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At the age of 13, YPO member <keyword id="2602339" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mark-McDonald">Mark McDonald</keyword> and his friend, Josiah Humphrey, began selling <keyword id="374952" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Seo">SEO</keyword> optimization software to companies in the United States on Craigslist. McDonald was teaching himself to build websites during a time when a lot of companies were looking for such services. Once he began to figure out a strategy to get people to that website, his entrepreneurial career took off. “It’s funny,” says McDonald. “Josiah and I began calling ourselves ‘entrepreneurs’ before we really knew what that meant. We left high school, we wanted to start a company and within six months we pivoted over to emerging technologies.” Fast forward seven years. In 2011, at the age of 19 and with just USD3,000, McDonald and Humphrey co-founded <a href="http://www.appster.com.au/">Appster</a>, a leading web and mobile app development company. Now, as Australia’s largest app developer, the company employs 350 people across Melbourne, Australia, San Francisco, California, USA, and Gurgaon, India. “We want more of a global presence and we are really focused on the United States, enjoying the strength of its economy.” Launched as a digital marketing company for businesses, it has quickly become more than just an app development company. <keyword id="3173219" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Appster">Appster</keyword> is part of the new breed of nimble entrepreneur. They’ve moved on to the next big thing and are not interested in replicating a competitor’s product. “We are the first ideas company,” says McDonald. “We don’t want to simply be that company you come to with an idea for an app. We want to be a global hub for turning the best ideas into new technologies first.” IT’S ALL ABOUT THE LIGHTBULB MOMENT Beyond just making mobile apps, Appster is passionate about lifting stellar ideas off the ground. To reflect this, the company starts by consulting with entrepreneurs as well as larger companies to refine their ideas to create a minimum viable product and test for product-market fit. “People and companies have a hundred ideas, but very likely don’t execute,” says McDonald. “We think of Appster as really filling the gap between the idea and the execution.” Appster teams help with the development of the idea and begin to work on an investment strategy early-on in the process. “We work in tandem with our clients as advisers in the space they are in and develop a plan to scale up.” The company aims to make products that people go back to and keep using, because 50 percent of apps are abandoned after 24 hours, and after 30 days it’s worse — around 90 percent are not used. The company has worked with around 100 startups. “We also help companies find the seed capital, so that Appster can develop the idea into a commercial product,” says McDonald. One notable example of Appster’s successes, and one that McDonald is particularly proud of, is the creation of a prototype for a geo-location technology for a company called <a href="http://www.bluedot.com.au/">BlueDot</a>. The technology enables smartphones to trigger actions such as processing payments, when a user passes by a specific location. The innovation is in the precision where it can identify a user’s location as close to five meters (16 feet) without draining the smartphone battery. “We worked on the initial prototype and it is one of the most amazing technologies. We are really proud of our work with BlueDot.” Appster begins each relationship with a new client by spending a couple of days locked in a room together, scoping out the project. This is followed by a “rapid concept workshop” in which the Appster team builds the product strategy and product roadmap for investors or executives at companies who give the go-ahead to the project. They strive to launch a new product every two months, turning it around as fast as 30 days. THE TRIBAL MENTALITY McDonald firmly believe managers get in the way of innovation and employees should be empowered to self-organize and be held accountable to their own targets through complete transparency. “We stay as lean as possible with few layers of <keyword id="34454" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="leadership">leadership</keyword>.” Where most companies rely on a hierarchical management structure with departments, Appster instead organizes employees into teams or “tribes,” containing a mix of functions. “They operate as a mini company within themselves with their own budget, pace of working, and timelines,” explains McDonald. Appster’s tribes also brand themselves with names such the Mavericks. “People in a large company want to know who they are working with and that they can trust each other. It happens organically in a company. Our tribes are designed so groups of people stay together to work their entire career at Appster, building trust and respect with one another.” And ultimately, it’s Mark’s belief, that the autonomy is used to give employees a sense of ownership of the company. The future of Appster will be in riding the innovation curve. “In 20 years, we don’t believe we’ll be making apps. We could be building robots. We’ll be wherever entrepreneurs want to be,” says McDonald. To get to that futurist state, the company created AppsterX where McDonald explains “we work on innovations in that space where we can test out our ideas. Sometimes they work, but most of the time not.” He sees a big future in a range of technologies, not just Apps, but wearable technology and hardware. There are opportunities in new payment systems, transport systems and medical solutions. “We really continue to be excited about what we do. Every year in this industry is like starting again. It’s a great industry to be in.” (The article is contributed by YPO. YPO is the global platform for chief executives to engage, learn and grow. YPO members harness the knowledge, influence and trust of the world’s most influential and innovative business leaders to inspire business, personal, family and community impact. Leadership. Learning. Lifelong. For more information, visit‪ YPO.org)

