A gift for the daughter inspired a couple in Yangpu to start a business that has won support from over a million people. In the context of mass innovation and entrepreneurship, Yangpu has witnessed a variety of brilliant start-up stories, among which Yang Yixin couple’s Good Father APP is a best example of the thousands of new business owners in the district.
"The Internet is so well-developed and artificial intelligence is also blooming. But students only have tapes to go with their textbooks—it’s like antique from the last century. Because of this, my child had little progress in preview, self-study, and review. "
Developer of the Good Father APP, Jiang Yixin, was member of the middle management of a Fortune 500 company. During his education on her daughter, he found that she was still using outdated items like tapes, thus hampering her preview, review and self-learning processes. So he wanted to develop a mobile application to make a difference and present as a gift for his daughter.
\Jiang Yixin had never created an APP or had done anything about it, but he was still resolved to try, starting from learning basics in books. "Whenever he has an idea, he will put it into action. To build this APP, he pushed himself so hard that he seemed completely absorbed.” said Wang Fei, Jiang Yi Xin's wife that he gave up a great deal of spare time. Even when they were already in bed, Jiang Yixin would rush to his desk and work all night when hit by inspiration.
Driven by innovation and passion, Jiang Yixin soon released his work, Good Father APP. "This APP integrates listening, speaking, reading and writing, and greatly reduces the boredom, increases interaction and enhances user experience by attaching an extensive learning module.” Said Wang Fei, particularly excited about this application.
The first build still needed testing, and the gift receiver, Jiang Yixin, became the first tester of this product. To his surprise, his daughter made great progress after a short period, and even became interested in English—she wasn’t quite a fan of the language—that she began to learn by herself instead of being subject to supervision by her parents.
Seeing her great progress in English, Jiang Yixin was relieved. Later, the classmates of her daughter also began to use this APP. Through word of mouth like this, the Jiang couple gained over 2 million users without spending a penny on publicity. What’s more rewarding, most APP users have given a 5-star rating, and a large number of parents have offered sincere advice.
"It is the encouragement and advice that have inspired us to keep it going so that the Good Father APP can receive continuous updates." Jiang Yixin said.
When the users reached one million, some companies in the food, healthcare, game industry etc. began to approach him for advertising placements. Although they have very attractive offerings, Jiang Yixin turned them down, because he wants to do things like it was in the beginning. He said the APP was originally designed as a teaching supportive tool that helps students pay closer attention to their study, and if some inappropriate ads were to be placed, the innocent and pure children would be more or less affected, thus defeating the very purpose of building this He wants the product to be clean and pure, just like those kids.
As the APP kept being updated, Good Father became more popular for its superior quality. In February 2015, the Jiang Yixin couple registered an Internet company, Shanghai Jiangxin Information Technology Co., Ltd. The characters “Jiangxin”, according to Wang Fei, “refers to their craftsmanship and pleasure in doing this job.”
They even opened a business office at the Makers’ Space of the Internet Education Building in Yangpu District. In last year’s "Yanji Cup" Innovation Entrepreneurship Competition, Wang Fei gave a wonderful performance in the road show as manager of the company. At the competition, their project won attention from Ant fortune and New Margin Ventures, who offered millions of Yuan as the starting fund, which was extremely helpful for the company’s development. According to Wang Fei, they are approaching more publishers to customize their featured APP.
In domestic APP stores, "Good Father", as a vertical teaching supportive APP, ranks first in the “children” category and fifth in the “education” category. As a revolutionary K12 education APP and a digital learning platform, it has cooperated with well-known domestic education publishers, and is intended to form a new education and publication industry chain that combines paper publication, mobile Internet APP, and data service through cutting-edge information technology such as the mobile Internet technology, voice recognition and big data optimization.