Holger Meyer, Founder and CEO elaborate on the success of Reciever App in an exclusive tête-à-tête with TheWebAppMarket. He shares his valuable thoughts, insights and vision behind creating such an amazing app.

Let’s check his journey!

Q1) Holger, Could you brief us about you and your two companies?

I started programming about 40 years ago. First I wrote small programs (not yet called apps..) for the Commodore 64 and later for the Atari ST. At this time there was no internet and no possibility for me to publish my programs. You needed a big publishing house.

Besides that it was more a hobby. Originally I studied audio engineering and worked in several recording studios in Berlin, but I always did some programming on the side. In 1999 I had the opportunity to get a job as a programmer. At that time, anyone who knew anything about programming was accepted.

I quickly made my career, because I always had very good ideas and helped my employer to create new products. When I bought my first iPhone at the end of 2007, I wanted to program apps for it. I developed my first apps in my spare time, at that time for iPhones with Jailbreak, because there was no AppStore yet.

When the AppStore was opened in summer 2008, I was lucky to be one of the first developers right from the start. My apps sold so well that I decided to start a company in 2009 and quit my old job. That was the birth of appsolute GmbH.

I hired more programmers and graphic designers and then big companies like BMW and Tupperware approached us, who also wanted to have apps developed by us. In 2019 I decided to split my company into 2 companies. 

Q2) How did you and the team (if any) come up with the idea of creating this radio app, especially considering there was none in the German app store 2009. Were there any international products/companies you were inspired by?

The idea actually came from outside. An employee from the German office of a US company that runs an internet radio database contacted us and asked if we would like to make a radio app together with them. Since there was no radio app in the German AppStore at that time and we liked the idea. So we created Receiver Radio.

But in the meantime we changed the radio database provider, because we had to give up too much of the sales and we wanted to be more independent. Our new database comes from the company airable (https://airablenow.com).

Q3) Once the idea was formed, how did you execute it?

A) How was the project funded? Did you start with your own savings or seek investment?

We just started to program and published the App in the AppStore. At this time there was no need to do marketing. It all went by itself. Since there were few radio apps, the app sold almost by itself.

B) Basically some highlights (highs and lows) of the initial app development process of receiver radio?

The highlight was definitely when we were featured by Apple as the best Radio App in the German AppStore. We were then No. 1 in the German App Store for several weeks and had sold a lot of apps. One “low” was, for example, that we had to support WMA streams in the beginning, since almost every second radio station streamed in WMA.

But WMA was not supported by the iPhone, so we had to use OpenSource libraries (ffmpeg) which took a lot of time and was very error-prone. Over time, most stations switched to MP3 and AAC streams, so we were able to take out the WMA support. 

Q4) Creating an app for people with special needs must have been difficult, can you share a bit more about that part of the development process.

Since we followed Apple standards right from the start, Receiver Radio was relatively easy to use by blind people. Therefore we always got inquiries if we could make it even better. So we listened to the suggestions of the blind users and implemented a barrier-free operation. I.e. for icons and pictures we always added a description and supported special gestures which are important for the operation with a screen reader.

Furthermore, we deliberately did without any frills like fancy animations and independent operation modes in order to keep the app easy to use with screen readers.

Q5) How long did it take for the app to launch? Did you have a marketing campaign ready? If yes, what did it look like?

The first version was programmed in 6 weeks and then immediately in the store. As first mover we did not have to start any marketing campaigns. As already mentioned, Apple has featured the app and many blogs and magazines have reported about Receiver. That was marketing for free 🙂

Q6) If you were building a unique product like receiver, an app that didn’t have any existing alternative or competitor, in 2022, what would be the first thing you’d do?

Nowadays, of course, it is not as easy as it used to be. There are now millions of apps in the AppStore and on Google Play

Q7) How did the pandemic affect your business (if it did) and what were your damage control strategies? Any new technologies you’re now integrating?

We didn’t have any damage because of Covid. We only switched to the home office during the lockdown. Also after the lockdown we work a lot more at home.

Q8) What business lessons did 2022 teach you? Say if there was another global emergency ten years or down the line, would you say you’d now be more prepared?

Our goal is to create several apps and platforms for e-learning. The pandemic has shown that this is still very much lacking. For example, we will create a cloud platform for our ear training app “Better Ears”, so that music schools can provide exercises and tests for their students.

Q9) What is the worst and the best piece of advice you’ve received in your professional career as a developer and an entrepreneur ?

The best advice came from my wife. I originally planned to develop apps for other companies as a freelancer in 2009. But my wife convinced me to start a real company and she was right. I can’t remember the worst advice.

Q10) What advice/ caution you would give to app clients who know nothing of the app development industry but have a unique app idea?

Before you spend a lot of money to have your great app idea programmed, you should definitely do some market research. You should find out if the app is feasible at all, if there are already similar apps on the market and what the competitors are. One should ask oneself what the potential customers of the app want.

What are their needs and wishes? How does my app differ from the others? You should also be clear about how you want to earn money with it. There are basically 2 different types of customers. One would like to have an app that was programmed especially for their company.

For example we programmed the mail app for the German mail service mail.de. Or for Tupperware an app with which their salesmen can communicate with each other. These kinds of apps are usually successful or have a reason to exist.

The other type of customer has an idea which solves a problem and wants to develop an app for it and get rich. Unfortunately, this goes wrong in most cases. For this to work, the app idea must be very, very good and there must be no competition. Then it is best to look for an investor and find a startup.

Q11) Any additional comments, something I may have missed that you’d like our readers to know?

Many app users prefer not to spend money on an app. But these users should be aware that app programming usually costs a lot of time and therefore money.

The app programmer has to buy his bread and butter. Therefore the users should be aware that they usually pay for free apps as well. Either by having to look at advertisements or by collecting their data.