Sometimes strategic timing can be the key to success. Meet Garrett Gee, a man who went from college schmuck eating Doritos and coding to millionaire world explorer in a year. While studying Industrial Design at the University of Utah, Gee developed an idea for a QR code reader app that would be far easier to use than pre-existing solutions. With a squad of developer buddies, Gee made this idea into an iOS app in a mere six months.
Now here’s the crucial part where timing turned this mans life around. The iPad 2 was slated to come out soon, and Gee made a guess that a “Top Ten Apps” blog post would arise soon after and bring mass success to the companies listed. Bearing this in mind, his team began porting their app to the iPad 2 immediately upon release and did not stop working to sleep until it was complete-53 hours later.
As a result of such ingenuity, his app landed a spot on that first top ten list, and ended up kicking Angry Birds off of the App Store most popular list. Gee then underwent a two year mission to raise 8 million for developing a paid version of his app. He even stepped up to Shark Tank, but decided after his pitch that none of the sea creatures before him could ever fly as high as he could in the realm of entrepreneurship. His new app hit the market at $2 a slice and generated him $60,000 a month, until he sold it to Snapchat soon after for 54 million.
This man is currently traveling the world with his wife an two children. Even while sitting upon millions, Gee and his family sold their possessions to fund their trip instead of using their exorbitant bank account. He was raised as a strictly frugal man, and one would be hard pressed to see GeeDunk into his savings.
What if he had released his original app at a different time, like between two iPad releases? We’ll never know for sure, but one can speculate that it would have received a significantly reduced amount of exposure. The answer is blowing in the wind.
Timing is everything, as we can see from your post. A great idea he had because i personally use his app and had no idea until i read this post that he made it. Honestly genius.