Michael Raber was not taken completely by surprise when AppRenaissance made an acquisition offer on his startup UXFlip. While Raber will not disclose the specifics of the deal, he is now employed full time as a Senior Product Director at the Old City HQ of the mobile app developer, which is part art gallery and part workspace. The street level suite at 309 Cherry was previously home to lighting craftsman Warren Mueller, and it retains a creative sensibility absent in most tech shops.
The Fall 2011 DreamIt grad already had a relationship with AppRen CEO Bob Moul. "Bob was my mentor during DreamIt, from the early days," says Raber, who entered the incubator with the plan to develop a company called Feedback Trail.
But halfway through DreamIt, while attempting to validate the idea, a method for developers to get enhanced feedback on mobile apps, Raber realized there was a problem. "It was a product people liked, but there was no revenue model." Eight weeks into the 12-week program, Raber and his wife/partner Jessica pivoted and created UXFlip. "I decided to focus on things I'd heard all along, that mobile app development is really hard, and UXFlip makes native mobile app development a much richer and easier experience," says Raber, who recently won top prize for UXFlip at Phorum 2012.
Rather than an assembly line approach, where a designer creates static representations of what screens will look like, then passes it to a programmer who carves everything up, UXFlip offers a round table approach in which team members can work together building the app, collapsing the process to be far more collaborative. Raber says Moul recognized the value of such a disruption early on, and not long after joining AppRenaissance in February 2012, Moul inquired as to whether Raber was interested in joining forces, combining AppRen's proprietary Unifeed middleware with UXFlip technology. Living on savings, having bootstrapped since September 2011 after leaving his job at NAVTEQ, Raber couldn't be happier. "It's been very good for both sides."
Incidentally, Raber and teammate John Romanski also won last month's Lean Startup Machine competition for their HeartMe mobile app, which allows married couples to track favors, keeping relationships on even footing. The HeartMe team is planning a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds.
Source: Michael Raber, UXFlip/AppRenaissance
Writer: Sue Spolan