Applico: The Dominant Business Model of the 21st century

Applico is the world’s first Platform Innovation Company founded in 2009 by Alex Moazed. Applico has worked with large enterprises for over 8 years launching over 350 successful apps with clients like Disney, DirecTV, Google and startups backed by KKR, Andreessen Horowitz and others.

Applico provides enterprise-grade digital transformation advisory and mobile app development. It provides advisory and implementation services to build, execute, and scale platform businesses alongside large, traditional enterprises. The clients at Applico include Fortune 100 firms as well as multibillion-dollar private companies. Applico is trailblazing a new type of client services firm, the Platform Innovation Company. In fact, the company has focused solely on Platform Innovation for the past 3 years creating hundreds of millions of dollars in enterprise platform value.

Applico helps enterprises executives scope out platform opportunities, build the products to capture it, and grow the opportunity to its maximum potential. The company specializes in Product Strategy, Platform Innovation, Business Transformation, Digital Transformation, Android Development, and iOS Development. Applico partners with clients to identify, build, and scale platform businesses through the use of connected technologies.

Case Study to highlight the story

ParkMe Mobile App helps drivers find real-time parking availability on a block-by-bock basis. Drivers can access ParkMe through Android and iOS mobile apps, GPS navigational systems, and its website. Users can either check for parking on their computers before they leave and make a parking reservation or find a space that has recently opened up while they’re driving through ParkMe. With help from Applico, ParkMe has constructed the largest parking database in the world with 31 million parking spaces in over 90,000 worldwide locations on all seven continents (yes, even Antarctica).

ParkMe needed help with go-to-market strategy, product development and engineering for its emerging ideas and technology. The objective of Applico was to design and develop a m obile platform for ParkMe.

Applico provided platform advisory work for ParkMe to help build their mobile parking platform. Typical advisory work involves constructing a liquid marketplace of consumers and producers, setting rules/regulations within the platform, creating network effects, and more. Applico also helped to build the mobile app for this platform, which includes the sensor integration, location services, behavior modeling, and payment processing.  As a result, ParkMe is able to offer its users real-time prices, in-app route guidance, payments, and a timer.

ParkMe has reached great levels of success. Over time, it has become the world’s largest and most robust parking data API and “the leading global provider of real-time and static on-street and off-street parking data to navigation companies, internet search and mapping portals, municipalities, parking operators and consumer smartphone platforms.” 

Recently, the platform was acquired by INRIX, a global SaaS and DaaS company that provides apps and other services relating to the driving experience and road traffic. Some of INRIX’s clients include BMW, Ford, Microsoft, The Weather Channel, and more.

Applico says the platform is the dominant business model of the 21st century. It enables two or more groups to exchange value in some way. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google and even Uber, Airbnb, and Snapchat are all platform businesses.

At the same time, Applico believes that Silicon Valley shouldn’t be the only ones building successful platform businesses. At Applico, the company identifies direct business threats for its enterprise clients and advises them on how to design and build platform businesses capable of combating startup threats.

In this scenario, Alex Moazed, the CEO wrote and published a best-selling book, Modern Monopolies, on the topic of digital transformation, the platform way. It explains the infrastructure and techniques required to build a modern and successful tech platform business like Uber and Airbnb. The book was recently recognized as an Amazon Best-Seller and has been featured on Yahoo and Bloomberg.

Meet the Mastermind of Applico

Alex Moazed is the Founder and CEO of Applico. Alex founded Applico in 2009 when he was 20 years old and funded the company with his own credit cards. Within the first three years, Alex led the company to become one of the largest app developers in the industry. Subsequently, Alex evolved Applico into the world’s first Platform Innovation Company, trailblazing a new type of consulting and engineering firm. In his role as CEO, Alex is laying the foundation for platforms to be the predominant business model of the 21st century. He speaks extensively about mobile technology, the Connected Revolution and Platform Innovation. He appears frequently on major television networks, as well as in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Alex is a founding board member of the Application Developers Alliance and a graduate from Babson College, Choate Rosemary Hall and Greenwich Country Day School.

“We provide advisory and implementation services to build, execute, and scale platform businesses alongside large, traditional enterprises.”