By Mike Askew
There’s no doubt about it, starting a business will be one of the most difficult challenges that you will ever undertake. The investment emotionally, financially and the amount of time it requires means that creating an app is out of the question for most people. If you are in a position where your idea is becoming a reality, we have put together some thoughts from the belong journey that may help you and your project.
Friends and family lie
We love our family and friends, and they love us too, that’s why you should never use them as a sounding board to validate your idea. They tell you what you want to hear and that your idea is revolutionary, this information despite its good intentions sends you down the wrong path and you will burn through valuable resources.
Build it and they’ll come
We knew that we were onto a winning formula with belong version 1 unfortunately, no one else seemed to care. We hadn’t validated the idea correctly and therefore spent precious resources building something that no one really wanted.
You don’t need to write a single line of code to develop screens for an app to discuss your product with prospects (people you don’t know). Who cares if it’s non-functional, you are validating your idea and the solution.
Sure, until your solution is in the hands of customers, you’ll never truly know how they will interact with your product. But if your idea isn’t a problem worth solving prototyping is cheap, fast and will help you through the process of envisaging your solution. You can find thousands of designers on Fiverr.com or if you know someone to help you out even better.
Make sure you validate the whole business, including how you will make money. I recommend checking out “the lean canvas” to help you with your checklist of what you need to validate but here are some headlines: –
· What is the problem?
· Who has this problem?
· Is the problem worth solving?
· How will you make money?
Choosing the right developers
We didn’t, and learnt the hard way, again burning through savings with a development team that wasn’t capable. The world is a big place full of great development teams that work remotely. Do your due diligence and select wisely – Clutch.com is a great place for reviews.
Keep it lean
Don’t sweat the small stuff, until you have a problem worth solving and the shape of a product customer will use, the finer details don’t matter. If it solves a problem people will accept bugs and a lack of nice features. There is no point in polishing something that no one wants to use. Find something that people like then start refining it.
Get specific
Write detailed and very boring specifications of every possible action and reaction for each feature. Couple this with wireframes and fully-fledged designs. This will ensure your expectations are fully aligned with your development team, and that nothing is missed.
80/20
Now you’ve written your specifications, cut the development time by half, you will have way too many features for your first release. This will force you to focus on the features that are critical (must have) from those nice to have features. What are the big features that will drive the most value and bring your product to life? This will save time and money, you need to learn fast, and you can always add them later if/when your product has traction.
Downloads are easy
Data doesn’t lie and measuring success is a key part of learning whether your product is well received. You need to gain insight into how people are using your product. Do they come back a day, week, or month from now? If they do, well done! Using analytics is fundamental to understanding user behaviour. You should integrate the basics ready for your launch. We love Mixpanel here at belong. Vanity metrics like downloads are useless, it’s the actions users are taking (or not taking) that are the difference between success and failure.
Crash course
The books below are worth their weight in gold and will save you time and resources.
- The Four Step to the Epiphany
- Crossing the Chasm
- The Art of War
- The Art of the Pitch
- The Lean Start up
- How to Build a Billion-Dollar App
- Getting Things Done
- The 5am Club
- Start with Why
- Venture Deals
- Startup CEO
You can thank me later
belong today
With 46% MoM Growth and 40% of that being organic, our retention rates and key metrics are on par with some of the largest social apps in the world.
We are so grateful to provide a supportive, inclusive platform to an amazing community, classed by many as a “home from home” and “Dubai’s social hub”.
The highs and lows of this journey have been well worth it. But there’s much more to be done, therefore we remain focused and motivated.
Nothing good comes out of comfort zones. Getting out in the world and understanding your strengths/weaknesses and addressing them, with the will to say “It can and done” is key to your development both in business and life in general.
