apps with no skills By this time, iOS was already a force to reckon with. So expanding the Apps to the iOS platform was the next logical step. For that I initially outsourced the App-work to a consultancy from Pune. After that relationship gracefully ended, I got a freelancer from Romania whom I found via freelancer.com . Interestingly, I was his first client on that website! I believed in his work even though he had no prior experience or reviews to show on that website. Hiring full-time engineers A year and a half later, I started hiring full-time Android and iOS engineers and we

In my previous post I wrote about how the Apps got me a job in Motorola . Now work on the Motorola MOTOACTV smart watch was going on well. On the personal front, I had also released 3 Android chess apps on the Play Store (no iOS apps yet, since this was still a side hustle using tech skills which I knew). Meeting Anand The year was 2012, and a team from Motorola with me as the captain, decided to participate in a Corporate Chess tournament in the month of July. The event consisted of team matches as well as an individual tournament. The highlight of the event was also a chance to play a game with none other than the then world champion Viswanathan Anand, provided one finishes in the top 10. There was also an option for a dinner with him (paid entry!). Although the team did not fare well, in the individual event I finished 4th, which meant I was eligible to play Anand! What a moment it was for me, not only to personally see the world chess champion face to face but try my chess skills a

This week, I take a break from writing about my own entrepreneurship journey. Instead, here is an inspiring journey of Ragunathan Pattabiraman, founder of kuyil.org ,  who quit his full time job to help his musician brother make apps for Carnatic music lovers! Ragu found his niche in Carnatic music and went on to develop 3 apps along with his brother. All together, the apps now have ~200,000 downloads, and all organically! I sent some questions to Ragu via email and he kindly replied with in-depth answers talking about his family and journey. Sit back and get inspired! Asim: What was your motivation to develop these Apps ? Ragu: My main motivation was to build something for my brother. He is a musician who studied carnatic music. He is also my favourite composer (You can listen to his old album   here ). I was working at a software company. We are all one joint family. Financially we were fine and there was no pressure on him to earn. I was very clear not to pressurize him so that he

The year is 2009. By this time , I had already released 2 Chess apps out there in the wild. The 2nd app, a simple chess database reader: 'PGN Reader' I kept releasing more updates to the Apps. Most of it was based on user feedback. In an upcoming post I will talk more in-depth on how listening to customers and quickly responding to grievances has improved our Apps and also many 1 star ratings have changed to 4 or 5 stars! Meanwhile, I returned back to India to continue the same project which I was working on while in the US. Work had become quite monotonous by then. Coincidentally, a colleague of mine mentioned about his friend in Motorola and that they were looking for Android developers. Till then, my main skills were in developing entreprise apps using Java/J2EE. But since Android primarily used Java, I decided to give this opportunity a shot! Android was just picking up and there were not many Android engineers in Bangalore. In the tech interview, I showed the interviewer

Here is an inspiring story of Monisha Misra which I recently heard. She started selling Food boards during the pandemic in the Boston area. But what is notable is that she started small, one step at a time and managed this besides her full-time day job! Photo of food board: www.boardsbymo.com After 9 months, it had grown to $100k in sales. Demand for food boards grew and she started getting lot of questions! Ultimate she started with online classes and could also afford to hire another Chef to assist her! She gives some nice Instagram tips too (using all the hashtags, how she tags other food brands etc) Listen to her on The Side Hustle Podcast:  The Side Hustle Show: 434: $100k in Sales in 9 Months: Instagram, Salami, and Fun If you wish to download the mp3 audio file, click here . #WomanPower #WomanEntrepreneur #Inspiring