ATP Stories: Bob Gallagher — Appsynth

Podcast highlights:

• 04:18 Earlier this year, you picked up an award in Singapore. Tell us a little bit about that. -- We picked up two awards from Campaign Asia-Pacific. Campaign Asia-Pacific is basically the de facto agency world magazine in the region. It was really good recognition for us. Now it's onward and upwards!
• 26:00 Do you see anything emerging in Thailand on the mobile front that will catch on in the rest of the world? -- On the consumption side, Thailand is leading in terms of time spent on mobile. We're talking 4-5 hours a day. There is also mobile payment via QR codes, which are very big here. We see the drive to a cashless society. These are things you would notice in Thailand, people scanning people's QR codes and transferring money for products and services very easily.
• 44:10 So now you're 8 years into the story of Appsynth. Where do things go from here? -- For us it's a careful balancing act in terms of having the people we need versus having a situation where work dries up and we can no longer support the number of people we have. Maybe we could expand to 100 people, be we'll have to see. We also want to look at growing regionally and also in Europe and the US. One effort we've engaged in is diversifying the nationalities of our employees. As we move forward we need to continue to figure out how to change our structure to support our growth.

Podcast notes:

• 00:05 Welcome Bob Gallagher, Managing Director and Founder of Appsynth to ATP Stories with Graham Brown.
• 00:40 You set up Appsynth in 2010, correct? -- Yes, that's correct. Coming up on 10 years in Thailand with 8 of those years running Appsynth. We have over 50 people working for us now and have seen a steady stream of growth in this regard.
• 01:40 So your background was originally in music, wasn't it? -- Yep. Started working in mobile 12 years ago for a mobile music distributor and even before that running a record label. Came to Thailand first at age 18 and saw the potential in the markets there.
• 04:18 Earlier this year, you picked up an award in Singapore. Tell us a little bit about that. -- We picked up two awards from Campaign Asia-Pacific. Campaign Asia-Pacific is basically the de facto agency world magazine in the region. It was really good recognition for us. Now it's onward and upwards!
• 07:48 These awards must help in terms of recruitment. Can you talk a little about that? -- We've probably hired a bit more than 15 recruits in the past year, which is a lot. The award adds to the prestige of working with a company like ours. While we're growing, we've been focusing on things like company culture and creating an environment where people want to come but also then want to stay.
• 10:35 When you look at other companies, who do you admire in terms of getting corporate culture correct? -- There are many different role models in this regard. There's no one way to run a business. But to name a few, there's Spotify. Of course there are other inspirations from different fields. Just take a look at who are the best software teams in the world and how do they operate. One benefit we have in terms of hiring people is the ability to tell candidates they will be able to work on many different projects given that we're not such a big company. We don't have teams devoted just to narrow features or products.
• 15:15 Can you describe a bit about how you capture the sort of software engineer who wants to go out and make a difference in the world?