MyApp

Founder: Aisha Granville

aisha.granville@gmail.com

MyApp is a company that will provide affordable, high-quality mobile-app solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses that might not otherwise have the wherewithal to develop such applications on their own.

HOW MENTORING WILL HELP: “Working with a network of accomplished entrepreneurs will be invaluable. I hope to benefit by avoiding the mistakes made by many young entrepreneurs.”

HOW $10,000 WILL HELP: “Our design staff is vital to MyApp’s success — and the grant from 100 Urban Entrepreneurs will be used to recruit highly skilled app designers and employ them by contract prior to making an full-time employment offer for employment. The funding will also help MyApp develop a winning advertising and marketing campaign.”

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IN TODAY’S WORLD, a signature app is almost as important an accessory for a business as its Web site or logo. The phenomenal proliferation of mobile-based apps is one of the most notable business trends of the last several years — but if you’re a small company with no particular tech expertise and not a lot of money to spend, where can you turn to be sure you’re staying in step with your competition?

Enter MyApp, a Washington, D.C.-based business founded by Aisha Granville, 28, who is currently a student at the Howard University School of Law. “I started the company because my mother faced difficulties in finding an app designer for her small business,” Granville says. “With the help of my Entrepreneurship professor at Howard Law, I seized the opportunity and began planning the business.”

MyApp will offer four core services beginning in 2012: creation of apps for small- and medium-sized businesses; what Granville calls “corrective, adaptive and preventative maintenance”; integration of apps into clients’ existing business models; and its own line of signature applications that its clients may use free of charge.

Granville is currently polishing MyApp’s operations and intends to hire two app designers and a sales associate before fully opening its doors. Her overall goal, though, is clear: to provide a means to an increasingly necessary business tool for companies that might otherwise be shut out of the market. If all goes well, she notes, before too long one phrase will trip off every small-business owner’s tongue: “Yeah, there’s a MyApp for that.” •