Husband Wife and serial entrepreneurs- The story behind mobile messaging app, Cubie
Tempo Feng and Cjin Cheng are a couple and have also founded three companies together. Cubie, a messaging and photo chat application for Android and iOS is their latest venture. Their first company was a Java-based app for the local stock market which was bought by a financial services firm in 2007. Gamelet, their second, is a social gaming company which continues to do well.
Cubie began in 2011 and launched in 2012. The company is backed by 500 Startups and has amassed 1 million downloads in the first 40 days. A 10 employee company at the moment, Cubie is based out of Taipei, Taiwan and Mountain View. “The idea behind Cubie was to provide a fun way to chat with friends without relying on text as much as traditional SMS or even some other OTT chat applications. Instead of typing 'I'm having lunch' to the question 'what are you doing?' why not send a pic of your lunch? It's much quicker and more interesting for the recipient,” explains James Hill of Cubie.
The messaging app is taking on the biggies in the messaging space but the early traction is encouraging. Cubie has roughly 200,000 registered users who are predominantly on Android. The company also recently launched a Chrome browser application to accompany the mobile version. Talking about the growth, James says, “The growth has been viral and started in Taiwan, then spread to Hong Kong, then Singapore, then SE Asia. We haven’t spent any money on marketing, just concentrating on social media and making it easy for our users to share drawings, photos and invite friends via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.”
Cubie was featured on the Google Play Store and that has marked its entry into India. The app hasn't really caught up yet in India but the team is now looking to push here as well (some testimonials). “Going forward we just want to grow our user base and offer more fun and creative ways for our users to chat,” says James about the roadmap.
Website: Cubie