In the time frame from September 2013 until September 2015 I founded a company called SunApps GmbH.

The Idea

Build a system that allows sport clubs to better communicate with their members. In 2013, all communication still happened through physical mail, or Facebook posts. During that time, Facebook already started hiding posts from followers, so there was a need to better reach members. Using a mobile app, the club could send messages directly to their member’s phones.

The Product

  • Fully native iOS & Android app
  • Real-time Over The Air updates
    • Owner has their own app that shows WIP content changes
    • Owner has a separate “Release” button to rollout changes to the users
  • URL Share Scheme that works across mobile & Desktop
  • Push Notifications
  • 3D Birdiebook for golf clubs
  • Weather Integration
  • A CMS based on Ruby on Rails, fully flexible and customizable, nested menus
  • Using Facebook pages as data source, automatic syncing of content, photos & videos
  • Creating a new native app based on a Facebook page within minutes just by providing the URL
    • Automatic analysing of logo to use prominent colors for the app’s theme
    • Within minutes, the potential customer would have the new app on their phone
    • Automatic creation of screenshots, and submission to the Apple App Store and Google Play
  • POI maps
  • Multi-language support built-in everywhere
  • Recovery mode built in: If a remote change breaks the app for whatever reason, it automatically resets to the last known good state
  • 100% offline mode support
  • QR Code integration
  • Integration of third party web content, with support of injecting additional JS/CSS code to further customize third party content (e.g. external tee time booking systems)

Screenshots

Conclusion

The company was shut down, due to difficulties in Sales. The technical implementation of SunApps was excellent, especially considering this was all built in 2013 it was way ahead of the times. However we had no sales experience, and many sport clubs didn’t understand the need for a mobile app.