The 23-year-olds came up with the first app, “Story Pieces”, in 2012 at StartupCamp Canberra, a two-day brainstorming and networking session run by Lighthouse Business Innovation Centre where they also formed a small IT startup called Exose. Their business idea was received warmly by a group of mentors and judges they pitched it to at the end of the weekend.

“They really liked it,” says Potts. “We got some great feedback and we found a couple of mentors there that we’ve kept in contact with and they’ve helped us along the way.”

Abeyasinghe graduated with a software engineering degree in 2012 and does the programming. Potts, who graduated last year with a double degree in law and commerce, does the design work and concept creation.

“Basically, anything else we need to do, we just figure out ourselves,” he says.

“It’s just the two of us, and we try to make the app as professional as any of the big companies would.”

“Story Pieces” is a digital version of a classic game often played on paper in school classrooms, and it’s free, but could draw revenue from advertising in future.

It’s not a win-or-lose game. One player starts a story and the others take turns adding their own lines, but most of what’s already been written is hidden from them, with only just enough visible to make sure their words flow on from the last sentence.

“Eventually,” says Potts, “you’re off on a wild tangent and by the time you reach the end, it’s nothing like what you started with.”

The design is clean and professional, it’s easy to use and there are features such as Facebook integration to let users easily play with their friends and log in without creating yet another user account.

“We also have an option to play with randoms, so you can hit ‘random’ and it will match you up with some other people from all over the world,” says Potts, adding that “Story Pieces” has users as far afield as Asia, the US and Europe.

The complete stories are all archived online automatically so they can be shared easily.

Potts and Abeyasinghe agree the concept behind “Story Pieces” is entirely unoriginal, but that puts it in good company. Some of the most successful apps are shameless digital counterfeits of popular, time-tested games.

“‘Words With Friends’ is a really funny example,” says Potts. “It started off as an app based on ‘Scrabble’, and now if you go to the stores you’ll see they actually have a ‘Words With Friends’ board game.”

Even though it’s only just come out, Exose has already shifted focus from “Story Pieces” to “Haste”, and Potts is keen to explain how the newer game works.

“Basically, we describe it as something like ‘Boggle’ meets ‘Scrabble’,” he says, starting a new game. “We match up players around the world in real-time, so if you hit play, then someone else hits play, we match you two up instantly.”

The two players compete to make words out of the same group of letters within a 90-second time limit, scoring points for each letter with special tiles giving double or triple scores.

“With ‘Story Pieces’ we have hundreds of users, and it’s a great start, but with ‘Haste’ we’re hoping to have hundreds of thousands of users,” says Potts. “That’s the aim.”

While Abeyasinghe works full time in the public service, Potts has yet to get a job since graduating last year and he suggests, optimistically, that if “Haste” goes well he might be working on Exose projects full time.

“I guess there’s a bit of luck involved but with persistence and hard work, you can definitely do it, and hopefully that’s what happens to us. We’re going to do our absolute best to get there and we’ll see how it goes.”

“Story Pieces” and “Haste” are available from iTunes.

Story by Stephen Easton