CBJ: Local cell phone app creators earn praise

Charlottesville tech firm WillowTree Apps is gaining national attention for its smart phone apps.

The company’s latest app, called Likes!, crawls through users’ social networks and builds a personalized directory of restaurant, bar, band and movie recommendations based on things that people in your social network have liked on Facebook.

And like many innovations, tech-based and otherwise, WillowTree CEO Tobias Dengel said Likes! grew out of frustration and the thought that there must be a better way.

Dengel and WillowTree chief technology officer and founder Michael Prichard travel often for business. Over the summer, they were in Denver and in search of a good place to eat.

But their efforts to find a nice neighborhood restaurant fell flat when their digital searches turned up mostly chain restaurants.

“I was thinking there has to be a friend of mine that’s been in Denver or lives in Denver on Facebook that has liked … one of these restaurants,” Dengel said.

Facebook doesn’t catalogue those recommendations into a single concise directory, so the duo set about devising a way to do it digitally.

Likes! was launched late last month. 

Company background 

Prichard started the firm in 2008 with just a couple of people as a rich Internet application development company (Rich Internet applications like Adobe Flash are used to add animation and interactivity to web pages.)

Today, WillowTree Apps employs about 30 people in downtown Charlottesville.In the fanfare surrounding Apple’s decision to open up their platforms to encourage the independent development of apps, Dengel said the company got its foot in the door at the beginning.

One of Prichard’s first apps was Spotasaurus, an app that’s designed to help drivers find the closest open spaces in parking garages.

It caught the attention of Apple’s senior officials and was featured in Apple print and TV ads.Other apps developed by the company include Birth Class, a pregnancy-oriented app that was among dozens featured on stage by the late Apple founder Steve Jobs at the debut of the iPad 2 about a year ago.

The company also built the official University of Virginia smart phone apps that are used by thousands of students and faculty daily.Overall, the company has developed about 100 apps, when multiple versions of the same app for different smart phone platforms are considered. 

City’s appeal retains talent 

Prichard and Dengel say they see a sustainable future in smart phone app development.

“Right now, the projections are that within the next three years in the United States, by 2015, there’s going to be more Internet traffic — which includes apps — on mobile devices than there is on desktop PCs,” Dengel said “Certainly within that time frame, there’s an incredible opportunity for growth.”

Their work — and the company’s location, in particular — caught the attention of tech website CNET.com.

“One generally doesn't think of tech startups thriving outside of the major tech hubs (Silicon Valley, New York, Boston),” CNET reviewer Rafe Needleman wrote. “But not everyone wants to live the expensive, urban lifestyle. Some developers and some CEOs do better in more contained social environments.”

(CNET was founded by Charlottesville native Halsey Minor. CBS bought the media company in 2008.)

Prichard said Charlottesville’s quality of life and the city’s appeal to 20-something techies helps the company retain talent.

“We pretty actively recruit at UVa, Virginia Tech, Richmond, JMU, local schools,” he said. A lot of those students want to stay here because they already know that Charlottesville is a good place to live.”