Luna Display allowed Astropad to broaden its market, selling software and hardware for creative people in general. Customers can mix and match devices for a seamless and remote workspace, with either a Mac or PC. Luna Display turns your iPad into a wireless second display, harnessing the power of your desktop and extending your workspace to a touchscreen device. Luna Display started as Astropad Studio’s companion but appeals to a much larger audience. Originally this was only going to be an accessory for existing customers, but it ended up morphing into our second product: Luna Display.” That’s when we decided we needed to get into the hardware game. Matt says, “We knew one of the constraints was that it only mirrored your screen, it didn’t extend it, which was a common ask from our users. They can also customize the software to their workspace preferences.Īstropad Studio turns your iPad into a professional drawing tablet.Ī couple of years into running a successful business, the founders realized that their product suffered from some limitations. Astropad Studio is designed for the most demanding creative work, allowing artists to work faster and more efficiently. Competitors suffered from low quality mirroring and high latency, making it harder for artists to draw. What made Astropad Studio unique was that it could mirror a desktop Mac with extremely high-quality imagery and low latency. We were the first app out there that could turn an iPad into a professional drawing tablet!” Products That Help People Imagine And Create “It caught fire because it was something that people were interested in. After two years of development, they launched Astropad Studio. He was drawing on it, looked at us, and said ‘Guys, this is going to be huge.’” We were super excited because this was coming from the best in the industry,” Matt says. Meanwhile, they consulted on the side to make ends meet. Matt and Giovanni burned the midnight oil for months to develop software that would allow people to use their iPad as a drawing device – without the need to buy specific hardware. The $75,000 prize money helped get the business off the ground. They pitched it, got great feedback, and ended up winning the whole thing. The founders participated in a statewide business plan competition, The Minnesota Cup, shortly after coming up with the idea for Astropad. Out of all the ideas we brainstormed together, we both instantly felt connected to this one.” And that’s how Astropad was born in 2013. He stopped running and thought to himself, ‘That’s cool – why can’t we do that on a Mac?’ Giovanni came back from his run and shared the idea with me. It was showing somebody using a stylus on the screen with Photoshop. “One day, Giovanni went for a run and saw an ad for the Microsoft Surface laptop. We wanted to build a product company – we just didn’t know what that would be.” Giovanni had taken a similar path to Matt, launching and selling a variety of internet projects that were unsustainable in the long run. Matt says, “We were okay at being contractors and consultants, but we weren’t great at it. Six years later, when Giovanni and Matt had both left Apple, they reconnected on Twitter and started working together on custom email app development for the iPad and iPhone. This is also where he met his now co-founder and Head of Product, Giovanni. This was during the iPod days,” Matt says laughing. “This was a long time ago, before the iPhone existed. He started his corporate career as a Software Engineering Intern at Apple. While he was doing well with it, Matt wanted to push his engineering career further, and he’d always dreamed of working at Apple. While many of his projects never launched or sold, one of them, Monkeybread Software, made good money and was growing consistently. “Even though they weren’t very good, I was determined to do it,” Matt says. Back in middle school, he built file management apps and tried to sell them on the internet. He’s created many companies over the years, but Astropad has by far been the most successful. Matt, the co-founder and CEO of Astropad, is a software engineer who’s had the entrepreneurial bug from an early age. Inspiration Can Strike When You Least Expect It Their products, Astropad Studio and Luna Display, were designed for the creative community – including illustrators, photographers, animators, and painters. Together, they built Astropad and bootstrapped the company to $4 million in revenue with a team of 15 people. With that vision as their guide, these founders developed products that allow people to use their digital devices for creative projects. After soul-searching and brainstorming, Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli found something they believed in: technology’s ability to help humans create.
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