RALEIGH, N.C. — Since he got his first computer at seven-years-old, Linker Logic Technologies’ 20-year-old CEO Ritwik Pavan has been fascinated by computers.

“When I was young, my dad’s friends would come to me with any technical questions,” he said. “I was just interested in how computers worked.”

Ritwik Pavan poses for a photo at the Forbes 30 under 30 conference in Boston.

As he grew older, his interest in technology grew as well, and when the market for apps began to gain traction, Pavan decided to start making apps for fun.

When he was a junior in high school, Pavan combined a viral video with the most popular game of the year, “Flappy Bird,” to create the popular app, “Flappy Yeet — where the boy from the viral video navigates a maze of pipes while atop an animated bird.

Although Pavan made the game for fun, “Flappy Yeet” soon became one of the top 20 apps in the Apple app store and made it into top three in the games category. Before Pavan knew it, an app that had started as a joke had exceeded half a million downloads.

After the success of “Flappy Yeet,” Pavan said he realized he could make money by helping people make apps.

“I could tell that so many people had ideas in their mind but they just didn’t know how to execute it,” he said.

Bringing an Idea to Life

In 2014, without any funding and with only one other friend on his team, Pavan started Linker Logic Technologies, a company that has made more than $1 million  in revenue since it was founded 4 years ago.

But Pavan said success did not come to him immediately.

“People didn’t trust me because of my age,” he said. “It was challenging.”

The 30 employees at the Linker Logic office in Ahmedabad, India are a crucial part of the 45-person team.
In order to prove that he was capable of making incredible apps despite being in high school, Pavan said in the first year, Linker Logic, accepted projects from anybody at basically any price.

But this strategy eventually led to some problems.

“I had a failure where one time a client didn’t pay me,” he said. “It was a $1,000 project and he paid $500 up front, but after we released his app he disappeared.”

After that incident, Pavan incorporated the company and a year later brought on two more team members. With the new team members he was able to expand Linker Logics’ services beyond apps to also include web projects and graphic design.

Soon, the growing company was getting more and more attention, and in part because of an article that The (Raleigh) News & Observer wrote about Pavan, Linker Logic landed it first big corporate client, WRAL.

The news station asked them to make an app for the newly released Apple Watch, and even though Pavan and his team had no idea how to create an app for the device, he accepted the challenge.

In the end, it turned out to be one of their biggest successes.

“We finished the project under budget and under their time limit,” he said. “They were super impressed with it.”

Continuing to Grow

The company has now completed over 70 projects and has worked with companies such as Cary Cardiology, WakeMed and the entrepreneurship department of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Kenan Flagler Business School.

With every new project, the company has found ways to innovate.

The 30 employees at the Linker Logic office in Ahmedabad, India are a crucial part of the 45-person team.

For their most recent client, Captain, Linker Logic created an all-in-one restaurant portal that connects customers with restaurants. The app allows customers to check into a restaurant with a QR code, have access to their waiter or waitress at all times and see real time updates from the kitchen.

Today, the average price for a Linker Logic project is about $50,000, with bigger projects costing up to $250,000.

For this kind of money, Pavan said the Linker Logic team puts plenty of attention and development into each client’s app.

Pavan said the company operates according to the Agile Method —a project management process for software development that gives each part of a project a time limit in order to ensure rapid delivery of a quality product.

Whenever the company gets a new client, Pavan said they first meet with their tech consultant to better visualize the idea and map out a plan for bringing it to life.

Then, Linker Logic’s seven graphic designers build a semi-functioning prototype with no backend code.

If the client likes the prototype, between seven to ten developers begin working on the app, keeping the client updated along the way with a daily brief on their progress.

Once the project is finished, Linker Logic gives their client full ownership of the app, but the company still offers maintenance and update services based on an hourly rate.

“We have about a 70 percent customer retention rate because once the app is developed our clients come back to us for updates consistently,” he said.

Big Plans

As a full-time student at UNC-Chapel Hill and a successful entrepreneur, Pavan has a lot going on, but that doesn’t mean he has no plans for the future.

This summer, Linker Logic opened up an office with 30 employees in Ahmedabad, India. Between the company’s other two offices in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, Pavan’s company now employs 45 people.

The 20-year-old CEO was also recently nominated for Forbes’ 30 under 30 list and traveled to Boston for the conference. Although he wasn’t one of the 30 who made the list, he was still able to network with the judges and some very successful people.

Pavan poses for a photo at the Forbes 30 under 30 conference in Boston.
“It keeps me motivated,” he said. “Doing this stuff you learn that you’re nothing compared to some of the people that are out there. It keeps you on your toes.”

But for Pavan, growing Linker Logic isn’t just about making a profit, it’s about helping his community.

In October, the company pledged $5,000 to the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and also helped raise $15,000 from the UNC community for the center.

Pavan is a business owner, but he is also a full-time junior at UNC-Chapel Hill. He said balancing school, a social life and his new startup VADE is not easy, but Pavan works hard to make sure he has time for everything.

Despite his busy schedule, Pavan said he doesn’t complain because he has big plans, and he truly believes in the work he and Linker Logic are doing to improve not only their clients’ businesses but the world as well.

“When you enjoy what you’re doing, you don’t really think about sleeping,” he said.

This story is from the North Carolina Business News Wire, a service of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Media and Journalism.