Appspiration

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 skil...

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 ...

In my first post , I mentioned how I got started with the first App idea. This was pretty much the first step in my long entrepreneurial journey which was to follow. I just didn't know it back then! The year is 2008 and the first App "iChess" for Java/Symbian was almost ready. It was time to get it in the hands of the chess users out there. iChess Java - ready for launch! How do you know when the app is good enough for a public release? The User Interface (UI) and the User eXperience (UX) was decent for the first version and I like to make sure these two things are well in place before any release. Being a user myself, I knew the UX was fine. Being a chess player myself helped. And a decent UI made sure users don't fall off immediately. This means no outright spelling mistakes, mis-aligned items, messy layout or glitches. I have followed these two principles all these years. Never release anything till I am myself satisfied with the look and feel of what I am making...