Appillionaires: Secrets from Developers Who Struck It Rich on the App Store

Chapter 11: From Bedroom to Boardroom

In the last few years, the iPhone and iPad have transformed many an indie programmer into a captain of industry. The ascent of the lone programmer from the bedroom to the boardroom is another side effect of the mass popularity of Apple’s products.

In response to the success of software sales on the iPhone, larger investment conglomerates and multi-national games companies have been bodysnatching small indie studios in a frenzy of acquisitions. While some developers, like Mills at ustwo, resent the fact that the developer community is losing its spiritual heart to lumbering corporate giants, the indie acquisition is often a lucrative one. Many studios long for the day when the long tentacle of the vampire squid taps on the door and blows banknotes at them.

A Golden Age

There is a feeling across the industry that we may be living in that most unique of times: the blink of an eye at the beginning of many technological revolutions where the lucky few make decisions that will eventually lead to colossal fortunes.

Apple itself was begun in 1976 in a garage in Los Altos, California. The space had been used to restore cars by Jobs’s father, but he cleared the it out for his son and Steve Wozniak to set up Apple Computers. Amusingly, a giant wood workbench — lugged home by Job’s father — was Apple’s first production line. “It was just the two of us, Woz and me,” Jobs told Fortune magazine when he returned to the space years later. “We were the manufacturing ...