First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?

For us, like many others, 2020 was a very challenging year.

We deal with many digital dining and hosting projects and two encountered issues because of lockdown and social distancing:

– The innovative app we were developing for a leading burger restaurant chain was paused.

– Our rising Facebook chatbot venture for booking tables via a FB messenger, Order. Chat, was shut down after two years of persistent and unrepresented growth.

Luckily we had a food delivery app solution in the works, so we accelerated its development and now it is already in production. This is one of the things that helped us ease the drawback.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company?

I started my career back in 2001 as a web developer and was hired to work by a few different internet companies, moving slowly up to become a CTO in the last few. Eventually, in 2006 I had an idea for a mobile app for feature phones, before the launch of the first iPhone and Android devices. Following this idea, i quit my job and went to pursue my own endeavor. I assembled a small team around me and got a small initial investment of $100K USD, and together with this, we managed to build the product. It was a mobile dating app, a bit similar to Tinder but for feature phones, that used Bluetooth proximity to match between users. All went well, but by the time we got to the second round of funding and were about to sign on a $500K VC funding investment, the banks in the USA fell. It was 2009, the world was in an economic crisis and the Venture Capital Firm was auctioned.

We were stuck. Some of my partners left the company out of despair, and being the situation that was, I made a decision to move on and pivot the company- this is how moblers was born.

moblers is a unique project-based company for developing digital products. Back in 2009, we started pioneering as a mobile app development company. This was a very new concept at the time since the first iPhone and Android devices were just introduced and there was a soaring demand for smartphone apps and there were not many who could fill in the gap as we did. moblers started growing with the growing demand. We were contacted by a lot of cool clients that asked us to build for them mobile strategies and smartphone apps. As demand grew, even more, we expanded our services into hardware development and added IOT solutions to our service catalog and a few years ago we moved also into developing smart chatbots and complex cloud solutions.

Today moblers provides not only full turn-key digital product development solutions but also works with entrepreneurs as a venture builder by turning ideas into ventures and established companies. We view ourselves as a One-Stop-Shop for all the technological needs of any company. Focusing on Apps, IoT, Chatbots, and Cloud solutions we design and develop our clients’ digital success tailored to their specific needs.

How does your company innovate?

This is a good question- Our innovation comes from within, it is a big part of the company’s spirit and goes with everything we do. Innovation is not a service we sell separately. Clients who come to us know that whatever we do will add a touch of cool innovation to it.

I have a very strong diverse technical background and I have worked in many different fields, this variety in my experience allows me to offer my clients original, creative and innovative tech solutions. On top of this, three years ago, I brought into moblers a co-owner to work next to me and help in the ongoing management of the company. We work very well together and his vast experience in product management boosted the company also in this sense.

We constantly ask ourselves how can we do things better? And we also put a lot of effort into answering this question for our clients. Together we are able to come up with really good innovative ideas for the benefit of our clients and their products. Our products. This is moblers’ spirit.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

As motioned above, the coronavirus had a strong negative effect on our business. We are dependent on revenues coming from projects we do for our clients,  and they have declined because of the uncertainty that possessed the market and our clients during 2020. But, we made quick changes and adapted to the new situation by listening to our customers and adjusting to their needs.

One of the things we did is to focus on offering the market new solutions to help businesses manage better during this new pandemic situation. For example, we developed a Smart Whatsapp Chatbot that collects online orders via a lite and entertaining messenger chat.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

We constantly make difficult decisions. From choosing the right partners,  the best employees, or the nicest customers to adding and removing features, pricing, prioritizing and making sure we deliver the best products- always. We believe in an infinite learning curve because eventually the learning never really ends. In fact, we decided to mark the learning one of our company values and part of our pledge to our clients:

MOBLERS PLEDGE

– To be a trustworthy partner
– To maintain professional conduct
– To keep our prices fair
– To be proud of our work
– To never stop practicing and expanding our knowledge and skills

What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?

There was no real difference besides the adjustments mentioned above. Moblers has always been a lean company that helped us by having us enter the coronavirus crisis in an already very efficient mode of work.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Back when moblers started we were pioneers and competition was scarce, but today we have a lot of competitors from all over the world.

We face the competition from different angles but mostly around pricing. Unfortunately, we cannot compete with the prices of cheap offshore competitors from India or Ukraine, but also our offering is not similar.

We offer top professional development with built-in innovation- we cannot offer this service for cheap but we also do our best not to be expensive- Our pricing is very fair considering our guarantee for top professional product development and service. This is part of our unique proposition and what our competitors can’t offer.

In fact, almost half of our clients chose us as their tech partners after trying their luck with offshore development that tempted them with low prices but eventually failed to deliver the solution they need and want.

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