Appster collapses — 400 staff laid off.

Over the course of my long history in mobile app development and running agency, Apps People, there had always been one company name in the industry that was omnipresent. First in Australia and then in the USA.

Appster — the company, the marketing machine, our biggest competitor, always ranked top of paid advertising on Google Adwords as well as ranking highly in organic results. Making us agencies all pay extra Google dollars to rank well with SEM.

They grew fast. Bootstrapped with a measly $3k and were founded on Melbourne turf by two good-looking young guys who appeared to be right out of high school, dressed to impress. The first app I remember them launching was for popular Australian radio show hosts, Triple J’s Hamish and Andy. Not sure what the app did but that didn’t matter, the lads managed to get a nice testimonial on their website from the radio duo. Any validation, even today would put you in good stead.

Appster’s co-founder, Kiwi-born Josiah Humphrey (Forbes 30 under 30) was very vocal on LinkedIn, regularly posting his moments of success and mentoring his social followers. He also posted some great videos on YouTube — I wondered how this guy had so much to time to do it all. It all seemed to be going amazingly well, money falling out of trees into their company headquarter coffers. Him and his co-founder, Mark…