To Grow or Not to Grow, That is SloPro
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.28945/2060
Abstract
Jon Lund, a mechanical engineer with a hobby building mobile applications for the mobile device community on the new Apple App Store, had just hung up the phone with his brother-in-law after discussing what to do next. His company, started in his spare time, was now two companies with several different partnering relationships all bootstrapped from the early successes his apps had had in the marketplace. Jon’s first app was a financial calculator that he built in his spare time based upon a spreadsheet calculator he built to help at work. Mostly, he just wanted to see if he could teach himself how to build an iOS app, get it accepted in the Apple Store, and generate revenue from the app. The resulting app actually had a number of unique advantages and quickly began generating downloads. This mild success encouraged Jon to create more financial apps. He partnered with friends and family to bootstrap a few additional apps while working full time at his day job in aircraft engine manufacturing. As revenue grew, he quit his day job and began to focus on apps that tapped into GPS (global positioning system) and smartphones’ capabilities to map their individual location. Jon enjoyed the outdoors and was interested in the intersection of geo-positioning on all kinds of outdoor activities and sports. Almost by accident, he came across an unexploited functionality in the new iPhone 4S that allowed the camera to actually record twice as many frames per second (fps) as the Apple software on the phone allowed. He and his team realized that an app that enabled that functionality would be very interesting to a community of users that were adopting their iPhones as their principle video capture device. And, many users in that community were also outdoor enthusiasts – it seemed like a perfect fit. From that realization grew the group’s most successful app, SloPro. It had just passed the 6 million user mark and was the most significant source of revenue for his companies. But competition to SloPro was growing on all fronts – including ten ton gorilla Apple itself – and some of his past decisions had actually opened the door for more competition. Meanwhile, Jon and everyone else in the business were busy – in most cases doing everything but focusing on SloPro. What should he do? Hire more resources? Spin off the company? Concentrate on one app or diversify across multiple app segments?
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Journal of Information Technology Education: Discussion Cases, v. 3, no. 6, p. 6-31
Scholar Commons Citation
Mullarkey, Matthew T.; Lund, Jonathan; and Gill, Grandon, "To Grow or Not to Grow, That is SloPro" (2014). School of Information Systems and Management Faculty Publications. 59.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/qmb_facpub/59
