I love my work. Someone comes to us with an amazing, world-changing idea, and we architect it, solve all the hard problems, make it real, and release it to the world.
But sometimes it is not so great. Like when someone has an idea that is truly wonderful and of benefit to everyone, but they have little funding to develop it. It’s worse when the idea has no clear monetisation path – no obvious way to make any money. Even if they had funding, they wouldn’t get any benefit from putting in all that money. Giving a wonderful gift to the world is a great and noble thing, but most of us still hope to pay the bills.
And so those projects never happened. And society is a little less lovely as a result.
I didn’t want to accept that, but I felt helpless to change things. I too must pay my bills. And even though App Factory Store does take on a lot of social responsibility projects, we don’t have resources available at a scale that would let us fully fund projects like this. Not today anyway.
We knew there had to be a better way. And so there was.
Fast-forward to several sleepless months later…
App Factory Store has just launched AFS Community Projects (AFS-CP), which is a crowdfunding website for launching community-focused mobile app ideas. On AFS-CP, anyone with a great idea can write it up and then invite people to contribute. All amounts, big or small, go directly into development of the idea – there is no middleman. And since AFS develops according to an “Agile” strategy, every bit of funding gets turned into hours of work, and scheduled in as soon as resources are available. We then carry out the work, and as milestones are reached we post updates to the project, which project contributors will see.
But we don’t stop there. If a project goes on to become profitable (yes, some projects can still benefit the community while making a profit!) then the person who came up with the idea gets a significant piece of the action. Ongoing. What’s more, every contributor does as well, in proportion to their contribution.
I can’t tell you how happy we are to be launching this initiative at last, because I hope to never again see the crestfallen expression on someone’s face after they hear how an app (a wonderful, life-changing app) is forever out of reach. Instead I look forward to telling them how to start it as a project on the AFS-CP site, and launch a campaign to get their family and friends engaged and contributing, so that it can one day change all our lives for the better!
So if you’ve been sitting on an idea that could change the world… now is the time to do something about it.
Geoff Ellison
Geoff Ellison is Lead Solutions Architect at App Factory Store. He has been designing and executing innovative technology solutions for 30 years. Geoff lives in paradise (Pottsville Beach, NSW) with his wife and two children. He also plays guitar (in theory), and tells appalling dad jokes.
Geoff is always open for work and new projects, particularly in web/app development, cloud Devops, security & encryption, and consulting. Get in touch.