Success stories are great. Success stories for your business are even better.
This week, we’re switching things up a little. I recently spoke with Brandon Frye, founder of ProPack (formerly known as CloudLink) and, more recently, of 4Parents. Brandon is a long-time App47 customer and is doing great things with our platform. We talked about ProPack, 4Parents, App47, and more. What better way to hear a success story than straight from a customer?
Have a look at our conversation below:
Hi, Brandon. To start, tell our readers about your history with App47.
Hi, Chris.
As you know, we’ve been working together for a while. Our journey started about 3 and a half years ago. Back then, we were CloudLink (we’ve since rebranded to ProPack). It all started because we wanted to be a trusted advisor for niche categories of apps in specific verticals.
At that point, few, if any, companies were offering app bundles focused around a common theme. We saw an opening on the enterprise side focused around productivity apps, and directed a lot of effort towards making that work.
We built a platform that sits on top of App47’s app store. It behaves a lot like a Google Play or iTunes, though we’re Android-specific due to restrictions with iTunes. Essentially, ProPack is an app bundle of productivity tools designed to increase the content and capability of mobile devices.
More recently, we’ve taken the bundle idea and applied it in a different setting: a bundle for families. Throughout this process, we’ve worked closely with the App47 team to build a unique offering that fills a niche in the market.
What kind of success have you seen with ProPack?
Right now, we’re at about 1.6 million visits with 130,000 registered customers. We’re quite pleased with its success!
Now, you’re spending a lot of time on your newest offering called 4Parents. What was your inspiration for 4Parents, and how does it work?
I’m a father of three daughters, and a while ago I realized that I wasn’t at all equipped to be a good parent when it came to my children’s devices. We’re really the first generation of our parents to give our kids this level of connectivity.
Having a smartphone is a bit like having Las Vegas in your pocket. You can connect to anything—good or bad. And at this point, around 80% of all teenagers own a cell phone (half of which are smartphones). Inappropriate content aside, texting and driving is a particularly insidious issue; texting while driving is now the leading cause of death among teenagers.
There’s defensive driving and driving school for cars, but there’s no training at all for children and their phones. I wanted to manage this digital environment, and was seriously disappointed in the other solutions available at the time. With my experience from ProPack, I saw an opportunity to apply that same kind of idea to a consumer environment.
From there, the idea to build a comprehensive solution for protecting children and enjoying life more with smartphones came to fruition with the help of App47.
What apps are included in 4Parents?
4Parents includes 4 apps to protect and manage your family on the go:
- Parental Board, which helps you locate, manage, monitor, and secure your kids’ devices. You can monitor texts, calls, and web activities, filter inappropriate content, and even send an emergency alert to all other family members.
- LifeSaver, designed to reduce or end texting while driving.
- Child’s Area, which lets you customize your device you your child can only access what you choose to let them access. When you have your phone locked down to certain apps or uses, there’s no chance your child could accidentally send a business email, for example.
- SquareHub, which is a private, family-oriented social network for sharing pictures and calendar events.
We spent a lot of time curating these apps to make sure we covered the most important needs of parents and their children.
How has App47 helped you with ProPack and 4Parents?
App47 has been a great help with both ProPack and 4Parents. From the very beginning, the App47 team has been tremendously helpful. We’ve had many conversations with the team—no question was too big or too small.
App47 was also integral in the development of both platforms, since they’re actually built on top of App47’s platform. Having access to the team’s resources and expertise really helped us hone our product and evolve our strategy along the way.
And that’s not even including the product itself. App47 gives you a wealth of data on the back end—new users, downloads, etc.—that helps you better manage your business. Sometimes you may not like the data, but it’s still absolutely essential to have.
All-in-all, we’ve had a great history together and I look forward to continuing to work together.
You can learn even more about 4Parents in this recent feature from Austin’s KVUE. For more information or to download ProPack or 4Parents, visit their websites: ProPack; 4Parents. For any additional questions about this blog post or about App47, get in touch with us via our site’s Contact Us page, or reach out to us on Twitter @App47.
