Useful SaaS Apps For Individuals and Businesses
January 5, 2019 — NoteToServices was founded in November 2015 but a story comes with how it got its name. When coming up with the idea for a name, there is no long list of names to go through. There was not even a big worry about some other company owning the copyrights to our brand name. However, it did not get its start until 2016. While I, Matthew Gates, was learning programming, I had already been in web development for 5 years, founding a small freelance business called ABQ Designs for which we built mostly WordPress websites for people. It was not until I acquired a client who kept requesting custom work that I started to learn PHP.
As I was building a custom product for her to integrate with WordPress, I realized that I really was quite fond of PHP and MySQL. The beautiful relationship between the two just worked. I began with PHP 5.4 and PHP 7.x was just being introduced into the game. To try and get into learning more about PHP, I decided to build a product. I wanted to build a platform, similar to WordPress that allowed me to get a web page up on the Internet anonymously without having to sign up for an account. While the platform has now evolved, requiring an account, it still takes anonymity into account. MyPost began as an experiment and has since made its way around the world from a single introduction tweet. MyPost taught me all I would need to know about the interactions of PHP and a MySQL database, from adding information to updating, to deleting, and editing. I had already had quite a bit of experience with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but doing anything with it — PHP was the passion that gave the three amigos their purpose. Coming up with a company name to market it was not quite immediate, so it was just released as MyPost.
In 2016, I began what would be the start of NoteToServices, however, this name was not yet chosen, but became the inspiration for what I would eventually build. I got the idea of wanting to send automated emails, texts, and phone calls to anyone. Coming up with a name did not take too long, as these would be notes being sent to recipients. Thus, NoteToEmail, NoteToText, and NoteToVoice were brainstormed and created. The services were kept separate in order to keep pricing down. The idea to keep them separated came from seeing other platforms charge so much for their plans, while some users may not want to use all the services offered. Why pay for what you aren't using? And so, we built each platform separate. Even when you combine and use all the platforms together, our pricing became very competitive with all other companies. Unfortunately, the three products would not be released until 2019. We had finished mostly everything but were just not quite satisifed with the final product. Instead, we decided to build other products during the long sabbatical of the three primary products and reason for starting the company.
Deciding on our company name soon would be realized. We thought about the three services, how they would and could be used, and the potential for making such a product. It would be these three products that would set me off to learn so much. In realizing those were our products and not a copmany name, we trie to take the purpose and turn it into a name. Notes and what they were doing. And finally, it was just realized: NoteToServices. Not a name that really goes crazy, but a name that was important to me, as these three products are what has taught me how to get into the coding game and realizing my own potential in creating useful products. The name stuck and we like it. It is not perfect, but it's not a name likely to be challenged or taken by anyone else. Thus, in November 2015, NoteToServices became an officially registered company in the state of New Mexico. Thanks for reading the story on how I came up with the company name.
And on that note, I am very happy to introduce the three products, albeit very delayed (over 3 years), that started it all.