RareWire was built on a strong relationship, split responsibilites

(Guest post by Matt Angell) Kirk Hasenzahl and I started RareWire in 2010 with a mission of simplifying and improving the app creation process. We developed a simple language that makes it easy for designers, web developers and front-end programmers to build truly native mobile apps. In the past three and a half years, we…

Founder Friday is a weekly guest post written by a founder who is based in or hails from the Silicon Prairie. Each month, a topic relevant to startups is presented and founders share lessons learned or best practices utilized on that topic. February’s topic is how co-founders found each other. 

About the authors: Matt Angell is the CTO and co-founder of RareWire.


Kirk Hasenzahl and I started RareWire in 2010 with a mission of simplifying and improving the app creation process. We developed a simple language that makes it easy for designers, web developers and front-end programmers to build truly native mobile apps. In the past three and a half years, we have built hundreds of apps and developed a robust engine that produces native iOS and Android apps. But it all started when Kirk and I met.

We met fourteen years ago at our previous jobs at a local software company. I was the head of product development and Kirk had been hired as a sales representative. From the start, Kirk and I got along great and together we increased sales twenty times over. We knew we made a good team.

BECOME A SPONSOR

After I came up with the idea to write a flexible app development language, I worked on it for four months during my nights and weekends. Kirk joined me and began looking for clients and quickly landed our first deal with The Atlantic magazine. At this point, we quit our jobs and made RareWire a full-time effort.

Since I was the technical mind and Kirk was sales-oriented, we split up the early responsibilities along that line. I developed the core product, the website and began building the apps for our clients. Kirk did everything else: sales, marketing and finance. He has an amazing ability to command any room he enters, and his ability to immediately get people interested in learning how we can help was instrumental in getting RareWire off the ground.

Starting RareWire would have been extremely challenging without a co-founder. I don’t know how I could have been able to single-handedly develop the technology while simultaneously getting the word out and getting people interested.

While my previous company began as a startup, I have learned a lot in the last few years. Learning how to cope with uncertainties has been a major help. It can be difficult to make plans and stick to them when you are constantly dealing with new customer requests, rapid changes in the mobile industry and limited resources. Planning for the unplanned is key.

 

Credits: Matt Angell photo from RareWire

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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