Listen to this articleNew startup Servant helps you manage your data and put it to use. A servant is a simple cloud database for all your data and an awesome system to build cool new apps on. Here is our recent interview with Tom Bergen, Co-Founder of new startup Servant:
Q: Could you tell us your story and something more about Servant?
A: Servant’s goal is to make building and managing a cohesive web presence easier, while allowing users to remain in complete control of their data. We don’t want it to just be a great tool for users, however. We also want to make it an awesome system to build cool new apps on. We’ve experienced first-hand, both from the developer side and user side, that data management is a pain. Everything is disconnected and compartmentalized into silos that don’t talk to each other. We eventually became so fed up we decided to develop something to help alleviate these problems. Since then we have been trying to create somewhat of a digital utopia, where developers and users have access to resources that make their lives much easier.
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Q: How long did it take to put it together? How big is your team?
A: Servant was in the idea stage for quite a while. We started building it at the beginning of May, 2014, so we have been working on it for about 9 months. The result so far has been a robust, scalable system that has a ton of potential. We are constantly improving it and have a lot more awesome features coming down the pipeline. We are currently a three man team, but would love to bring on new members in near future.
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Q: What is Servant Ecosystem?
A: The Servant Ecosystem is the product of Servant’s philosophy. We wanted to create a system that had benefits for both developers and users alike. One of the things that exemplifies this is how we share our revenue with apps that are connected to Servant. We believe that apps should be rewarded for providing value to our customers and we measure this value in the form of API requests. Whenever an app makes an API request to Servant for a user’s data it is providing value to that user. As a result, we share half of the revenue associated with that API request with the app making the request. This creates a new source of passive, recurring revenue that can stand alone, or act as a supplement to ad revenue or premium feature pricing charged by the app. Essentially, we redistribute the hosting cost paid by our users to the apps that they use. Now your app can make money just for being used, without having to resort to the degradation of either its functional or aesthetic integrity through monetization via ugly or annoying ads.
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Servant is also completely free for developers and we have tried to address a lot of pain points that developing and launching a new app can create. With Servant, developers are getting access to a free backend for their apps. This means they can focus purely on developing front end applications that do cool stuff. This makes development of apps much easier and also reduces costs since they have no overhead for storing data, the cost of which can be significant. Instead, Servant does it for them. This doesn’t mean that you can’t create your own database for your app as well. It just means that you have the choice not to. It is very simple to integrate with Servant, requiring only a few lines of JavaScript. This is a result of our incredibly awesome JavaScript SDK.
Lastly, Servant makes it easier for people to sign up and use your app. Our users can connect to any app integrated with Servant by clicking a single button. This instantly registers them and imports the relevant data into the app. Now they can instantly start using an app, which can be a significant barrier to entry for people if they have to manually register and import significant amounts of data just to start using it.
Q: What’s your favorite upcoming feature?
A: Our favorite upcoming feature is our payment infrastructure that we call “Servant Pay”. Servant Pay allows apps to charge for premium features to a user’s payment information stored with Servant. This provides a few conveniences. First, it allows developers to skip development of their own payment infrastructure, which can be a pain and is just tedious work. Secondly, users won’t have to spend extra time to pay you. They can instead decide to pay for a premium feature and do it instantly from their payment info stored with Servant. Users can also manage their subscriptions from Servant, making it very convenient if a user is subscribed to premium plans across multiple apps.
Q: What are your plans?
A: We have a few plans that we are putting into action now. First, we are trying to cultivate a community of developers that share our vision and are interested in developing or integrating apps with Servant. Web developers are an integral part of the Servant ecosystem, so having a large community of developers backing Servant’s philosophy is of the utmost importance. We have also currently launched on a small scale to users and are looking to completely open Servant to the public in the very near future.
