Equilateral

The easiest way to make a decent salary everywhere in the world is to speak the digital language, "the code." 

At Apsy, we have created an AI-based platform that generates 70% of the code for apps, allowing us to significantly drop the cost of building apps. It also simplifies coding allowing human talent to quickly learn necessary skills to complete the remaining 30% and earn a decent salary. In a way, We are bringing Uber’s model to building apps: matching independent programmers with people who need an app.

To find talent, we have partnered with universities in developing countries and have specific training programs to help them quickly join our workforce. The salary they earn is at least 2 to 3 times higher than average, while our customers - the entrepreneurs and SMBs - pay us about ten times less than average.

Many people in developing countries have enough background in math and programming to quickly learn how to build apps. However, due to lack of training, and demand, they are deprived of such opportunities. 

At the same time, many startups and SMBs are faced with a considerable challenge when it comes to building their apps. Many are deceived by offshore agencies which pretend to be cheap. Yet, they charge exorbitant fees for non-functional apps - we have several real stories to tell based on our existing customers’ experiences.

We call our solution digital equilateral since it depends on three sides equally essential elements: 

1. Our app builder platform built on top of AI and automation can generate most of the app code, allowing us to keep the cost, time, and potential to make errors as low as possible.

2. Our academy platform provides training and licensing tools to people who can learn general skills like C# and React and specific skills on building apps at Apsy.

3. Our matching and delivery platform built on top of AI matches developers to projects, monitors the quality of their work, and allows customers to see the progress made in building the app in a real-time manner.

Our solution serves to groups of people: 

1. On the demand side, we serve startups and SMBs who have a limited budget to spend building their digital face - aka their app or website.  It is almost impossible to have a successful business without digital transact with the customers in today’s economy. Recent pandemic has shown how essential digital is in keeping businesses up and running. Yet, many startups and SMBs are faced with a considerable challenge when it comes to building their apps. Many are deceived by offshore agencies which pretend to be cheap, yet they charge exorbitant fees for non-functional apps - we have several real stories to tell based on our existing customers’ experiences 

2. On the supply side, we serve developers and students in engineering universities in developing countries: If instructed and provided with the right foundations, we can enable people with low experience to quickly learn the necessary skills to build apps and earn a decent salary.

Building high-quality apps can be very challenging for people with little experience in doing so. Our platform uses state-of-the-art techniques in machine programming (vision AI, NLP, and modern app theories) to generate 70% of the code. 

We rely upon human creativity to complete the rest. We have created a way to eliminate complexities, allowing people with enough training to provide four online courses delivered in 4 weeks to start working on apps. 

Once certified, our AI-based matching platform selects the appropriate programmer to complete the app based on their availability and level of proficiency. 

Lastly, our AI-based delivery platform detects syntactic and semantic issues in the app, automatically patches them or assigns them to programmers, and allows our customers to track the progress of their app in a real-time manner.

The first version of our code-generating platform called Panorama has already been used to generate apps for four paying customers. We have been expanding our customer base in two communities: universities and accelerators in the US and EU. Some examples of existing customers include the University of California Irvine (UCI), Cambridge University, Southern California (USC), and Boston University. We have recently started expanding into the middle east and in talks with a coworking company called Wrkbay in UAE to build their apps.

In terms of finding talent, we are currently working with the University of Ghana to train their students. We are also in talks with a few other universities in the middle east, including the University of Kabul, to get more talent.

Our process requires several orchestrations and we are going to implement them over ServiceNow. Keep in mind that each of these processes can be executed 10,000 or more times each year.

1. When a person applies to become a certified creator.

2. When a project is assigned to a certified creator.

3. When a project is completed by a certified creator.

4. When a new project is submitted by a startup or SMB.

5. When a customer would like to report a problem with their completed app.

We use state-of-the-art techniques based on the founder's Ph.D. research to generate code at a scale that never existed before. The existing techniques can only generate code for a code fragment. However, by relying on our novel research around app theory and machine programming, we have generated code for the real-world app.

This allows us to significantly reduce the time and cost of generating the app and eliminate manual coding for repetitive parts of the app. It also allow us to place structure around sections we outsource to our partner programmers.

