By Suhyuk Kang, ESTmob Co-Founder and CSO
Over the next few weeks, Send Anywhere will be releasing Send Anywhere 2 for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Linux. It is during these hectic times that I like to take a moment to reflect upon how we got here and the creative process that lead to these releases.
Every company is constantly looking for new and better ways to improve their product and Send Anywhere isn’t any different. Directly following the release of our last Android and iOS update, our team locked themselves away in a secret location to begin planning for our next launch. We all came in with bright ideas and a collective burning desire to make this something truly special. After many sleepless nights and a few too many cups of coffee (which may explain the sleepless nights) we had a roadmap for our release. Not only did we want to greatly expand the features for our iOS and Android users but we also wanted to extend Send Anywhere’s compatibility to Windows, Mac, and Linux. Now that we knew what we wanted, it was time to turn our ideas into reality.
Anyone can create an idea but it takes careful planning and much iteration to turn this into something tangible and powerful. I’m very lucky that I work alongside a brilliant engineering team that can take these ideas and craft a wonderful end product. At the start of each week during the product development stage, we’d gather as a team at breakfast and run through what everyone’s goals were for that week and how we could work as a team to help reach them. We would then meet again on Friday at “Town Hall” to discuss if these goals were met and, if not, what happened and how we could go about fixing this.
My favorite issue that impeded a goal being met was given by one of our engineers back in May. He came into Town Hall looking sullen and beaten down. When it was his turn to present he mentioned how he did not meet certain goals for the week because his cat broke his computer. As he said this I thought to myself, “Could he not think of a better excuse? I thought the ‘Dog ate my homework’ line of defense went out of fashion years ago.” He went on to explain that he was finishing up some coding on his personal computer the night before with a warm cup of coffee by his side and his cat in his lap. His cat decided that she was sick of looking at lines of code (can you blame her) and hopped out of his lap thereby knocking the coffee all over his laptop. Needless to say, he no longer asks his cat for help coding.
It was also during our product development that I learned one of our engineers has quite the sweet tooth. One day, I brought in a huge bag of chocolate for the team (pictured below) that was supposed to last them for a few weeks. Our engineer finished it all by himself in less than three days.
Thus far, we’ve released our Android update and will be releasing our iOS update and brand new Mac and Windows releases within the following month. (Did I mention Linux? Yes, we do care about geeks as well!) These releases will push the envelope of file sharing with features such as “My Devices” which offers seamless remote file management across your PC and Android as well as expanding the power of Send Anywhere to PCs.
We hope you enjoy using Send Anywhere 2 as much as we have in making it.
-Suhyuk Kang
P.S. For up-to-date news about Send Anywhere follow us on Twitter @Send_Anywhere.