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The Story of Hatch Apps : The App To Build Apps

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There are rare cases when your honesty and realization of your fundamental duty would have paid you well. Yes, you might have received appreciation from people, but did it become the biggest business idea for you ever?

This is what happened to the Param Jaggi, who is the co-founder of Hatch App. Param Jaggi is of Indian descent, who dropped out of Vanderbilt University at the age of 19, to work for his own self. He was a brilliant student and even invented EcoTube when he was in school at the age of 16. The EcoTube was built under a science project, that used the algae photosynthesis to reduce carbon emissions from cars. The device worked well and Jaggi patented the device in his name. Jaggi’s father is an engineer and wanted him to become a doctor. But as Jaggi was already working for a better cause, i.e., saving the environment, his family never interfered. Jaggi also sold his innovative bio-fuel preparation method to a Fortune 500 company.

AmeliaParam
Image Source: thewholetruthbooth.com

During the same time, he also developed an interest in web development, and later, when he turned 19, he decided to work as a freelancer, as he was already developing web and mobile apps and was earning enough. At that time he was charging $10K to $30 to build simple apps and that too only in a time equal to a weekend. For Jaggi, it had become quite easy to copy paste the similar code in the background of each web app and finish the project within a week. This fact made him think that he was charging way too much for delivering the ‘almost same’ code to every other client. “What’s fundamentally wrong with the software development industry, especially custom development systems, is that they price out products based on your price elasticity”, said Jaggi in an interview.

On the other hand, the other co-founder of Hatch Apps, Amelia Friedman, was also an entrepreneur who started her own business when she was still in college. She was a student of Brown University and was running college-level programs in different languages. At the time she completed her graduate degree, her program had reached to 7 cities, with over 32 different programs.

Founding Hatch Apps

Jaggi was a 19-years old eco-innovator, and Friedman was a self-made entrepreneur. The two got a chance to attend the Halcyon Incubator in Washington, DC, where the two met each other, the very first time. The meeting included the discussion over many things including how Jaggi wanted to bring price stability to the app building industry. And the idea of Hatch Apps was formed.

Jaggi’s plan was clear. He wanted to create a platform, upon which people could build their own apps without paying extra money. In 2015, the two launched Hatch Apps and started working on the basic plan. At the same time, the need for extra funds arisen. So they developed the 2016 Election game in just three days and were able to raise $100,000 for Hatch Apps within a few weeks.

The Hatch Apps is one of its kind, where a user can build apps by just dragging and dropping the elements, without actually knowing the coding behind those elements. During the testing of the app, Jaggi built the first app on Hatch Apps, just in three days even having the deadline of five days.

In March 2017, this software company raised $1.3M in angel funding to launch their product. The company has a team of more than twenty people and charges only $1K a month for app development. For $2K to $5K, customers can implement specific customizations and add-ons.

Jaggi is working as the CEO of Hatch Apps, and Friedman holds the position of the COO of the company. Jaggi has also got his name listed twice in the Forbes “30 Under 30”.

The company is still managing its ways in the market and slowly is getting ahead to earn more consumers. For now, the idea is really innovative and one of its kind, so the future of the company looks quite bright.

Zipcar : The Success Story of One of the Oldest Car-rental Services

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Zipcar has a history even before the car-renting businesses were not even that common. Built by two moms, the idea at the time was unique, and it was their passion that made it successful in just a few months.

Zipcar is an almost 2 decades old company, founded in the year 2000, by Antje Danielson, a Harvard geochemist and Robin Chase, a stay-at-home mom and an MIT business school graduate. The two ladies met each other at their children’s kindergarten, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both were struggling financially, as Chase had left her job due to the birth of her first child and Danielson was the only working member in her family.

zipcar
Image Source: wright.edu

But as the time was passing both of them wanted to make use of their studies, and as a business graduate, Chase has expressed her desire to start a business with Danielson. Danielson was on the same track and had studied about Switzerland’s Mobility Cooperative, and shared the idea of starting a similar technology based car-rental company, in the US, with Chase. Chase also liked the idea, but it was a big project that included a huge risk. So both talked to their husbands and got the approval for the business.

Finally, in January 2000, both started their car-rental business, Zipcar. Zipcar provided the automobile reservations to its members through charging them a monthly or annual fee. Before incorporating the company, the two had already raised investments for its launch of around $75,000 in startup financing. After they launched the startup, Chase held the position of the president of Zipcar and Danielson became the vice president of the company.

