Please note: if you have any questions about software development or Messapps, please reach out to that company directly. I’m no longer part of it after the acquisition.
After creating my first app "LSAT Triangle" I have then moved and created apps for other exams. Apps that would help students study for the LSAT, GMAT, GRE, MCAT, TOEFL, IELTS, SAT, etc. As time went, more and more people started to approach me asking to help with their app idea. And soon it became evident that there was more to this new app market than just building educational apps in fairly niche markets.
I need to admit that at the time I wasn't intelligent enough to consider either selling apps I've built to another company or selling the company itself. The only option that made sense to me was to make all of those test prep apps from the first company, Malyshev EduSys, free, let people use it and then start focusing on building a new company. Hence, in March of 2013 Messapps was born. A company that would design and develop apps for others.
It is interesting to note that I was able to start Messapps with almost $0 investment. This was possible because essentially in the early days I functioned as an agent between clients and developers. I would look for clients on freelance websites (at the time the main one I used was elance.com which later became upwork.com). Once I found a client I would reach out to developers I already knew or looked for new ones. Agreed with developers to pay them for parts of completed work and then was able to pay them portion of what client paid me. So there was no cost to connect the two parties and essentially getting a commission for managing those projects.
As time went on the team continued to grow. We would hire more and more designers and developers around the world. Soon we would open our first office in one of WeWorks in New York.
The team and the company was my second family. Since 2013 so many things changed in my life but no matter where I was and what was happening around me, one thing never changed: each morning at 8am I opened my computer and started working with an amazing group of people. Important to note that Messapps was always an international team. The first people I worked with (who stayed in the company to this day) where a few guys from India: Suresh, Kishan, Chirag, Kamal. They have been working with me from the start and I simply feel obligated to say that they are some of the most amazing, kind and at the same time professional people I ever knew. After the initial group of people in India more people joined right here in New York. Then, being that my native language is Russia, we've started to hire in other Russian speaking countries. With most people coming from Russia and Ukraine, and others also from Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and others.
It is those people that made Messapps into a very successful business. Almost all of my life achievements in the next 9 years were related to Messapps and its team. Whether its winning tens of awards, speaking at the United Nations, teaching at New York University, investing in other startups - Messapps was a big reason for all of this.
Messapps Exit
Please note: if you have any questions about software development or Messapps, please reach out to that company directly. I’m no longer part of it after the acquisition.
For the last year or two before COVID I started to dabble with the idea of building my own software product. Messapps is an amazing company and it has some of the best people I ever worked with. But, after building my first app LSAT Triangle, I have spent almost 10 years building products for others. And I've started to feel the itch of getting back to the product development more and more.
At the same time Messapps was showing amazing growth. We overcame COVID and continued growth after that. By the end of 2020 Messapps was a rapidly growing company that already had an established name in the industry.
Looking at the growth of Messapps and at the same time feeling the itch to get back to working on my own products led me to deciding it might be the time to sell the company. After speaking to multiple brokers I found an absolute gem: Vishal Bharucha from VNB Brokers. I cannot speak more highly of Vishal and his work. After we've started working together we received the first offer in just a few weeks! This offer was unfortunately not what we wanted and we had to decline.
But in a couple of months another two offers came in. Both were fairly similar. After some time of talking to potential buyers we’ve settled on one of the offers. And after another 6-8 months of due diligence and conversations with the buyer by the end of 2021 we were ready to close with official closing happening in January 2022.
This closed an unforgivable and amazing chapter of my life. Messapps and the people in it were my second family. They say that it's a bad idea to become friends with people that work for you but in a team of about 20 people that might not be such a bad idea. As the closing happened I went through the whole spectrum of emotions from being devastated that such a big part of my life is gone to being excited about what lies ahead.
Now that I have completed the transition away from Messapps I have began working on Intelogos and you can learn more about it here.