It’s time to take this great product and blast it out there.
Hwy92, a company owned by Utah entrepreneur Travis Cook, co-founder of SolutionStream, has acquired Appigo, the software company behind the popular app Todo. With millions of downloads and more than half a million active users, Todo has managed to garner a massive following among consumers and business customers.
“Appigo is this sleeper, awesome startup that’s been here in Utah for years,” Cook said in an interview with Beehive Startups. “When Apple first launched the iPhone, Appigo picked up iOS first and early, and was the first in the store with a productivity app — back when Apple didn’t even have an app. They jumped in and had huge success.”
As a co-founder of SolutionStream, Cook has a lot of experience helping other tech companies become successful. Appigo gives him the opportunity to build a startup of his own.
Wunderlist, a competitor of Appigo’s Todo, raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital last year. Cook believes the need and market for an app like Todo exists. It’s just a matter of capitalizing on Todo’s large user base and growing it into a full-blown company.
Appigo was originally founded by two developers, Calvin Gaisford and Boyd Timothy, who focused primarily on building a high quality product and did very little marketing or PR.
“The competitors out there are kinda kicking our trash right now — at least from a marketing and messaging perspective, but not from the product perspective,” said Cook. “They are weaker on the product; if you go read reviews and compare across the board we stack up very well.”
To illustrate Appigo’s lack of marketing up to this point, the small startup has a very active user base inside companies like Nike, Disney, Cisco, Oracle, Siemens, AT&T, Verizon, Berkeley, Cornell, and countless. Yet, the company makes no mention of any of these customers on its website. Cook hopes to change that, and a whole lot more, very soon.
In the coming months, Todo plans to expand its customer base by releasing some new features, updating its Android app, and building an app for the new Apple Watch..
“In terms of product, we are hiring developers to fill in blank spots so that we can go as fast as we need to,” said Cook. “We need teams on each of the products so we’re moving fast.”
Todo has always been in the Apple Store’s top 10 for productivity apps. In fact, it’s one of the Apple Store’s top 100 grossing products of all-time in the productivity category.
“It’s time to take this great product and blast it out there,” said Cook. “Boyd and Calvin did this awesome thing and grew it to this point — now, let’s go big.”
Published 12/17/2014