The first rental car from Zipcar went onto the roads in May 2000, and in just three-four months it registered over 600 customers for the service. The company was doing well, but the two co-founders were not going along too well. In 2001, Robin Chase fired Danielson, after Chase petitioned Zipcar’s board for the ability to make hiring and firing decisions without consulting them.

The fire of the co-founder did not impact the company much, and it kept on expanding in New York City and Washington DC. Even the company was expanding, it was unable to secure more funding, and as a result, the board of the company replaced Chase as the CEO of the company with Scott Griffith. Within two years the company was able to raise $10 million in funding led by Benchmark Capital. In the same year, a new office was opened in San Francisco, following by another office in Toronto in the next year. The establishment of Toronto led to the fastest growing market in Toronto for Zipcar.

In late 2006, the company reached London, and in 2007, Zipcar opened an office in Vancouver. In the same year, in the month of October, the company had a merger with Flexcar. After the merger, the company earned over 225,000 members, double the number of the member it had in the previous year.

In June 2009, the company launched its iPhone app, with the features like honking the horn and unlocking some Zipcars. In April 2010, Zipcar acquired the London-based car-sharing club Streetcar.

In 2013, Avis Budget Group acquired Zipcar. In 2014, the company opened its offices in Houston, Dallas TX regions, Greater Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario. In the same year, the company also extended to Paris, France and Madrid, Spain. Zipcar also launched its floating car-sharing service in Brussels, Belgium, in 2016.

Zipcar offers the car rental service for over fifty different car models, even including the luxury car models like Audi and BMW. The company headquarters still remains in Boston, Massachusetts and it has raised to over 500 employees.

The reason behind the success has been that it started through word-of-mouth promotion and had invested well in the technology. The business idea was simple and was based on customer feedback. So in the past two decades, it has grown in a phenomenal way. Even it has been more than a decade for the two co-founders left the company, Zipcar had its own success story. And, the success story of Zipcar shows us that keeping things simple and targeting customer satisfaction is the key to success.

Simon Nixon: The Founder of ‘MoneySuperMarket’

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Today’s market brings so much to its consumers. It’s hard to decide what to choose and why because there is a lot of companies out there selling their products and services. We get to see so many products with almost the same quality and the same prices, making it difficult what to choose. But with every problem comes a solution and for this problem, Moneysupermarket gives you ‘the’ proper solution, giving answers to all your questions. Simon Nixon, the man who gave birth to the company, has a story to be heard which says that following someone’s steps may not always be the right way to success.

Moneysupermarket.com stands out to be a British price comparison website. The work that the site does is that it helps you to compare prices. You can compare prices on a wide range of products be it an insurance or a loan. The company’s aim is to help households save money.

“This ambition is perfectly suited to the times in which we live, given the financial uncertainty that exists at home. We aim to help by shining a light on the best ways, households can take control of their finances. Our objective is to offer consistently competitive prices and deliver a great visitor experience, so that customers find what they want, and think of us first for their future needs”, itself, the site says.

simonnixon
Image Source: standard.co.uk

It all started back when Simon Nixon found his university education really boring. “I hated it. It was boring,” said Simon when asked why he dropped out of his university. He looked into the market the lacks and gaps, and where he could use his mind to fill them up. Eventually, he found out that there were no websites or journals to compare the prices of the products out in the market. He thought to himself, ‘If I didn’t do this, who else will?’ He started a journal-ish thing that had best-but tables in it. Initially, he lent them out for free but as the magazine gained popularity, he started charging 11 Pounds for a monthly subscription. His business became so efficient that only after two years, he started earning more than 10,000 pounds from that magazine only. Nixon named the group working with him as ‘Mortgage 2000.’

He, along with his friend Duncan Cameron, launched an internet site called ‘Moneysupermarket.com’ which updated itself according to the market daily. The site came out to be a huge success as the internet was blooming all over the world and the UK was no exception. Since then, the site only grew and never saw a backdrop. They kept on increasing their range of products that could be compared.

It was 2004 when Simon Nixon launched Travelsupermarket.com. The site was the same as the Moneysupermarket. The difference was that the users could now compare travel related products too. However, Duncan and Simon fell out as the attention diverted away from Mortgage 2000. In 2007, he (Duncan) sold his shares to Simon for 162 Million Pounds. All these years, Duncan stayed as a silent business partner.

