A little over four years ago, I realized that my mentor, Chuck Wenger, would wake up at three am every morning to read the Bible. After that, he would share a key verse with over forty guys that accepted his purity accountability challenge, which is basically to read the Bible each day and exchange verses. This way, the young man will show that he had read the Bible that day, and also gets equipped to face the world and its temptations. It took Chuck two hours to copy-paste the message to each contact, address it by name, and then send it.
Chuck, in his eighties, was the busiest man I knew and I thought about how to make this process shorter and easier for him. I am a software developer, so I coded a quick messaging app that helped him write his text once, choose a name template, and send to each contact. This way, Chuck didn’t have to rewrite his message, or to type each contact’s name. The software did all that for him. Later, I also began a similar challenge with different people and became a user of my app. A year after that, my wife started using it, and few of my close friends. The app was not published or available to the public, so each time, I had to install it on their iPhones.
December of 2015, Chuck Wenger passed away. Chuck was one of the most influential and Christlike men I knew, and I am honored to have known him personally and closely. He always encouraged my love for technology and software development; he even often times compelled me to start a business of my own.
Fast forward a year and a few months, my wife and I moved back to Israel, we had been living in the US for almost seven years. And here we were jobless, living back with our parents, and wondering about whats next. So we decided to renovate the software and put it out there. We saw a much wider application to it, for example, busy leaders who do not prefer group messaging with many notifications and chatter but don’t have time to send message by message, it is also perfect for personalized event invites or seasonal greetings that can be sent within a few taps. The app increases reply rates because when a message is personal, the recipient is prone to reply much more than when in a group. Another very important aspect to me was to protect the contacts in the group. Many apps reveal other contacts and their info in the group, which is not preferable for everyone. In addition to that, app developers/makers often sell their contact data to third party companies and a lot of make money on it. Rest assured that the information of the app users is safe and protected.
Before we knew it, Reach was born. We called it Reach, because it simply reaches people easily, securely, and caters to different platforms all at the same time.
It has been a coupe of moths and its going great! Today, my wife and I, are working on marketing. We are learning the challenges and how to overcome them. Its quite a ride that we are enjoying together, despite the obstacles. Reach helps me each day save a great deal of time, and I hope it helps you too!
Check out this video explaining how the app works: