The Austin high-tech community on Thursday joined in the worldwide mourning of the death of Steve Jobs.

“I wouldn’t be standing here today, and none of the people in this building would be here today, if not for Steve,” said Tarun Nimmagadda, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Mutual Mobile, based in Austin.

Employees have been scribbling inspirational and motivational quotes from Steve Jobs on a white board at their new corporate headquarters on the 14th floor of a downtown office tower.

The growing firm builds mobile applications for businesses and consumers.

“Steve Jobs to us is more than just another CEO, or just another person,” Nimmagadda said. “For us he was the inspiration for starting this company.

“Back in 2007 when he got up on stage and announced the iPhone, I was still in school and so were my co-founders. We stood up and took notice and took that as a call to action. We stopped what we were doing and started this company.”

Nimmagadda and his executive team emulated Jobs’ idea of having designers and engineers work in concert.

“Here you don’t see engineers sitting on one side of the building and designers sitting on one side of the building. We all work together,” he said. “Steve has created for this company both the canvas on which we paint and the paintbrush with which we do it.”

Mutual Mobile, with additional offices in San Francisco and Hyderabad, India, now does business with corporate giants such as Google, Dell and Cisco.

“Steve showed how much impact one person can have today if you set your mind to it,” Nimmagadda said. “That’s the drive and inspiration that we can all use going forward.”

As usual, business was brisk Thursday at the Apple Store at Barton Creek Square in southwest Austin. The only nod to the loss of the company’s founder — the lights on the trademark Apple sign on the storefront were shut off.

At Apple Inc.’s North Austin campus, flags were flown at half staff.