Some of the major sales growth of the company was from 2000 to 2002, where the site jumped from 5.4 million to 13.6 million Pounds. The company was listed in London Stock Exchange, and the site was valued at a massive amount of 1 Billion Pounds, at the time of its Initial Public Offering!

In 2009, Simon stepped down from the position of CEO, with Peter Plumb becoming the new CEO. Simon is fond of luxuries. Also, he admits that he doesn’t like doing business for a long time. “I’m scared of doing nothing,” said Simon, during an interview. Simon has a worth of $1.1 Billion. Even after having so much wealth and businesses, Simon prefers to stay quiet when it comes to his personal life, and there are very little details known about it. Now, he invests in different businesses across the world, which gives him access to travel to different parts of the world too.

Simon Nixon, the founder of Moneysupermarket.com shows us that it only takes true passion to reach your goal. Sometimes, hard work may not count up as much as passion does. Also, it isn’t required that you follow a guided roadmap to success, instead, take your own route and make a path of success out of it.

Ubisoft : The Journey of the Leading Video Games Company; From a Small Village to a Global Market

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Video games have seen a great transformation since its commencement. It all started with old 3D tic-tac-toe and Moon Landing games, and now, we see visually rich mission games and numerous small scale Smartphone games, which are really good at their functionalities.

The rise of video games not only provided people with new means of entertainment but has also given the opportunity to many businesses and developers to head into new horizons. The founders of the company Ubisoft also founded their passion in the same field, and now they are the owner of the third biggest video game development company.

Origin

Five brothers, Christian, Claude, Gérard, Michel and Yves, from the Guillemot family of northwest France founded Ubisoft in 1986. In the beginning, the Guillemot brothers had joined their family business. They started working even before they started going to University and had gained enough experience to start their own business.

ubisoft
Image Source: sharkone

Before Ubisoft, the Guillemot brothers had tried their hands in many other businesses. As their family business was based on farming, there was a real less margin in the business. Soon, they realised that the farming industry was not paying much and was going through a decline. So, the first business they did out of farming was selling audio CDs, as these were the latest trend in the market. The business was good, and soon, they were able to deal in personal computers and established a small shop.

The trade was going well, and along with selling computers, they also sold things that were needed in farming. The Guillemot then stocked up video games in the shop and installed 20 machines to play video games at the shop. In 1980, they shifted from buying the video games from France market to the US’s, as it was much cheaper to buy those video games from the US. This led to a huge difference in the profits, and as a result, the five brothers started another new business. In 1984, they founded Guillemot Informatique and began the mail-order business around computers and software.

By the year 1985, they were earning good profits through video games and realised that they can have much more of that if they start developing video games by themselves.

Founding Ubisoft

Guillemot brothers founded Ubisoft in Carentoir, in Brittany, on 12 March 1986. Ubisoft is the acronym for Ubiquitous Software, and formally, it was named as Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. For the development purpose, they gathered a team of developers from their neighbouring places and set up their first office in a chateau in Carentoir.

For two years of the startup, the brothers continued operating their company from the chateau only, but it was way expensive to maintain the office. So many of their developers relocated to Paris. One of their first recruited staff, Michel Ancel, who also returned to his hometown in the same year, came back with another developer Frederic Houde with a prototype of a game with highly-animated features in 1994.

The prototype caught the immediate attention of Guillemot brothers, and in 1994, they started working on the same, making it the prime project of the company. They also set up an office in Montreuil and hired 100 developers to work on the project. Finally, in 1995, Ubisoft launched its first hit video game Rayman, which targeted the new line of fifth-generation consoles, like the Atari Jaguar and PlayStation. The instant success of the game made the company popular worldwide.

The game was a huge hit, and only in one year, Ubisoft went for its IPO, in 1996, and raised over US$80 million in funds. The company also expanded to other worldwide cities, including Annecy, Shanghai, Montreal, and Milan, in a span of four years from its inception.

With the expansion of the internet in 1999, the Guillemot brothers found another opportunity to widen the growth of Ubisoft in the US market, too. They, then founded Gameloft, an online game publisher, in 1999. In the year 2000, Ubisoft acquired an American video game development company Red Storm Entertainment, that too, helped Ubisoft to expand in the American market, bringing titles like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series.

