Big news from our team: App47 turns 5 in just a few short weeks on January 21st!
Over the next few weeks we’re going to celebrate this important milestone here on our blog with a brief series on our history—where we’ve been, where we are now, where we’re going, and what it all means moving forward. We see this as an exciting opportunity to talk about our company, and we’re even more excited to see what the next five years will bring!
For now, however, what better place to start than looking back?
To say the market—and our company—have evolved since we launched in 2011 would be an understatement.
For one, the enterprise mobility space has grown tremendously in the last five years. It’s still nascent now, so it’s hard to believe there was much of a market at all when we first started. (There was a market, albeit a small one.)
Think of the story of the laptop in the enterprise setting. When laptops were new technology, it was a big deal for an employee to get one, both from a logistics standpoint and from a cost perspective. No one knew how they’d be utilized or if the additional cost was worth it. Now, laptops are so ubiquitous that no one bats an eye when an employee receives one as part of their onboarding process.
Enterprise mobility is following the same trajectory. When App47 first came to be, there was a large amount of ambiguity about enterprise mobility, and specifically mobile app management. What would it be used for? Why not just manage the device? Would employees buy in to mobility at all? Companies weren’t sure what EMM was, they weren’t sure what they needed, and they certainly didn’t know what the space would look like headed into the future. Early adopters are now mature mobile enterprises, and all along the way the space has grown more mature.
We’ve changed a good bit as a company, too. Entrepreneurs and other startups will be able to relate to deals we’ve taken along the way. We’ve given up revenue to have big logos on our website. We’ve negotiated with other companies and entertained small or short engagements because some revenue is better than no revenue. We’ve placed bets on a company hitting it big and working with us that paid off—and we’ve done some that didn’t pan out, too.
Life at a company that’s 6 months old and doing anything it can to find clients is much different than life at a company that’s been around for 5 years and has the portfolio of success to push itself forward. Fortunately, we’re the company that’s been around for 5 years now rather than the former.
Now, we know where we’re headed. We’re a lot smarter. We’re more frugal and more mature. We know our target. We have a good background and a track record of success at Fortune 500 companies with large-scale, customized solutions deploying to employees, consultants, third-party providers, and more. And we’re devoting all our effort towards fine-tuning that model to give the best performance possible. Realizing where we perform best allowed us to have our best year ever in 2015. 2016 is looking even better.
A lot has changed since we launched the company five years ago, but we couldn’t be more pleased with what we’ve accomplished or where we’re headed—even if that has meant some compromise along the way. Our platform has given us a great foothold in a space that’s still very young—something we’re very thankful for. If the amount of change we’ve seen in the last five years is any indication, a lot of exciting evolution is in store from now until App47 turns 10.
