What if you could own a billion-dollar company?
That is exactly what Keith Shields, a 2010 graduate of Marcellus High School and junior at Ohio State University, thought when he first came up with the idea for Applits.com a web site that allows users to submit their ideas for smartphone apps, in hopes of having that app developed.
Shields and co-founder Joshua Tucker, a 2010 Marcellus High School graduate and junior at Alfred University, receive app ideas for the first three weeks of each month. Then, anyone who visits the site can vote on which app idea they like the best during the fourth week of that month. By the end of the month, Shields and Tucker take the app that gets the most votes and have it developed.
“The end users themselves, we feel, have all these great ideas, but don’t have the coding experience,” Shields said. “They’ve never really been involved before.”
Shields and Tucker launched the web site in early July, and have so far received about 100 user submissions, ranging from games to utilities, Shields said.
“We’ve gotten some of everything; there are already a handful of ideas that are really well thought out,” he said.
The user who submits the chosen app each month will receive a monetary reward, the amount of which may fluctuate, Shields said. This month, the award is $1,500.
Tucker and Shields also plan to reward those who submit interesting, creative ideas, even if their app is not chosen. Those users will be rewarded anywhere from $10 to $20, Shields said.
Shields said their goal is to involve the user community in the process of developing apps as much as possible. He said once an app is chosen each month, he and Tucker will post screenshots of the app as it is being developed. This way, he said, users can continue to submit their ideas and help improve the app.
Currently, Shields and Tucker are working on figuring out how to get the submitted apps developed. Shields said they have two options: one is to hire a team to develop the app, which could take months; the other, and more appealing option to the duo, is to find companies that already develop apps, pitch the app to them and split the revenue, Shields said.
But right now, Shields said, they are working on increasing traffic to their web site. “Until we can get that deal, it’s all about building up that usership,” he said.
Shields said the site has received a lot of positive feedback so far, and they hope to see the site grow in popularity. What makes their company unique, Shields said, is that they are not just focused on developing one single app.
“We’re looking at having 12 new startup companies a year,” Shields said, “The future of Applits could be 12 small apps, or 12 billion-dollar companies.”
