StartUs Presents: Appwoodoo

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Today's edition of StartUs Presents features Appwoodoo, a tool for app developers to use on their Android or iOS devices. Find out what it's all about here!

Describe Appwoodoo in 50 or less words.

Appwoodoo is a tool for app developers to add push notification and remote settings to their Android or iOS apps. It’s open source, lightweight, and, quite unlike our competition, we won’t track the apps’ users at all.

Why did you decide to pursue your own dreams rather than someone else’s?

We know no other way! Richard started working on his first company still in high school, almost 15 years ago, right while the first internet boom was happening. Tamas also joined in during the University years, and though that company doesn’t exist today, we still keep on bringing new ideas to life.

In 7 years from now: How did your startup change the world?

Even the iPhone is only that old! There is almost no way to tell how exactly Appwoodoo will change in another seven, but looking back to the past decade, we can have a good guess. What’s sure is that we are on the mission to create better apps, better products – and better tools for creating better apps, down the road.

In what ways do you measure your success and how do you make sure you don’t lose track?

The feedback we received so far is fantastic, and the word-of-mouth too seems to work in our advantage. If there is one thing we want to improve, it’s to listen to our fantastic developer community a little closer. Our friends and clients did a good job in providing honest feedback, and we try to keep updating the product for them.

Describe your typical working day from coming to the office to leaving it.

Every day and week is completely different. We have two core elements that are unique to Appwoodoo though: one is, that we are a remote team, and therefore our product meetings tend to be quick, down-to-the-point stand-ups – mostly daily, in development phases. And second, we work on a multitude of apps besides Appwoodoo, which gives us the opportunity to experience different teams and have a great understanding of the state-of-the-art tools they can use.

Already pivoted? Did customers use the tool like you imagined it in the beginning?

This field dictates a crazy pace. When we started out, we were focusing only on remote control, to make AB testing easier. Now that pretty much everyone has an Android or iOS app out there, the competition for people’s attention is raising – and in that battle, well-timed push notifications are a worthy weapon.

Bootstrapped or financed: What fuels your startup now and what will in the future?

We have been bootstrapping with Appwoodoo so far, so we didn’t need financial support. Having said that, we can’t be more thankful for our developer friends and first customers who were using our service and give us feedback along the way. Without them, Appwoodoo would be just another techie product in our drawer.

With ferocious competition and a booming trend to build new companies: How do you make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle?

There’s already quite some competition around, and those companies have great products – but they seem to miss our core values. According to our vision, programmers should be in full control over the code and the information that gets stored about their users. More and more developers seem to share these values, and as of today, our competitors won’t have a suitable product for them.

What do you look for in team members?

We are all creative folks who love to discover the world, solve riddles and work on difficult problems. We also tend to go for small workations, when we discover an area or city, work from cafes and play with new technologies for a few days. This is clearly not for everyone, but our team members tend to not only like but require this sort of lifestyle.

Why would a talent join your team?

At Appwoodoo, we believe that what we do will make the world a slightly better place: we enable developers create better products, while keeping their users safe. Oh, and we are quite some knowledgable hackers too! So Appwoodoo is quite some place for someone who wants to become better in what they do – while being proud of what they do.

What was your most memorable moment so far?

Being one of the winners at Betapitch in Vienna was especially precious for us, for at least two reasons. First, Appwoodoo is an extremely techie product that is very hard to explain to a lesser-techie crowd. And more importantly: the other teams had great products as well, and it’s always great to win a prize where the competition is hard.

What advice would you give fellow founders for their startup?

Just get started! Appwoodoo was only a few lines of code, a server and an admin page when we decided to make it to be a product. Early feedback means that you only develop the features people need and want to use – and there is no easier way to make money than by not spending it.

 

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