The success in the US market led Ubisoft to work with companies like Microsoft, at the time, when no one was ready to develop games for Xbox. With Microsoft, Ubisoft brought games like Halo and Ghost Recon, etc.

As of 2017, the estimated valuation of the company was registered at $6.4 billion. Currently, the company owns several video game studios across the world. The company gets the credits of many popular games to its name, including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rayman, Raving Rabbids, and Tom Clancy’s.

As of March 2018, it is the fourth largest publicly-traded game company in America and Europe after Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive in terms of revenue and market capitalisation.

BlaBlaCar : A Successful Startup that Simplified the Long-distance Journeys

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Travelling, for some people is not just moving from one place to the other, but is something which includes emotions. Whether it be homecoming or a trip to one’s dream place, it brings emotion with itself. But the thing is, when it comes to travelling, the fare and the comfort don’t come on the same page. If you need affordable rates, then comfort is something that you need to compromise with, and that goes the other way round when you need high comfort.

But, according to the famous saying, where there’s a will, there’s a way, people have found their way to comfort and affordable travelling through BlaBlaCar. Carpooling, certainly, is a way that gives you the comfort and the affordable rates at the same time. When it comes to carpools, BlaBlaCar is a name that arises from within.

BlaBlaCar is a platform for long distance carpooling. Its app and website connect drivers to passengers who are willing to travel long distances. The benefits of the carpooling service are that the cost of the journey comes into sharing that means you get to experience comfort at an affordable price. Also, the drivers with empty seats get filled in. As of now, BlaBlaCar reaches more than 10 million rides per quarter year. The success story of BlaBlaCar is certainly is the one that inspires depicting that a small picture can be changed into a bigger one.

The idea of the startup came up to the current CEO and the co-founder of the BlaBlaCar, Fredric Mazzella, who in the winter of 2003, decided to visit his home on Christmas. But eventually, he found himself left with no options to travel, as all the trains in France were booked due to the holiday season. He didn’t have a car either, so he was stuck. Luckily, his sister offered him a ride home and during that particular trip, he noticed that most of the cars that were around them, had empty seats. That’s when the idea clicked. He thought, “If I put all those cars with empty seats, in a search engine, such that people can search the available seats in those cars, just like they do while booking a train.” The idea in his mind was something that was unique, and soon after realizing it, he started to work on the same, with his friends Francis Nappez and Nicolas Brusson.

blablacar-founders
Image Source: indexventures.com

However, the journey to build this platform did not start smoothly. The problem that arose was in the implementation of the idea. Precisely, the implementation of a business model was the issue that the co-founders were facing.

In 2006, when the service was launched, it was the ‘Premium Model’ of the platform, that was released first. This model was free to use, but users could pay a monthly or annual fee to get their service higher on the search engine. But the model was discarded, as soon as the company realized that money won’t benefit in the long run and also, that the model could be unfair to many of the users.

Then, BlaBlaCar jumped to ‘Monthly Fee’ plan, but it too was eliminated. Then, they picked up an advertising model, but keeping users’ privacy at stake was unacceptable.

Then the company induced ‘Phone Bridge Model’ into their system. In this model, users could choose to hide their contact numbers while remaining reachable via a pay telephone bridge. But the catch here was that if the company wanted to go global, then the telephone operators all over the world were different. So, this effort also went in vain.

Once during this phase, Fredric asked his M.B.A. professor at INSEAD that whether it’s possible to run a business, without a business model, to which, he replied, “You need a business model or you’ll die!” Those words gave Fredric so much motivation that he ended up on the idea to take risks and learn. As a result, it took 5 years for the company to restructure itself.

Soon, the company saw that there were other companies, like Carrefour, IKEA, that wanted to give services of BlaBlaCar to their employees. After that, there was no stopping, as 200 more companies bought the BlaBlaCar service for their employees. But in 2012, this business model was again put to an end, as each company’s each employee had different requirements which made it difficult to give a collective solution.

But with today’s business model that BlaBlaCar has put into effect has helped them reduce their cancellation from 35% to around 2.5%.

The company has a motto of FAIL. LEARN. SUCCEED. As a result of its past experiences, the company is open to failures and openly says about them. But they ensure that once a mistake is committed, it won’t be repeated. BlaBlaCar has grown all over Europe, and Asia too. For now, the company serves in more than 22 countries, including India, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany etc. BlaBlaCar, currently, is also in talks with France’s National Railway company SNCF for its bus division, so that the platform can provide bus services, too.

