Brothers David and Chris Sinkinson attended Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, when David learned of the problems maintaining the blue emergency phones on campus. He proposed a location-aware mobile safety app, so Chris built it himself, and it worked great. 

AppArmor grew steadily to become the most popular mobile safety app and platform in Canada and the US used by over 250 universities.

With no outside investors, they bootstrapped the company to $6 million ARR with serious profits before selling it to Rave Mobile Security for $40 million. They stayed on for another year in transition before writing a book and running a podcast called Startup Different.

Podcast Sponsor – Full Scale

This week’s podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. 

Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines, who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io to have a conversation about your practical dev staffing plans. 

Quote from David Sinkinson, CEO and co-founder of AppArmor

”The biggest advice I give new founders is to ‘Ignore The Startup Noise.’ Throughout our experience, we had lots of people who we loosely refered to as haters. People who said everything from “we’re just a lifestyle business” to our idea is never going to work. One person literally told my cofounder brother Chris that we weren’t even a startup.

“Just ignore those people. Don’t pursue validation from your peers. Instead, pursue validation in the market. A couple of years into the business, that realization was a big change that helped me stay on track. So, my advice for SaaS founders is to ignore the haters and enjoy the journey.”

Links

• David Sinkinson on LinkedIn
• Chris Sinkinson on LinkedIn
• AppArmor on LinkedIn
• AppArmor website
• Rave Mobile Security website
• Startup Different podcast and book