Meet Aaron Pilcher, Ben Pilcher, Sue Foster | Aaron & Sue – Product Designer; Ben-Software Developer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Aaron Pilcher, Ben Pilcher, Sue Foster and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Aaron Pilcher, Ben Pilcher, Sue Foster, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
The three of us began a collaboration a few years ago. Sue had just sold her first business, Iron Doggy, a company that designed, produced and sold dog leashes for runners. She wanted to apply the lessons learned from that experience to another product.

At that time Sue & Aaron worked together at a large company as product designers. Aaron was looking for creative outlet, and he happened to know an iOS developer interested in building a consumer app. That developer, as it turned out, was Aaron’s identical twin brother Ben.

In the beginning we had lots of ideas about what kind of app we might produce, but after doing a bunch of research we realized the market for packing list apps was really big. When we looked at the apps available at the time, we realized there was a lot of room for improvement.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
If you were to do a side-by-side comparison with the top packing list apps on the market today, the first thing that you would notice is that Packaroo looks very high-end. A review on FStoppers referred to it as “nerdy and artistic”. The visual design is head and shoulders above the competition, but the difference is not just in the way the app looks. We’ve worked really hard to design a product that handles all sorts of packing needs without exposing the underlying complexity. We want our users to spend their energy focusing on their travels, not figuring out how to use our app.

We’re happy with the product’s direction, and excited about what we have planned for it in the future. From a business perspective, it’s not lost on us that fewer than 1% of all apps are successful. They may make it to the App Store initially, but they die a quick death because of a lack of downloads, active users, or revenue. We’re really proud that we were able to envision this product, bring it to market, and keep it alive.

How we managed to pull this off probably boils down to two decisions we made from the start. First, we chose to create something where we already had a lot of expertise. Sue & Aaron both had extensive backgrounds in product design, having worked together professionally for several years. At the same time, Ben had over a decade of professional experience developing iOS apps.

Secondly, we decided to invest our own time and money into this project rather than accept venture capital funding. We’ve kept our expenses very low by doing all of the work ourselves. The trade-off, of course, is that the pace of rolling out the product is slower than if we had hired more resources from the start. We think it was the right decision because it’s allowed us to keep a healthy balance between work and our personal lives. It’s also meant that we control the product’s direction exclusively.

It’s been fun, and a lot of work. In some ways it was easy because it is a side project for each of us. Ben & Aaron both have “real jobs”, and families with children to raise. Sue is a “free agent” (having retired from the working world back in 2020). When she’s not busy with Packaroo, she and her partner spend months at a time camping their way around the country. None of us are counting on Packaroo to pay the bills. This allows us to take our time, and focus on the product’s quality. It’s a bit counter-intuitive to bring something to market, and to do it slowly. It requires a lot of staying power, and sometimes when a customer asks for something that just isn’t there yet it can be humbling.

The most important thing is that we’re having fun creating Packaroo, and we think that shows up in the experience of using the product. We get some amazing emails from customers that are really gratifying, which makes the more mundane tasks of keep the books and dealing with accountants all worth it. In the end, starting up a business is a lot like the process of creating a new product. If you do it well enough, some people might mistake it for being easy.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?

Day 1: Go inner tubing through downtown Golden and grab a beer at The Gold Mill afterwards.
Day 2; Eat dinner at Uncle (get the spicy chicken bowl) then get some drinks at Williams & Graham.
Day 3: Wander through the Botanic Gardens, bring a picnic and spread out some place in the shade
Day 4: Bike Watertown Canyon and grab beers afterwords at Living the Dream
Day 5: Dinner at J’s Noodles followed by a free concert at the Levitt Pavilion
Day 6: Rise early and take a box of donuts from Habit (downtown, on Platte St) to RedRocks amphitheater and heckle the stairs-runners between bites.
Day 7: Rest

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Ben sends a shoutout to Stack Overflow.com

Sue sends a shoutout to whoever it was who invented the spreadsheet.

Aaron sends shoutouts to Sue and two other long-time colleagues at his day-job, who mentored and shaped him as a designer. Honorable mention to his brother Ben for his extreme work ethic.

Last, and certainly not least, we send shoutouts to our spouses (Adriane, Carla, and Laura) for tolerating us staring at our screens for gazillions of hours.

Website: https://www.packaroo.app

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/packarooapp/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/packarooapp

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@packaroo3386/videos

Other: On the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/packaroo-packing-lists/id1480958178

Image Credits
Aaron Pilcher, Sue Foster