A Year’s Appenings at 3Advance!

Your weekly news in apps - and once a year, your favorite app developers 😉

RINGING IN THE NEW YEAR: A RECAP OF 2022 AND LOOKING FORWARD TO 2023

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we’re featuring the annual message from 3Advance CEO Paul Murphy, reflecting on what’s been the most defining year in our history. New faces, new focus and yes, some incredible new apps we helped bring to life! We’ll also take a look at the most important trends that will affect our business and the opportunities for the next generation of tech startups. Enjoy, and we’ll be back with our regular programming next week.

A Chara ☘️

It’s hard to describe how much 3Advance has grown the past year. In January 2022, our outlook was very different. The Pandemic had converted us into a fully-remote business and our culture had suffered. We needed to shake things up, and get back on target. As an old friend once said, it's amazing what you can do when you have no choice. We had no choice. It was go-time. So tough decisions were made, and go, we did.

Fast forward to today: Our team looks different. Some have moved on. More have stayed. We’re bigger, we’re stronger, but most importantly, we are all moving in the same direction. We have improved our culture, our character, and our hiring practice has drastically improved. This has resulted in the addition of many amazing people to our team: Rishi, Luis, Kayne, Roshan, Gabe, Jack, Cameca, Jose, Jon, Howie, and now Ṣope, who started just this week! I can confidently say we’ve finally mastered this remote-thing. 😅 Ironically, one of the most enjoyable parts of being remote is bringing people together. In September, we held our first in-person retreat in New Orleans, and wow, it was worth it! 🎺 🎶

Now back to the apps! In 2022, we celebrated some major launches. These weren't easy; they stretched us, pushed us out of our comfort zone, and forced us to be better. In the past twelve months, we shifted our focus from being an app developer to becoming a true product development partner, and in some cases, investor. This was intentional and, at times, costly. This investment will pay dividends not only for us, but for all our clients - and not just figuratively… It's not enough to just build web and mobile apps; we’re dedicated to helping our founders create true, sustainable, thriving businesses.

🚀 New Products We Launched in 2022

JUKE → Alrighty then! Our first foray into Web3 was with Juke - an NFT Marketplace for TV & Film collectibles. 🎬 JUKE’s first drop took place in December, with the cult comedy classic Ace Ventura - Pet Detective. This has not only opened our eyes to the value of blockchain and tokens (fungible, and non), but the opportunity to work with the JUKE team has been an incredible experience. We are also investors in JUKE, and are excited for what’s coming in 2023. You’re gonna have to wait and see for yourself. 🍿

TriAxle → Hot off the press, TriAxle was our final project to go live in 2022. A multi-sided marketplace in the construction space, TriAxle answers the age-old call for contractors: 🆘 Where can I find Cleanfill? (Or for others, how on earth do I get rid of this Cleanfill?) TriAxle was the first project that 3Advance went really deep on Product Development: A dynamic website for customer aquisition, embedded tools for providing value before the network exists, and a follow-up data strategy for growth. This was tough, but so is construction. 💪

Istruzi → Running a business is hard (I think I may have mentioned this 🤔) and running a golf coaching business is frustrating and time-consuming. No longer. Istruzi allows coaches to communicate with their customers, to schedule lessons with their golfers and to support the growth of their coaching business. Acting as advisors to Istruzi is allowing us to further impact the growth of the company. We’ve got some customer-driven features coming in Q1, and we’re proud to be caddy for this sports-tech startup. 🏌️‍♂️

LeagueApps → We’ve been friends with the team from LeagueApps for a long time. Neighbors of ours in the DC metro area, we shared good times together at DC Sports Tech meetup, and have watched them explode with growth. When they finally came calling, we jumped at the opportunity to help. In 2022, we launched the Android version of LeagueApps Play - the mobile app powering leading clubs, camps, tournaments, and leagues across the nation. ⚽️

🗓 What’s Appening for All of Us in 2023?

In addition to these latest adventures, we’ll continue to support our long term clients AARP Foundation, Curbside Kitchen and NNEDV. And then there’s the products we’re currently working on. Expect to see some awesome things from these startups in Q1 and Q2!

So if you’ve been reading our newsletter, you’ll know it’s been a whirlwind year. And if you’ve worked with us here at 3Advance, you’ll know we don’t just build, we reveal. This year, here are the top three waves we’ll be riding, and taking our friends along for the ride.

🛠 Low-Code: Advancements in low-code platforms allow the quick creation of prototypes, landing pages, administration panels and so much more. This allows startups to pay less, and get more. Don’t recreate the wheel. Focus your dollars on your own unique value prop, not what exists elsewhere.

🤖 AI: Yes, the artificial intelligence revolution took a sharp turn in 2022. If you haven’t already checked out ChatGPT, it’s time you did. Yes, it’s not always accurate, but that’s not the point. AI will ultimately enable you and your business to be more efficient. It will threaten some jobs, it will expand the reach of others. But there’s no doubt, the world is changing, and we advise you to get ahead of the curve. We’ll be using Github Copilot to improve our code, ChatGPT to improve our content creation (already it’s helped improve the wording of our company policies, and client content examples), and generative AI for God-knows-what.

🌎 Web3: Forget the Crypto Bros, and the Bored Apes. Stay clear of scams and get-rich-quick schemes. And unless you can afford to lose, don’t gamble on cryptocurrencies. Blockchain, however, is here to stay. The value of web3 is yet to be revealed to most of us. Starbucks will open your eyes just a little if you’re still skeptical. An Internet controlled by fully controllable digital wallets is on the way, and it’s a better Internet. We’ll embrace the tech, we’ll be working on new web3 projects this coming year - hopefully shedding more light on how important this technology advancement is.

Now, I would love to chat with you about any of these things. The 3Advance team eats, sleeps and breathes this stuff. And this isn’t stuff we like to keep to ourselves.

Finally, thanks again for following along with our What’s Appening newsletter, and if you’ve been watching on YouTube. You’ve kept me on my toes. ;)

Sláinte,

Paul, Darren and Team 3Advance.