Successful story: Bike Computer
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Not many people in North Macedonia can boast with a successful аpp that hit a million downloads. Yet, Ivan Ivanovski is one of them. This is the story of a software developer turned one-man-show for his app Bike Computer, and how an innovative idea changed his way of working, creating and helping the community.

The road to a successful product with more than a million users is paved with many obstacles. But for Ivan Ivanovski, a few trials and errors made sure he knew how to handle his latest — and best invention — Bike Computer.
The backstory
As a part of his fitness routine, Ivan, who was then employed at Venikom, regularly rode his bike. A girl that was also biking has an accident, and they had a whole ordeal — waiting for the ambulance for hours. She was lucky someone was near because she couldn’t get help herself. That’s when Ivan got the idea to make an app for bike riders that detects a fall and alarms the user’s emergency contacts.
That was the birth of Bike Computer — GPS cycling tracker for free, and fall detection and emergency contact feature if you subscribe. At first, there was only the ‘keep me safe’ feature, but they soon realized that no one would start the app just for that, so they added many other features, such as distance, ascend, descend, calories burned, etc.

What started as a spin-off project is now a very successful company, unaffiliated with the ‘parent’.
At first, it wasn’t looking too bright — no big traction, not many users. But after a few different marketing strategies and ads, going to events and other efforts, they had a brilliant idea to give users bike mounds as a gift and ask them to leave a rating. After a while, ratings quickly skyrocketed as satisfied costumers kept improving their authority, and their rating soon greatly improved. With that came the organic reach. A personalized approach with every single user was the foundation on which they built a great userbase.
Recently, Bike Computer hit one million downloads, and another app is coming too — Ski Tracker.
The people of Bike Computer
In the beginning, there was just Ivan and one other developer. Now, Bike Computer consists of eight full-time employees, senior and intermediate level.
Ivan says that working on their own product has a great effect on the motivation and productiveness of the team.
“When developers work for another client their whole career, they are frustrated, because either the client doesn’t know what they want, or the developers think their wishes are very illogical. Here, they have the possibility to be creative. I try not to give them tasks, but simply tell them what our goals are and ask for their opinion and ideas. They like being a part of this team, and do the things that are important to them with a lot more enthusiasm”.
His team is mostly seniors — people with 7–8 years of experience, or 3–4 years of experience for those whose first job was working on Bike Computer.

The fact that he is an engineer himself helps, he adds.
“It’s easier for the project management and to motivate the team because I have realistic expectations for them”.
His way to keep the seniors motivated is the possibility for equity and giving them a platform to share their visions and ideas.
“That’s what matters, that’s how we can keep getting bigger and bigger. Seniors don’t really care about 200–300 euros more per month. And at the end of the day, I’d rather have 10 percent of a product that’s worth a billion, than 100 percent of something small. This way, everyone is motivated and gets their share”.
He worked as a developer himself, to earn the money to start his own product. Nowadays, he says he doesn’t miss coding, but always keeps himself updated on the important stuff.
So far, he took care of marketing and community management himself — ads, analytics, meetings, communication with users. And since he has plenty of responsibilities, Bike Computer is currently looking for an experienced Pay Per Click Manager experienced in Digital Marketing, data analysis and reporting and knowledge of SEO and digital marketing concepts.
They are also looking for junior, full-time iOS and Android Devs.

The takeaway
Always work on improving, and think on your feet. That’s what Ivan believes in, which is why his team is now working on Ski Tracker. The app is similar to Bike Computer, but with more suitable algorithms for skiing enthusiasts, such as not calculating the ascend because the skier is on a ski lift, and a feature that warns you of a possible avalanche, fog, blizzards. And of course, the ‘keep me safe’ feature.
He has learned that there is no perfect moment for releasing a new product, cause it’s never going to be perfect. His own mistakes so far inspired him to find a way to share his experience with other entrepreneurs, to help them find investments.
“I’ve realized that a lot of times we overanalyze things that aren’t as important, and there are other deciding traits in a product that make it profitable and worth investing in. I think that I can help other startups by sharing my own experiences. That way, it helps the whole community, and it can help put Macedonian products on the map”, he says.


