Episode 6: Simple In/Out With Bill Burgess & Brandon Medenwald

Bill Burgess & Brandon Medenwald, two of the original founders of Simply Made Apps, join me to talk about creating Simple In/Out, and launching their company from it.

Bill & Brandon became friends on the golf course and discovered they had complimentary skill sets and a shared idea.

Bill is a self taught iOS developer. He started toying with iOS development around the launch of iOS 3, and got serious with it when they had an idea for a service they wanted to create. Brandon comes from long established a web development background in a variety of languages. Since discovering Ruby On Rails, he is now primarily focused on Ruby. They met and became friends on the golf course. After playing several weekend games, they realized they had some complimentary skill sets. Together with another friend who was interested in Android development, they began looking for ideas they could work on together. Today when they are not discussing business plans with their laptops over beers they still enjoy golfing in their spare time.

Simple In/Out provides an excellent In/Out service with no manual action required by the users. The smart phones people already carry with them do all the checking in & out for them.

Simple In/Out is a digital in/out board platform, on the web, with client applications for the major smart phone platforms. By utilizing geofences, and now also iBeacons on iOS 7, these client apps take care of all the checking in and out automatically. By utilizing the apps on smart phones and doing the checking in and out automatically the system is free from the common pitfalls and inaccuracies of most physical in/out boards. Simple In/Out is now deployed and used in a wide variety of profesional, non profit, and personal environments. If you have a need to track who is in and out of a given location at any given time, there is simply no better system. Checking in and out is just the tip of the iceberg with Simple In/Out. They also offer advanced reporting and even full screen web interfaces perfect for big screen integration to your office. They also have the Front Desk iPad app designed to sit in on a front desk or accessible area so users can quickly check themselves in or out as they come and go, as well as see who is in and out. It can even be configured as an iBeacon for the service.

Bill & Brandon's App Story tells how a few guys with an idea, and $100 each, built a set of apps, a service, an API enabled platform, and eventually a small business capable of providing a few jobs.

Feeling frustration with the limitations of magnetic In/Out Boards, a system commonly used to track employees in and out of the office, and the then current software implementations, led them to decide to try and make the Simple In/Out service. Three guys each threw in $100 to launch the company and over a beer fueled weekend they put their noses to the grind stone to build their first prototype of the app and backing web service. The Simple In/Out app was born and Simply Made Apps grew with it. They stay on top of the changing tech landscape, and with tips and suggestions from a great user base, they continue to add new features when they fit the platform, while still maintaining it's core simplicity. They eventually became successful enough, that now they even provide a few jobs to their community in Fargo North Dakota. They grew all this from the original $300 personal investment with no external funding.

Contact Links:

• Simple In/Out on the web
• Brandon Medenwald on Twitter
• Bill Burgess on Twitter
• Vic on Twitter
• App Story on Twitter

Support Simply Made Apps & the show by using this link to get Simple In/Out on the App Store:

• Simple In/Out on the iOS App Store