Ari Weinstein

by Sue Ann Rybak

Mt. Airy native Ari Weinstein and two other software developers, Nick Frey and Conrad Kramer, made national headlines last month when their app Workflow won Apple's “Most Innovative App of 2015.”

Workflow is an app for smartphones and tablets that lets the user combine selected tasks on their phone. When the app was released in December 2014, it was the most downloaded app in the entire App Store.

Apple said in a statement that “Workflow makes powerful automation easy and, better yet, fun.”

Weinstein, the son of Ken Weinstein, president of Philly Office Retail, said it was “a huge honor” to be selected.

“Workflow lets you automate different things that you do every day, so you can do them with just a push of a button,” he said. “It's sort of like making your own apps but very simple. People use the app in all sorts of interesting ways and use it in ways we would have never imagined.”

Weinstein, a co-founder of DeskConnect is currently working on making the app even more user-friendly.

At only 21, the Germantown Friends School graduate's future looks bright. Workflow is his second successful app launch. He released his first app DeskConnect, which lets users share content between different devices – for example between your iPad and phone – during his first week as a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Before enrolling in MIT, Weinstein took a “gap year” to work as a software engineer at a startup company called WiFast in California. In December 2013, while still a freshman at MIT, he and Kramer applied for a Thiel Fellowship. The two-year fellowship is given by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, to 20 college students under the age of 20 nationwide to pursue their passions outside of the classroom.

The $100,000 fellowship allowed Weinstein and Kramer to pursue their dream of owning a software development company.

The Germantown Friends School graduate said he has always been passionate about computers.

“When I was a kid I was really obsessed with computers,” he said.

Weinstein said when he was 13 years old, he got involved in “jailbreaking.”

“Jailbreaking is sort like figuring out a way to get around Apple's restrictions,” he explained.” At that time, there was no App Store.”

Later, he worked online to help create Jailbreak.

“It made it a lot easier to jailbreak a long time ago, and it was downloaded like a million times,” Weinstein said.

He said the decision to leave MIT wasn't an easy one.

“I had a really conflicting year at MIT because I was working on DeskConnect and Workflow while trying to be a good student,” he said. “Even when Conrad and I decided to apply for the fellowship, I wasn't sure if it was something I actually wanted to do because I thought staying in school was the responsible thing to do.

“But as time went on, it became clear that I would have to give up one or the other. And I would never have been able to forgive myself if I just gave up the stuff I was working on. The fellowship gave us the legitimacy and the resources to sustain ourselves for two years.”

He said his parents were initially very apprehensive about his decision to leave college.

“Eventually, they came around,” he said.

Weinstein may return to school after the fellowship ends in June 2016, but right now his focus is on making Workflow accessible for everyone, even those who are technologically-challenged.