Create and distribute your own customized mobile app in less than five minutes with Appguppy
Today's featured startup, Appguppy, is the easiest way to go mobile.
Appguppy Mobile is an online DIY platform that lets anyone make AND distribute a beautiful cross-platform mobile app in 5 minutes and 5 steps. Learn more about this Massachusetts-based startup from their Co-Founder and CEO, Anu Nadkarni.
What inspired you to start your company?
I was inspired to start my company when I tried to go mobile myself. As I faced enormous costs and executional difficulties in trying to develop my own mobile presence, I realized that there must be countless other entities and individuals dealing with the same hurdles that I was facing.
Tell us something unique about you and your co-founder(s)?
We have incredibly diverse backgrounds-we're a team composed of a JD/MBA, an MD and a hacker from MIT. Rather than working against us, our diverse backgrounds help us draw on different experiences to confront the challenges of running a startup.
What problem does your product or service solve?
Our product solves the problem of being able to quickly make and distribute mobile apps. DIY solutions are typically aimed at developers rather than the average individual, and app stores cause extensive time-to-market delays and add to the cost of going mobile. Our platform solves both these issues by creating a solution that is ridiculously easy to use and allowing clients to distribute their apps outside of stores on their own social networks.
What are your startup's three biggest challenges to growth?
Our three biggest challenges to growth are:
1. Deciding on the right way to scale our organization.
2. Being aware of typical startup pitfalls.
3. Providing our clients the level of customer service they have grown to expect from Appguppy Mobile even as we grow larger.
How has the Startup America Partnership helped you overcome these challenges to growth?
Startup America has access to local networks and startup expertise that allows young companies to make well-researched decisions on the tough questions.
What Startup America Member Benefits have you used?
We're big fans of the Learning Series.
Why should startups join Startup America?
To become part of a community-running a startup can be an isolating experience, even when you're in a state with a big startup culture. Becoming an entrepreneur requires founders to take the road less traveled, so it's incredibly helpful to meet like-minded individuals and share resources and information.
What is the startup culture like in your City/State?
We've been lucky enough to experience startup culture in both Massachusetts, where we were founded, by participating in organizations such as the MIT Enterprise Forum, the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Collaborative (MassTLC) and the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX). And recently in New York, we were luck to be selected as part of the first class of participants in the Women Innovate Mobile tech incubator. They are slightly different, but both very vibrant startup environments. We'd say that both Boston and New York are defined by a willingness to push boundaries.
We're democratizing mobile! We're taking something that only an army of sophisticated and expensive developers could achieve and opening it up to everyone! And, we're disrupting app stores, so that people don't have to rely on them for distributing their app. Now, they can go directly through social.
Appguppy is part of Startup Massachusetts and has been a Startup America member since October 2011. Connect with them here:
Web: www.appguppy.com
Twitter: @appguppy
Facebook: www.facebook.com/appguppy
Pinterest: pinterest.com/appguppy
Join over 8,000 growing American startups here: 
