In case you may have missed it, Vodio is a personalized video discovery app, currently available for iPad. It was recently featured as the App of the Week by Apple in Canada, and received wide exposure on leading tech media sites such as TechCrunch and TheNextWeb.

Vodio lets you discover and enjoy the best videos, based on what’s being shared around you as well as your personal preferences and interests.

For the sake of full disclosure, Vodio is an AppsMarketing.mobi client.

I sat down with Jonathan Messika, CEO and Co-Founder at Vodio to find out a little more about the process of developing an app, its marketing aspects, and what it really takes to build a sustainable business in the mobile app industry today.

Hey Jonathan, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions for our readers.

Can you please tell me about your professional background?

My professional background consists of various positions within internet consumer products industry.

My last position prior to founding Vodio Labs was with the new Corporate Business Development Team at IncrediMail Ltd. (now known as Perion), a Nasdaq company developing downloadable products for users. My job consisted of finding interesting companies and products that may fit the company’s product strategy and vision.

In the 2 years prior to that, I was part of the Product Management Team and managed two of IncrediMail’s main products; HiYo and PhotoJoy. I also held the VP Products position at Trivya Ltd. for a couple of years and was the Product Manager of Nextplay Ltd., both start-up companies.

What made you decide to get into the mobile app industry?

Spending many years in this industry I see the mobile industry as the spearhead of new internet products and applications. Mobile is where innovation is happening right now and that is where I thought I ought to be.

How did the idea of Vodio come to be?

I spent hours and hours with Uri, one of my two co-founders (Uri Twig & Ishay Weinstock) talking about developing a service related to Video. We were both frustrated with the video discovery issue and thought we really need to come up with a good solution for it.

Actually, the first tool we developed was a browser add-on that enabled users to collect videos from the web, similar to what Pinterest does today. From there it rolled into the idea of Vodio which is basically serving users, at all times, with the most updated and interesting videos in any given category, in an easy, simple and beautiful way.

What do you look for in the apps you choose to use?

Most of all, great user experience and real value. I need the app to solve a problem I may have or improve the use of something I am doing today with a different tool.

What’s been your biggest learning curve through the development process?

How to run a company of my own. There are so many different aspects I have only witnessed from the side but never had the chance to do for my own company.I find this to both very challenging and rewarding.

Let’s talk marketing – How soon in the process did you starting thinking about the marketing aspect of the app?

To be honest, we had marketing in the back of our mind from day 1. The reason we developed Vodio for the iPad to begin with, was among other things the ability to stand-out from the start in a relatively small marketing budget which looking back seems to be pretty much true.

Having said that, we know marketing is an everlasting effort and we have much work to do on that side of things going forward.

What’s the biggest tip you would give upcoming app developers?

Judge everything you do within the app in the eyes of your users and try to keep it stupid simple.

(Side note – Track everything you do, period. The Vodio Labs team analysis every aspect of user interactions within the app.)

In your opinion, what needs to be improved today, specifically in the mobile app industry?

I think one of the main things we the app industry today is missing, is great monetization engines for apps that are not games.

It seems there is a lot to do in that area and much to be explored. I am confident that many interesting solutions will be introduced with months and years to come. We should not forget that the industry itself is really young and in a way it is equivalent to where the web was circa 2000.

What’s next for Vodio? Go on, spill the beans!

So, as every start-up company we have a feature backlog that can fill in a full year’s schedule. However, each and every feature we will release in the upcoming versions were hand-picked and essentially are supposed to offer the user an even greater user experience, more tools to manage the video content and of course, more great content.
Having said that we are also open to implement other features, we did not originally plan if we see a strong demand among our users.

Anything else you would like to share?

We really would like to set a standard towards how video content should be consumed in our time and hope our users will prove us right Keep your fantastic feedback coming on our Facebook page or over on Twitter!