Interview with Alex Young, Lead Developer and Designer of Helipad

I wrote a piece about Helipad recently and I manage to track down Alex Young, the lead developer of that cool app - Helipad, to answer a few questions about their company. Here is the insight:

Hi Alex, I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you. So shall you first introduce yourself for our readers and tell us what projects you were involved in before?

I’m Alex Young, lead developer and designer of Helicoid. I’ve been working professionally as a web developer since 2001.

I’ve worked on many projects from content and document management systems for corporates to public-facing web sites for small businesses. I started off as a programmer, worked up to lead developer, then started creating and marketing my own software.

I’ve always used open source software and taken part in various open source communities (I used to write for Linux.com for example).

And how did you come up with the idea of Helipad and the cool name?

Helipad came about through my love for notepads - real paper notepads that you can scribble in and rip pages out of. I gave up carrying a laptop around because I could be more expressive with a little leather-bound notepad and pen. This was great on the road, but I still had to write up and print my notes. I use so many computers in different offices and at home that I decided I needed something that would run in any modern web browser. I also wanted something simple, something that would let me write without clumsy formatting controls.

At this point I decided to build a prototype of Helipad, and then pitched it to my friends. Some loved it and others hated it: so I knew it was a good idea! At this point, Helicoid’s system administrator called the initial prototype Helipad for a joke, and the name stuck.

What about actual implementation: development, team, financing, etc.?

At the moment, I write all the code for Helicoid’s applications. I also do the design work - I stick to web standards and this helps make things manageable. My family are mostly designers, so I often ask them for their aesthetic opinions. My fiancé also helps out, some of the design decisions in Helipad were made by her early on. I’m financing Helicoid for the moment. We actually have a business plan, and the machinations are falling into place to make it a reality.

There are a few competitors out there like Writely. How does this make you feel?

Writely and similar services attempt to reproduce the word processor in web browsers. I have an issue with this approach: I hate word processors. I want to write, I don’t want to worry about weird rendering bugs. I want to throw my ideas, to-do lists, blindly at a page just like I can with my notepad and pen.

The fact Helipad provides a preview page is basically because I use it to produce drafts of documents. I can easily click ’share’, then send the URL to a friend or client, and they can read the draft. Combine this with tags and the tag colours, and you’ve got a neat little personal organiser!

It’s also important to realise that Writely is aimed at everyone. At university, they taught me that off the shelf software follows the 80/20 rule: you only ever use 20% of a given package. At Helicoid we have a different 80/20 rule: we spend 20% of our time working on our software, and 80% thinking about it. That means our products will never be suitable for everyone, but hopefully instead a niche of people who really love them.

Mind to share how many users you have right now and how much traffic the site gets currently?

Helipad is currently close to 2000 accounts. We only launched it last week, so it’s very exciting to see that people are interested in the product. The Helipad frontpage is getting about 3000 sessions a day at the moment, mainly due to it being on del.icio.us/popular and ajaxian.com.

Do you have any new features in the pipeline before I end this interview?

Drag and drop ordering, a JavaScript plugin that turns bulleted lists into dynamic to-do lists, the Mac Helipad client, and the ability for people to easily download all their documents.