I was really into zines when I was in high school. I spent almost all my time on alt.zines, spent way too much time hunting for old issues of Urban Hermitt, and constantly found myself browsing the fantastic zine section at Tower Records. Almost all my money went to Microcosm Publishing.

But whenever I’d browse Microcosm Publishing, one number always caught my eye: the wholesale pricing. It was so much less than the full price. I wanted to pay that price, not retail.

I launched my own zine distribution, Deranged Distro, and stocked only the zines that I wanted to read. Selling copies more than made up for the cost of the issues I bought myself. It was a perfect situation.

My guest today is Bobby Gill, founder of BlueLabel Labs. BlueLabel Labs doesn’t just build apps for other people, it spends half its time working on its own mobile applications. Bobby has a passion for apps and some fantastic business insights. He even shares the reason why his new iOS game is only available in Canada.

Here’s what we chat about:

• What it’s like to work at Microsoft
• Learning how to manage a team and allocate resources as a program manager
• Why it can feel stifling to work for a large company
• Why it’s totally stupid for people to go to college right out of high school
• What sort of people use BlueLabel Labs to build an app, and what stage the ideas are in
• Why BlueLabel Labs spends half its time working on their own projects
• How building games is different than building apps
• Why you might want to release in a single country before making your app internationally available

Links mentioned in this show include:

• BlueLabel Labs
• Word Hack (iOS)
• Threes (iOS)
• 2048 (iOS)
• Threes creators express puzzlement, sadness over 2048 and rampant cloning (Polygon)
• Color Labs
• Appsters
• IdeatoAppster.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Thank Bobby on Twitter!

If you thought this episode of the podcast was interesting, take a few seconds and let Bobby know by clicking the link below to share via Twitter:

Click here to thank Bobby on Twitter!

Comments?

Have you ever started a business to support a passion? Let us know in the comments below!

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The Novice No Longer Podcast intro music was composed by the talented Will Larche.

Thanks again for listening!

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