I started a company and other stories — Building it’s first product
A few minutes ago, I uploaded and made available for my current (and hopefully future) customers to show what my company can do for them. Its pre-alpha software but it has enough things that showcases what my team and I can do.
The Product
I have been doing some serious, high level software work for quiet some time now. Now, I self-describe myself as a software architect level operator. I can take a business idea and help it implemented using a combination of cloud power and mobile apps. This helps businesses serve the customers they plan to reach.
This product, the alpha version which is now ready for some internal consumption, takes all the above and puts it in a easy to see form. It is made of three components.
API Server — The backend of any app system. This is known by many names. JSON Server. API endpoint. API backend.
An API serves data. That means, someone must request this data. That would be clients.
Mobile Web App — This is the client that runs on any web browser. That means, this app can be used on a Windows and Mac computers (with browsers like Firefox and Chrome). Further, the app will run on iPad via Safari. Obviously, mobile phone browsers will be able to show this app.
iOS Mobile App — Web apps run everywhere. However, they consume a lot of data. Mobile apps are built for speed and efficiency. Our product contains an iOS app that consumes the above mentioned API server.
Our Idea
Lets say there is a fruit seller who has some 10 shops. This person, wants to digitize some of the operations. For example, stock tracking across all the shops, with data available at the hands of ten to twenty employees. This means, the following.
First, an API server needs to be developed. This will contain data about the stock of different fruits in different shops.
Second, an app (mobile app — android or iOS, mobile web app — running on any phone/computer browser), that can be used to do 2 things. Thing 1 — Update stock level to the main server. Thing 2 — see the stock level.
The idea behind our product, and by extension, our company is to allow small business to do all the above (take their offline data online, get a server with the data, and apps to interact with this server) in one single place.
Bonus — Training
Our company is not big enough to take care of maintenance of things that we build. In order to solve that problem, we plan to bundle training as part of software development.
Once we are ready to handover the project over, we get the available team with the business, on how to keep it running.
The Future
The current release is pre-alpha. It shows that we can build these things in one go. However, it is not useful for anything except as an early demo.
As time progresses, my team plan to keep enhancing it until we have reduced the number of bugs and missing features to a more manageable level.
This idea has been in my head for over a year. Seeing it reach its final albeit early release, is very satisfying.
