Today’s guest post comes from Victoria Moore who, together with her business partner Mo, launched the iPhone app Legacy Organiser (despite neither of them having a background in IT or even owning iPhones!)
You may recall that the last series of the BBC’s Apprentice featured the launch of an app. At the time I couldn’t believe it as earlier the same day the programme went out, my friend and I had launched our own iPhone app. It was such a coincidence and hopefully a good sign for the success of our project.
Mo and I met as neighbours in the Scottish Highlands. We both had previously been involved in start-ups and business, and last year we started talking about new ideas and ventures. It was around the same time that I had my will drawn up. Like many people, I had never got round to doing this but after having children I felt a huge responsibility of making sure they would be looked after if anything were to happen to myself and my husband. There are many moments in life when you suddenly recognise your own mortality and for me having children was definitely one of those.
Although my will dealt with legal and financial matters, I realised that there was no way of leaving details of how I would like to be remembered or my life celebrated. Many evenings and glasses of wine later, Mo and I came up with the idea that a mobile app would be a perfect way of storing this information and thus “Legacy Organiser” was born.
However, neither of us had any kind of background in IT or new media nor did we own an iPhone between us. The whole project has been a massive learning curve. There is a huge amount of information on the internet about start up apps, but given our lack of experience and knowledge it was very difficult to work out what was relevant or helpful.
We met with a few app developers and had a particularly surreal meeting with one agency where we felt we were old enough to be their mothers. They swaggered in wearing skinny jeans looking like Franz Ferdinand and appeared pretty startled when they spotted us sitting there sipping our lattes in our pastel coloured cardigans. I think there is a presumption that people engaging in new business within the mobile app community are young, achingly trendy and technology natives. We don’t quite fit the bill in any of these categories.
Having said that, and after months of research, we came up with a brief for our developers for the design and the functionality for the app and we spent several months working with them to get it right. We submitted the app to Apple and having had it approved we are now beginning the process of soft launching the app. It has been a fantastic, exasperating at times and fascinating journey so far. We are trying to raise awareness of the app through traditional and social media. We were delighted to be featured recently as a Virgin Entrepreneur http://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/blog/app-innovator-on-acting-upon-inspiration
My advice to anyone thinking of doing the same is don’t let a lack of IT experience put you off – look at me….I did it!
To download the app and being creating your own legacy click here:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/legacy-organiser/id428518774?mt=8
For any further information contact Victoria Moore at victoria@legacyorganiser.com
or at LinkedIn http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/victoria-moore/34/a08/512
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