Grey Software

To celebrate one year of being incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in Canada, we launched a new landing website.

All the knowledge we had accumulated as a team throughout the previous iterations of our landing pages came together for this milestone.

Four of these projects contributors were graduates of Grey Software's apprenticeship program with UET Mardan!

We published Focused Browsing on the Chrome Webstore first because there were certain issues keeping us from being compatible with Firefox.

What we found was that our codebase needed to be re-factored using a library built by Mozilla called webextension-polyfill

Once we did that, we got Firefox compatibility published to the store.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ocbkghddheomencfpdiblibbjhjcojna

Arsala, Avi, and Raj spent 2 months crafting an open-source extension that hides distracting feeds on popular websites.

Once they got v0.9.2, they felt that it was ready to publish on the Chrome Web store as an unlisted extension.

https://org.grey.software/certificate

Incorporating in Canada as a not-for-profit was a big step because it opened up a lot of doors for us in the future.

Because of this, we were able to set up a bank account, Github Sponsorships, credibility when partnering with universities in Pakistan, and more.

As the school year ended strangely after the world was turned upside down by COVID19, I pondered whether I could start building the Grey Software organization.

I didn't have a massive source of funding, or the entire skillset needed to pull this venture, but I knew the internet had the answers I was looking for.

I had people tell me I was making a financially irresponsible move by not working for the kinds of companies that would hire me, but I knew the tech industry would still be around if I decided to jump back in.

I didn't even have a clear business plan.

What I had was an exhilarating albeit blurry vision of a world where anyone learning software could collaborate with professionals to create useful products and services with the latest tech.

I knew how fortunate I was to have had the opportunity to study at UTM and intern at Google and Vida. I knew how happy it would make me to see every honest, determined student around the world have a fair shot at creating a better future for themselves through technology. I knew that never in the history of the world did we have an event like COVID spike an exponential rise in distributed, remote solutions.

My gut told me it was the right time to start building Grey Software full-time.

Armed with an exciting vision and the determination to make it a reality, I joined the Pioneer global startup tournament.