Filling the gap between idea and execution

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Appster" title_caption="Members of the team at Appster go through 20 hours of interviews and tests before being hired." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54665b82eab8ea5120424101-960/appster-team-outside.jpg"></a>AppsterMembers of the team at Appster go through 20 hours of interviews and tests before being hired.</div></div></div>Interviewing for a new job is always a nerve-wracking experience, one fraught with potential mistakes that could ruin your chance at working for your dream company.
But take solace in the fact that the interviews you've been on are relatively short, at least when compared to the Australian mobile app development startup Appster.
There, candidates go through about 20 hours of interviews and tests in a process that requires them to answer questions ranging from "What would you would do if you were made CEO?" to "How would your tutor in college rate you on a scale of 1-10?"
The pressure is enough to make anyone crack, as one prospective employee did when he started yelling at Appster c0-CEO and cofounder Mark McDonald for mispronouncing a name on his résumé.
"You start seeing glimmers of people's personalities they can't hide, things you would never be able to see in a traditional job interview," McDonald tells Business Insider.
These cracks are precisely what Appster is looking for. If you're unfamiliar, the company helps people who have an idea for an app by developing software, asking investors for money, and implementing a business plan for them.
Now three years old, Appster has grown to 150 employees and has offices in Australia, San Francisco, and India. In this crucial hiring phase, choosing the wrong people could be crippling.
McDonald says that he and cofounder Josiah Humphrey initially implemented a fairly standard interview process, only to find that many of the new recruits were not suited to work at Appster and left after about a year.
Two years ago, they decided to try something more rigorous, figuring that if they could get more new hires to stick, it would be a huge advantage to them in the long run.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Appster" title_caption="Appster now has 150 employees." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54665bdfecad049b436c845c-960/1658176_10152690473404989_7939265460935931006_o.jpg"></a>AppsterAppster now has 150 employees.</div></div>
Today, McDonald says about 90% of Appster's hires work out in the long run, a number he attributes to the fact that it weeds out people who either do not have the right technical knowledge or are not a good fit for Appster's work-hard, play-hard culture.
The process takes about 12 to 15 hours for entry-level employees, while team leaders and middle managers are interviewed for 22 hours. Senior executives can expect to spend about 150 hours being vetted.
The process begins when Appster develops a list of technical skills and personality traits a "superstar" in a given role will possess, and creates a detailed scorecard to measure applicants on those qualities.
After filling out a short questionnaire and doing a 20-minute screening phone call with human resources, potential hires are brought in to the office for a 90-minute interview with a hiring manager.
If they survive this, candidates move on to the meat of Appster's interview process, the grueling "one-day intensive" at its office, for which candidates are usually asked to block out nine hours of their day and sometimes required to come back a second time.
First, applicants do a series of 30- to 45-minute interviews with about five members of the team they would be working with. The interviewers score the candidates on the skills the interviewers are most expert in.
Then, candidates are taken to dinner and drinks for about 4 hours by two Appster employees - usually a hiring manager and a member of the HR team.
There, the prospective employee is asked a series of 150 questions that test industry knowledge ("What will be the biggest trends in mobile technology over the next five years?"), cultural fit ("What would you do if an employee told you a secret that could hurt the business?"), and past performance ("What were your sales figures at your first job out of college?"). 
Mostly, what Appster wants to hear is that the candidate excelled at every stop along their career, and that their previous bosses would also rate them highly. Of course, Appster follows up with every person an applicant has ever reported to, just to make sure they are telling the truth.
"If you actually ask them about their direct reports with the idea that you'll check this later on, people tend to be really honest," McDonald says.
If someone makes it through all that and Appster still wants to hire them, the person is given about eight hours of work to do on their own time to prove their competence once and for all.
If they succeed at that, and a background check doesn't turn up anything negative, they will at long last receive an offer.
"I've been lucky enough to receive offers for all of the past roles I've applied for, but this was quite a daunting experience," says Dane Matheson, who was hired as the company's head of growth strategy a little more than a year ago. "When you actually get the green light, it's extraordinarily rewarding."
<div class="KonaFilter image-container click-to-enlarge"><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Appster" title_caption="Appster head of growth strategy Dane Matheson addresses the troops." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54665cd16bb3f798302a9aec-960/unnamed-87.png"></a>AppsterAppster head of growth strategy Dane Matheson addresses the troops.</div></div>Despite his supreme confidence in himself, Matheson says that 17 hours into the process, he began to get nervous about whether his old bosses would provide him with positive references.
Still, Matheson appreciates that Appster goes to great lengths to make sure its talent is top-notch, something he sees as a "badge of honor" for employees.
McDonald says he's never had a strong candidate say they didn't want to do the one-day intensive, adding that "A-plus players" tend to like it because they get to reflect on their achievements.
Another potentially enjoyable aspect of the marathon interview? Since it has already spent so much time making sure candidates are a perfect fit, McDonald says Appster isn't about to haggle over a few dollars after it has made an offer.
"If you're serious about recruiting A-plus players, you need to have this rigorous process," Matheson says. "Otherwise, we won't get people who are the pinnacle of their respective fields - and that's what we need to grow the business properly."

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Filling the gap between idea and execution

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