I just wrote a story about Qmobao, a start-up that aims to give anyone, especially entertainers, the ability to create their own mobile apps. To lower the barrier of entry for small businesses in America in a similar way, Bizness Apps allows small businesses like hairdressers, restaurants, café’s, gyms or real estate agents to create their own mobile apps and publish them across iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry and Windows devices. Mobile apps are the new websites, and services like Qmobao and Bizness Apps are driving the transition.
Using a simple dashboard and by following a step by step process, any small business can create an app to engage with their customers through mobile. For example, if I tried to make an app for TechNode as a blog; I can name the app, and select the features that I want to appear on the app. relevant features to us include a blog scroll, message board and comment board. Some other cool features on offer are, GPS directions, QR code reader and push notifications
I recently had a chat with the founder of Bizness Apps, Andrew Gazdecki to find out more.
Before Bizness Apps
At only 22, Andrew is indeed a young entrepreneur. He graduated from USC Chico and undertook a business degree. He always knew his “goal from the get-go was to make a company,” and “always tried to make money in strange ways that didn’t always make sense.” He was studying for a minor in entrepreneurship, but figured that instead of studying it; he should just jump in and start doing entrepreneurship. So he dropped some classes but managed to complete the course.
His first start-up was a job-board that connected small businesses with local mobile app developers, who would bid for the job. He learnt from that start-up that he was only solving one problem, which was to help app developers and small business connect. After building it to a certain level of revenue, Andrew sold the business and moved on to start Bizness Apps.
The Creation of Bizness Apps
Bizness App was established a year and a half ago and received some angel investment in November 2010 to kick start it. It was aimed to be a more holistic solution by making the whole process easier, faster and cheaper. Andrew wanted to remove a lot of the frustrating, confusing and time consuming steps to app creation such as mapping out the app, building and testing the app, to deploying the app.
Already they have deployed over 1,000 apps, across 20 countries in over 10 languages.
More affordable mobile app development
Andrew said that some small businesses would spend on average US$10,000- US$30,000 to create and deploy a mobile app which is very expensive. In comparison, a small business can use Bizness Apps and only pay US$39 a month. The monthly service fee allows the small business to maintain the app, make changes and keep it active. Unlike many of his competitors, Andrew says Bizness Apps offers unlimited push notifications and included app publishing.
Simple 5 step process
- Choose your industry – This will then generate some templates with relevant features you can select or not.
- Upload content – general information, images, videos, sounds
- Customize appearance – edit the appearance and style of your content
- Preview app – see what it will look like
- Publish app – give app title and description as well as screen shots
To ensure Apple will accept the app, Bizness Apps will review the app and make sure it meets their quality guidelines. They will also help polish the app to make it look nice.
Asia is the number one market of interest
Andrew said “Asia is the number one market of interest.” And they have already started to make in-roads in Singapore, Taiwan and Japan through a reseller program. This allows marketing companies to develop mobile apps for their clients using the Bizness Apps platform.
Bizness apps is looking to break into China through a similar white-label program.