The startup that started as a minor one has gained more than $1.5 as funding. The company itself generates revenue of around $91 million. It’s worth, too, is $1.5 billion, which makes it the mater on its own.

The success story shows that personal needs can also be turned into a million-euro idea. It gives us the glimpse that how much innovative ideas our surroundings hold for us. Who knew that the startup which was such a unicorn sized, would grow up to such an extent that it will serve more than 22 countries. The success story of BlaBlaCar is certainly a one filled with eternal inspiration.

Min-Liang Tan : The Lawyer, Turned Billionaire Gaming Tycoon

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Having your name ranked with leaders like Elon Musk and Jack Ma, in the Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Tech, is a real achievement, and when you are a non-tech person, then it is huge. It’s the Singaporean entrepreneur, Min-Liang Tan, who got his name ranked ahead of these two tech savvies. Tan studied law and eventually, ended up starting up a tech company, i.e. Razer and became one of the most influential people in the Tech world. This billionaire from Singapore is in love with video games and shares an inspirational story with the world.

Early Life

Tan was born on 5 November 1977, in Singapore. His father, Tan Kim Lee, worked as a real estate consultant and his mother, Low Ken Yin, is a homemaker. He has three siblings, one of whom is the famous clinician-scientist Min-Han Tan. One of the other two is also a doctor, and one is a renowned lawyer.

He completed his primary education from Raffles Institution, and then, attended the Hwa Chong Junior College, to pursue high school education. Later, he went to join National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Law. He got ranked 20 in his master’s degree.

Early Career & Founding Razer

As soon as he completed his education, Tan started working as an advocate and solicitor for the Supreme Court of Singapore. But the future had held some other plans for him.

Tan, since his childhood, loved playing video games, as he was not much into outdoor games. His father had brought an Apple II computer, for him and his brother, upon which he played lots of games.

Image Source: alchetron.com

The idea of starting a video gaming peripheral manufacturing company came up to Tan, when he met the future co-founder of Razer, Robert Krakoff, through a social media website, in 1999. The two coincided on their interest for video games and started working together to design the world’s first gaming mouse – the “Razer Boomslang,” when Tan was still in college. Even, after graduating in 2002, along with his job as an advocate, he devoted most of the time on working for Razer.

Finally, in 2005, the two acquired the rights to the Razer brand and Founded the company Razer. The two headquarters of Razer are located at San Francisco and Singapore. Tan holds the post of the CEO of the company.

The company produces the peripherals for gamers, and the software for those peripherals, but does not publish games. The motto of the company is “For Gamers. By Gamers”, as both of the co-founders are avid video game lovers.

As one of the first products of Razer, the Razer Boomslang was more responsive, accurate, and faster than what tech companies were producing at that time, it attracted the attention of many venture capitalists. The company started obtaining funding from many investors, and it started manufacturing other gaming hardware, including headsets, a handheld gaming device, the Razer Edge gaming tablet computer and Razer Blade laptops, etc.

In 2015, Razer acquired software division of video-game company Ouya. It also acquired THX in 2016 and Nextbit in 2017.

In 2017, the company went public through an IPO in Hong Kong and was the 2nd most successful IPO of 2017 in Hong Kong stock exchange. In November 2017, the company launched its first Smartphone named Razer Phone.

Personal Life

Tan, currently, lives in Singapore in his family house with his parents. However, he keeps travelling back and forth from Singapore to San Francisco. Tan despite being an owner of a gaming hardware manufacturing company lives a life of a celebrity as many of Singapore people consider him as their idol. People get tattoos of the company logo, and one of them even tattooed Tan’s face on his arm.

In 2015, Tan was listed among the “Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Tech” by Juniper Research. He was also named in the list of “The 25 Most Creative People in Tech” by Business Insider and was ranked one of the top 40 most powerful people in gaming by Kotaku. TechinAsia ranked him No 1 of the 30 top South East Asia tech founders and was also named the Asian of the Year in 2016 by the Straits Times.

In 2016, he was among the Forbes Singapore Rich List with a net worth of $600 million and was the youngest Singaporean self-made billionaire.

Tan is also in philanthropy and in 2014, he donated a US$10,000 to raise funds for ALS and a £10,000 to fight Motor Neuron Disease, in 2015.