Both recent graduates of the University of Florida, Marlana and Nahu work on building apps for a wide variety of customers. Their story is a partnership of two visions, one rooted in entrepreneurship and the other in engineering. Both credit their parents as the ultimate role models, showing them “resilience and independence.”

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade, the podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them. We'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:39

There's an app for that. That's what we're going to be talking about on Radio Cade this morning and this morning I have with me Marlana Armstrong and Nahu Alula on our podcast and welcome to the show.

Marlana Armstrong: 0:49

Thanks for having us.

Nahu Alula: 0:51

Thank you.

Richard Miles: 0:51

So before I ask you about yourselves and sort of how you arrived at your company and what you're doing, Marlana, could you tell me a little bit about, first of all, what is it and what does it do?

Marlana Armstrong: 1:03

Sure, so Modernized Mobile is an app development company. That's what we primarily focus on, but we also do software development and Web Platforms, AKA websites and essentially every app that we do is going to be very different, but we want to help businesses engage with their clientele. We want to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life so everybody has got a good idea, right? And apps are on everybody's phone essentially if you've got a smartphone. So the best way to enact a new idea is to put it on an app and see how it takes off.

Richard Miles: 1:38

Great. Um, okay. So we're going to talk later about the specific apps or maybe some of the types of clients you have, but first I'd like to know a little bit about the two of you and how you ended up doing this for what your past work towards this company. So Marlana why don't we start with you. Where'd you grow up and what was your childhood like? Education and that sort of stuff.

Marlana Armstrong: 2:00

All the fun stuff, yeah. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Uh, all throughout high school. I love debate and public speaking and just spending my weekends talking about worldly topics that had a pro and a con and I was going to tell you which one was right, so that was my favorite thing to do for sure. Had a great family, just my mom and my dad and myself. Few dogs here and there.

Richard Miles: 2:24

And what made you choose the University of Florida?

Marlana Armstrong: 2:26

So it's kind of funny. For a while I was very resistant. I was like, everybody from my high school is going to UF, I'm not going and I wanted to be a broadcast journalist for quite awhile and I decided on UCF because they were close to Disney and Disney owns ESPN, so why not? But I ended up deciding on UF because it's the number one public school in Florida. It was the obvious choice and my mom was not going to let me attend a subpar college. Uh, not to put down UCF, UCF's a great school.

Richard Miles: