Have you noticed the stark differences in your phone’s apps for consumers and businesses? Business apps are just difficult to use, but consumer apps are elegantly built and simple to use.
A European entrepreneur is creating a line of business-to-business apps with a focus on mobile because most people now use their phones as their primary PC. They have named their business the Mobile-First Company.
When you download an app from this company, you can use the device in your pocket to complete everything, including creating an account from your phone (which isn’t usually the case for B2B apps). Far too many B2B tool providers approach mobile apps like companion apps or as second-class citizens.
However, the European startup has no intention of recreating Workday, Asana, or Salesforce on mobile devices. Rather, the company intends to concentrate on small and medium-sized enterprises, addressing their needs with each app individually. Enterprise software solutions that are complex are not necessary for small businesses. All they need is one app to do a number of jobs really well.
Furthermore, the Mobile-First Company is full of ideas. For example, they could develop an app to generate quotes, another to keep track of spending, or still another to manage the inventory in your small warehouse or workshop.
Essentially, the goal is to create an application suite. Its key distinction from other participants will be that it is not an all-in-one app. Co-founder and CEO Jérémy Goillot told me, “We don’t believe in the all-in-one model because people are scared of technology.”
The First Inventory Tracking App
The co-founder and chief technology officer of this new venture, Ignacio Siel Brunet, was formerly vice president of engineering at Pomelo, a financial infrastructure business with 200 engineers in Latin America.
Although Siel Brunet has greater experience with the requirements of major corporations, he has also observed how poorly B2B apps function with smaller enterprises. “I know how to help big companies solve big problems. But on the other side I had this problem with my family. They own a furniture company but they have issues with invoicing, inventory, etc.,” he told me.
For all their wants, a lot of small businesses only depend on consumer apps. Goillot stated,”They use a personal bank to manage their financial aspects, WhatsApp as the CRM, and Instagram as the showcase.” “Our DNA is to keep this B2C style of applications with this friendliness and mass-market appeal while also solving problems.”
Amoa is the first app developed by The Mobile-First Company; it is a mobile inventory tracking tool. For example, a lot of garages use spreadsheets to keep track of how many spare parts they have on hand right now. However, most employees don’t spend their entire workday in front of a computer.
They can use Amoa as the source of truth by opening an app, adding parts by scanning a barcode, adding other data, such pricing details, and more. They can take an item from Amoa and proceed once they’ve picked it up from the shelf.
It can be helpful to manage an inventory even if you don’t sell anything. To make sure you don’t forget anything, you might want to generate an inventory of all the camera lenses and equipment you own if you’re a wedding photographer, for example. Likewise, before driving to the first patient, nurses want to make sure they have everything they need.
Behaving Like A Developer Of Mobile Games
Amoa might or might not function. To focus on the most promising ideas, the Mobile-First Company plans to create, ship, iterate, and eliminate concepts that don’t work. The company’s ultimate goal is to make money off of the most promising apps by charging for access to premium features.
This is because Goillot was the head of growth at spend management firm Spendesk before, so he has some experience with product-market fit. He joined the French fintech startup, which soon turned into a unicorn, as its fourth employee.
After leaving Spendesk, he traveled and observed the application of tech items in regions other than the United States and Europe.“I traveled to Africa a lot, from Nigeria to Ghana and Kenya because I wanted to see other types of products. I traveled a lot in Latin America too,” Goillot said.
“And I was impressed by other types of companies. We are a huge fan of Indian companies — Zoho is one of them. We are a huge fan of Treinta as well — it’s a Colombian company.”
The Mobile-First Company, which was founded in December, is reporting today that it has secured €3.5 million ($3.8 million at the current exchange rate) in a pre-seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Emblem. Xavier Niel (Kima Ventures), Thibaud Elzière (Hexa), Jean-Baptiste Hironde (MWM), and Rodolphe Ardant (Spendesk) were among the numerous angel investors who took part in the round.
The business is now trying to go fast. “By year’s end, we hope to have six applications out there with this high velocity of trying, killing, trying, killing to really advance the company’s knowledge,” Goillot stated.
“We are able to build an application in two weeks. We are able to bring thousands of downloads a day,” he added. So, in our conversation with small business owners, let’s see how long it takes The Mobile-First Company to deploy an app that you can see in the wild.