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As many of us have learned the hard way, software development is expensive and can take months to get from idea to product. Even so, software and the efficiencies it yields are becoming more and more integral to the success of any business. Whether it’s a digital storefront, a mobile app or just a simple website hosting a takeout menu, being online is no longer optional for most businesses.
For many of non-technical business leaders, the steep upfront costs of software development are prohibitive to getting a small company to that next stage of growth. Tools like Squarespace or WordPress can help these companies affordably launch a website without any technical know-how, but it has traditionally been expensive to build high-quality mobile apps to reach the 77% of Americans that Pew Research Center reports own smartphones.
"Over the past 10 years, services like Stripe and AWS have tremendously lowered barriers to the deployment of new software products. Gone are the days when you have to set up a server before even getting started," said Amelia Friedman, cofounder of Hatch Apps. "But businesses still need to find and hire a developer before they deploy, spend north of $50,000, and often wait three to six months before they even have a basic MVP."
Friedman and her cofounder Param Jaggi started Hatch Apps to strike down that final barrier and make it possible for anyone to build production-grade software without writing a line of code. Their product, an automated software development platform, provides tools for small and medium-sized businesses to build their own apps and deploy them to iOS, Android and the web in a matter of days. Once apps are live on their platform, users can track analytics, export user data, send push notifications and make changes on-the-go. With Hatch Apps, there’s no more waiting for developers to fix a typo or update a design.
The U.S. Labor Department reported in 2015 that software developers are paid $98,260/year on average. Oftentimes, engineering hires are the most expensive that a small company makes— if they’re lucky enough to find them. Additionally, Outsystems reported in their 2017 State of Application Development Research Report that 44% of companies don’t have the knowledge and skills to build their apps. This is an all too real problem that I directly experienced while working at a leading software development agency in New York. In this tech-enabled world we're creating, startups like Hatch Apps are well positioned to fill a gap helping companies affordably launch the software they need to propel their businesses forward.
"We've been live for three months now, and we've already had the opportunity to power the tech behind some awesome nonprofits, small businesses, and startups," said Friedman. "The reality is that most of us don’t have the technical know-how to build our software from scratch or an extra six-figure salary set aside to hire an engineer. It's really cool to see people who never would have been able to launch tech for their company finally have that opportunity."
The founding of Hatch Apps is playing into a larger trend of automation within the service industry. From food delivery via drones to legal aid templates from companies like LegalZoom, service industries are being disrupted by a combination of human and machine intelligence technologies that are capable of completing a human task. Even healthcare is seeing the introduction of machines with healthcare providers now using IBM Watson to deliver more efficient care. Hatch Apps aims to bring similar automation— and thereby time and cost savings— to the software development industry.
“Developer demand will exceed developer supply by five to one in the next four years,” said Friedman. “If we’re successful, we’ll be able to right this imbalance with software automation tools that lower the barrier to entry for companies to deploy production-level apps. And, by automating the simpler parts of the development process, we’ll be able to free software developers to work on more innovative, challenging projects. Machines will begin doing the basic work and the human will handle the edge cases.”
In the near future, every company will have a technical component. Whether it’s a simple employee training application or a mobile app to effectively engage customers, software is becoming more and more critical in order for businesses to compete. Even industries that were traditionally offline are going online to meet their customer; in the United States, more than 84 percent of us use the Internet. A lot of the apps we use every day have enough in common— chat, profiles, training, user data collection, etc— that their development can be automated to drive down costs and hasten timelines.
That’s the vision for Friedman and her team. And they’re going for it.
