One App at a Time
Today’s featured startup is quietly replacing Excel with a new generation of mobile-native tools.
Project Overview
The Mobile-First Company is a French startup that aims to build a suite of mobile-first apps “for every need.” As its name suggests, the core idea is simple: create apps that are designed from the ground up for mobile use — not as stripped-down versions of desktop software, but as fully functional mobile-native tools.
This mobile-first approach is already common in consumer apps like TikTok or Instagram, where desktop versions are the afterthought. But in business software, the reverse is often true: desktop apps are fully featured, while mobile versions tend to be clunky, limited, or unusable.
The Mobile-First Company wants to change that — starting with small businesses, which often don’t have the resources to build their own tools. The goal: create at least 20 seamlessly integrated mobile apps tailored to everyday business tasks like invoicing, CRM updates, online ordering, and project tracking.
The biggest competitor? Excel. It’s still the default operating system for millions of small business owners — and The Mobile-First Company wants to replace it, one app at a time.
Founded just six months ago, the company has already raised €3.5 million and launched its first app: Amoa, a mobile inventory management tool with a built-in barcode scanner.
What’s the Gist?
At first glance, Amoa looks like a warehouse app. But the use cases listed on its website go far beyond business — and into people's living rooms.
The startup positions Amoa as a tool not just for stockrooms, but also for personal organization. Meticulous users can catalog their household items — from TVs and microwaves to power tools — complete with photos, purchase dates, receipts, warranties, and storage locations. Collectors can do the same for stamps, coins, action figures, or any other collection.
At first, this might sound like a dangerous dilution of focus. But it actually reflects a deeper insight.
Unlike corporate executives, small business owners often blur the line between personal and professional life. For a solo founder or shop owner, business and life flow together. The same person managing inventory for their store might also want to track tools in their garage — and if one app can do both, that’s a feature, not a flaw.
The insight here: if your main competitor is Excel — a single spreadsheet used for everything from taxes to soccer schedules — then building a multi-purpose app may not dilute your focus. It may amplify your appeal.
Amoa is testing that hypothesis right now.
Key Takeaways
This startup isn't just building an app — it’s building an app factory.
Its strategy is not to make one perfect product, nor to spread itself thin across industries. Instead, it’s focused on one audience — small business owners — and one insight: many of them are still using Excel to run everything. That opens up dozens of niche opportunities for simple, well-designed mobile apps.
Each app will be:
Tailored to a common business task (e.g. invoicing, inventory, CRM)
Easy to use on a phone
Connected to the broader ecosystem
Marketed to the same audience through the same channels
And the process will be repeatable: find a pain point where Excel is still the norm, and build a mobile-first solution using the same dev team, same design playbook, and now — the speed and cost advantages of AI-assisted app development.
This “factory model” isn’t new. Startups like Staytuned (which buys and integrates Shopify apps) and Unaric (focused on Salesforce apps) are already playing this game — and have raised $46.5M and $35M respectively. But The Mobile-First Company is betting on in-house development, accelerated by AI, to maintain product quality and UX control.
In that sense, this is more than a startup — it’s an evolving template for how to build many products from one core thesis.
So here’s the million-euro question:
Which market, which user, and which task still runs on Excel — and is ready for mobile-first reinvention?
Answer that, and you might just have the blueprint for your own product factory.
Company Info
The Mobile-First Company
Website: themobilefirstcompany.com
Last round: €3.5M, 28.03.2024
Total investment: €3.5M, across 1 round