Aplano

Tadeus Gregorian was 32 years old and working in a pharmacy in Hamburg, Germany when the problem became impossible to ignore. His workplace managed employee scheduling the old-fashioned way: Excel sheets and pen and paper. "This caused lots of confusion and conflict among the employees," he recalls. The irony wasn't lost on him—even a small pharmacy needed modern workforce management software. Gregorian had a background in software development and passion for building, having worked on several projects before pursuing pharmacy studies. When he looked at existing scheduling solutions on the market, he saw a clear opportunity: they were outdated, had terrible user interfaces, and were overloaded with needless complexity. The few usable options were prohibitively expensive. Rather than complain, he built a scheduling tool for the pharmacy itself—initially with no intention of commercializing it. Other local pharmacies noticed and started using it too, signaling real demand beyond his own workplace.

Gregorian realized he couldn't scale this alone, so he brought in his two brothers and a school friend to form the founding team. They mocked the UI in Sketch and built the application using the latest web technologies. The development process was grueling—unforeseen bugs were constant, and the team had to fight through numerous obstacles. The entire build-to-launch cycle took approximately two years. When they finally went live, they made a strategic decision: launch for free. This wasn't a temporary freemium model, but a deliberate bet. By offering nearly feature-parity with expensive competitors at zero cost, combined with superior performance and clean design, they attracted early users organically. These free users became their most valuable asset—testing the product in real-world conditions in ways the small team never could have anticipated internally. Once bugs were squashed and the software ran smoothly, they introduced three pricing tiers. As a gesture of gratitude, their earliest customers received permanent access to the premium plan at no cost.

Aplano's growth strategy centered on search engine dominance. The team built a basic backlink profile, launched a blog, and invested in Google Ads to target scheduling-conscious business owners. They later expanded to Facebook for more targeted customer profiling. Cold calling was attempted but quickly abandoned—"People don't pay monthly for something they never really thought about," Gregorian noted candidly. The free launch had seeded their Google ranking naturally through user adoption. After six months of optimization and ads, paying customers began arriving. Critically, some large companies with substantial payroll signed up, bringing significant monthly recurring revenue. "That was a big morale boost for all of us," Gregorian recalls. Even the COVID-19 pandemic proved unexpectedly beneficial; major corona-testing stations, which suddenly needed to manage hundreds of employees, became substantial customers.

The free launch and organic Google growth worked spectacularly. Paid channels—Google Ads and Facebook—proved effective for customer acquisition once the product was polished. However, cold calling flopped entirely. The team also faced significant technical headwinds. Early on, they struggled with their backend infrastructure, experiencing slow deployment processes and cumbersome bug fixes until they switched to Firebase, which eliminated those bottlenecks entirely. SEO optimization was another painful learning curve; without prior experience, they tackled it through trial-and-error, losing time but eventually mastering the discipline. The biggest strategic insight came late: "You shouldn't waste too much time making the software perfect. Launch as soon as possible, get in some valuable feedback from customers and users." They were competing against well-funded competitors with larger teams, so the team compensated through specialization—each co-founder mastered different areas, enabling them to compete despite resource constraints.

Aplano has surpassed five-figure monthly revenue ($10,000–$25,000 per month range based on the article's categorization) and continues growing steadily. The team remains lean, working primarily with freelancers and outsourcing support and specialized expertise as needed. Advertising represents their largest expense category. Gregorian deliberately keeps exact financials private, preferring to grow "under the radar" rather than attract unwanted attention. They're focused on building a solid team with healthy culture and ambitious people. The product roadmap emphasizes customer-requested features, usability improvements, and performance optimization. Their core business model—subscription-based SaaS at per-employee pricing—has proven resilient and scalable. The next phase involves consolidating their market position through continued SEO dominance and deepening product-market fit in the mid-market segment (businesses up to 500 employees).