Our core platforms consist of:

1. Panorama: uses Vision AI to detect design elements in artboards and uses them to generate UI code.

2. Automata: understands natural language description of the app and uses advanced NLP techniques to extract information and generate the logic for the app.

3. Match: uses rule-based algorithms gradually using intelligent recommendation engines to match programmers to complete specific apps.

4. CrpytoAps: a social-crowdfunding platform to help startups crowdfund their apps. It supports crypto-currencies to support countries that do not have access to credit cards.

5. Apper: a platform to certify creators and allow them to select projects and get paid.

Here is a demo of products: 

And here is the link to the supporting papers used to build Automata:

https://toorajhelmi.github.io/home/publication/parsing

There are no risks involved. Any discrepancies in the code our tools generate - which is really rare - will be captured and fixed during manual coding.

Our business has two sides: 1. demand from people who need an app 2, Supply of talent from developing countries.

On the demand side: we currently have 5 customers - startups and small businesses - from the US, UK, and the Middle East. Our estimate is to have more than 5000 customers all around the world in five years.

On the supply side: we currently have 6 developers from Afghanistan. We estimate to have more than 100 developers to work for us in the next five years.

In the next years, we would like to expand our partnership which universities in the following countries:

1. Ghana

2. Afghanistan

3. Pakistan

4. the Philippines

5. Mexico

In five years, we try to expand to other countries where a developer earns around $250 per month. We will be able to pay them at least twice that rate.

Regarding the number of startups and small businesses we would like to help, our goal is to have around 50 to 100 new customers in one year and five years around 3000 to 500o new customers.

We use two metrics:

1. Number of apps build on per month

2. Number of hours developers get to work on projects per month.

3 full-time: CEO, VPs

1 part-time: Lead UX

5 interns: Engineering, Marketing

25 offshore fulltime: Engineering, UX, UI, PM, Design

The idea came about 3 years ago when Alex and I - who were co-workers - started discussing the inefficiency of building custom software. I was looking at it from a technological lens, and he was from the product offering perspective. That discussion stayed in mind and resulted in Apsy. As a result, all three of us are energized to solve the missing need for people who merely need an elegant custom app to run their business.

1. Tooraj has been working in generating apps for years and has led teams of engineers to build similar platforms. His Ph.D. research is on machine programming - to convert user intent into code or codable assets using automation and AI - and he has published academic papers on using AI to generate code. Before founding Apsy, he was the head of engineering at Engineer.ai, where he created a low-code platform to build apps using pre-made components.

2. Alex has worked in tech product management and sales for years in notable companies like Blizzard, Experien, and IBM. As a result, he fully understands how to turn complex technological ideas into simple forms that non-technical people can understand.

3. Paulina has been working as UI/UX designer for more than 5 years. At Apsy, she is in charge of anything customer-facing to ensure we provide a consistent experience to our customers.

Our idea is inherently around building a team of developers worldwide, focusing on developing countries. The most important quality is a desire to show one can go beyond tempo-geographical constraints and evolve to transcend oneself and the organization one works for. 

Our local team is currently pretty diverse: the founder comes from a middle eastern background, and the CEO comes from an African background, our CXO comes from Latin America, and our fourth onshore team member is caucasian from Canada. The rest of our team is composed of people from India, the middle east, and Africa.

Our values are integrity, creativity, and respect for our team members. The last values specifically focus on equality and fairness across all people working in the company regardless of gender, race, or background.

If we win solve the credibility we get can help us in different ways:

1. Partnership: we can expand our partnership with other organizations active in developing countries much faster

2. Technological: we would be able to attract talent from top-tier universities like MIT, Standford, ... to help us build our advanced platforms.

Our resources are limited - like all the other startups in the world. So far, our focus has been on what we think is the core for our survival:

Technology: building our core tools. We rely on several orchestrations in adding certified coders, running projects, ... ServiceNow platform can jumpstart implementing these tools

Operations: Running high-quality projects to satisfy our customers

We are actively thinking and trying on other areas, but we can do much better with some external help.

We want to partner with 2 types of organizations:

1. Orgzanitions who support startups and SMBs: through them, we can find customers and help their customers to get access to affordable technology

2. Organization that works in developing countries to educate and train talent: we can work with them to provide tech courses and hire them.