App Development

Author
Discussion

timlongs

Original Poster:

1,720 posts

178 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
quotequote all
Hey all, have done a quick search on this topic and found a few threads but they're all a couple of years out of date now so I imagine things may have moved on in this area now. As we all know PH is a wealth of experience so asking here is worth a try!

Me and a friend have came up with an idea for an app, we've conducted market research to our target market and on the whole found the feedback very positive and we believe we've found something that could potentially be viable.

Our next problem is neither of us are coders/computer experts. I've had experience in the past designing websites but only basic HTML and CSS. The other problem is that I'm fresh from uni and am not mega wealthy obviously, and my friend is in a similar boat.

Wondering what the best way to go about moving the idea forward is really, was thinking of getting in touch with universities with courses on app development to speak to them - but any professional advice would be great.

Obviously don't want to talk about what the app is we don't want the idea getting nicked!

Thanks for any help in advance.

timlongs

Original Poster:

1,720 posts

178 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
quotequote all
Bump smile

timlongs

Original Poster:

1,720 posts

178 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
quotequote all
Purity14 said:
Without knowing what the app is about, its hard to advise.
But there was one website that I was on ages ago, and it allowed you to create an app on iPhone and Android platforms.
It was their own specific programming language, and had a forum dedicated to learning and help that had quite a large community.

You can create the app and develop it for free. But to release it for your own use then costs you money.
I cant remember the name of it, but that method certainly stops someone stealing your stuff.

You had people that couldn't even code making really sweet games..!

If i can remember what its called ill update this thread.

Good luck..!
Thanks that sounds interesting. If you could remember what it was called definitely let me know.

We're very much in the early stages of the idea and are both aware of it - we're happy not to rush as its to do with ski/snowboarding so we'd never get it ready in time for this season anyway.


GrumpyTwig

3,354 posts

156 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
quotequote all
Maybe look at using a framework that means the work involved in creating the app is more within your skill set?
Something like http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/ .

I've never used it myself as all my experience is in .net and windows or bash/python etc. not mobile.

You're unlikely to find someone to make something for free, there are websites where you could contract out the work to individuals, though that costs money.

timlongs

Original Poster:

1,720 posts

178 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
quotequote all
GrumpyTwig said:
Maybe look at using a framework that means the work involved in creating the app is more within your skill set?
Something like http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/ .

I've never used it myself as all my experience is in .net and windows or bash/python etc. not mobile.

You're unlikely to find someone to make something for free, there are websites where you could contract out the work to individuals, though that costs money.
We're happy to pay but I've seen the cost of app development go into 100s of thousands!

Another idea is to find someone of a similar age to ourselves and (21/22) who is starting out in the developing market and get them involved in the company. At the minute this is still very much just an idea but one we believe in.

eps

6,272 posts

268 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
quotequote all
If you want toinitially target Android, I can recommend Basic4Android which is quite cheap but very goodand works well. The creator of that are currently Beta testing a similar product for iOS so code should be quite portable.

If you want to chat offline PM me

jammy_basturd

29,776 posts

211 months

Saturday 25th October 2014
quotequote all
What have you done for market research?

Don

28,377 posts

283 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
timlongs said:
We're happy to pay but I've seen the cost of app development go into 100s of thousands!

Another idea is to find someone of a similar age to ourselves and (21/22) who is starting out in the developing market and get them involved in the company. At the minute this is still very much just an idea but one we believe in.
As an idea this is the one most likely to work. In a company you need someone who can manage and grow a business, someone who can raise money and take care of everything financial and someone who can do the work, and go on to manage others doing the work. If you have a winner of an idea that should get you going.

Be aware: you will not get the sort of tech guy you want or need for peanuts. You will be giving up a proper share in your business to someone who will work for free and make the software happen.

And you will need to be able to convince someone your idea is worth being poor as a church mouse for initially...just like you will be until the revenues/funding finally arrive.

Good luck.

neilus

901 posts

281 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
Purity14 said:
But there was one website that I was on ages ago, and it allowed you to create an app on iPhone and Android platforms.
Marmalade?

Petrus1983

8,521 posts

161 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
I had an idea for an app about 2 years ago that I was convinced was a flyer, but after spending a lot of time doing market research and pricing the app I found it was going to be vastly expensive with a high chance of not making any money back at all. Promoting the app seems one of the biggest problems, however great the app is itself - then tying in the ads etc isn't easy, and there's very big companies that can always offer their apps for free. I'll email you the people I was speaking with incase it helps.

Tebbers

352 posts

150 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
Take a look at mobincube, met the founder in San Francisco. They seem to be growing very quickly

Don

28,377 posts

283 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Sound advice. A good idea is a single and very small first step. You have to make the software work. Then you have to understand if the software will be defensible. i.e. is it hard for someone else to come along, build an identical app and undercutting you. Software doesn't have quite the same patent protection. Think of Excel vs Lotus 1-2-3 etc.

Durzel

12,232 posts

167 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
On that note - if you were going to release the next Flappy Birds make sure your version is the progenitor for the clones, rather than releasing something as a buggy proof of concept that goes nowhere but gives studios and keen entrepreneurs the inspiration to actually make money from your idea.

BJG1

5,966 posts

211 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
timlongs said:
We're happy to pay but I've seen the cost of app development go into 100s of thousands!

Another idea is to find someone of a similar age to ourselves and (21/22) who is starting out in the developing market and get them involved in the company. At the minute this is still very much just an idea but one we believe in.
It doesn't cost 100s of thousands to develop an app. Find yourself a freelance developer and get them to do it for £20 an hour.

zippy3x

1,308 posts

266 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
Develop a proof of concept (PoC). Preferably for android or windows phone (bear with me)

Assuming a moderately simple app, it shouldn't take more that 3 or 4 weekends of a competent developer to build a reasonable facsimile of your app.

If your app has live data, I.e. "what's going on today" or similar, then create some sort of backend that you can edit and see this data appear live in the app. This would be a bit more work for you to build and maintain, but would give the user a much better idea of the real apps potential.

If you could get something together before Christmas, you could put it on a few cheap (hence android/windows) phones and pass them out to friends and family going skiing in the new year. Get some good honest feedback and wish lists from them and see where you are.

I would say that about 70% of the PoC's I have built have resulted in abandonment or at least major re-thinks of the concepts, simply because it's very easy to make anything work on paper.

Doing this will give you 4 things.

1) validation of the feasibility of your idea.

2) much better understanding of the scale of the project

3) a good amount of feedback from test users (and hopefully some brilliant ideas)

4) if the idea is still good and you want to stand in front of an potential investor, you're going to be in a much stronger position with the PoC and feedback items in you possession.

jammy_basturd

29,776 posts

211 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
jammy_basturd said:
What have you done for market research?
I'll follow this up with some qualification.

Whatever you do, do not develop your app as your next step.

Save up £1000. Pay a web designer to design and create a landing page/basic website for your app, along with screenshots, etc. Work out how you're going to moneytise your app. If it is through paid downloads then you'll need to add in a payment form on your website/page. If you've got the skillz then you could even do this using a Wordpress theme and save yourself the cost of the designer.

Use some of your budget to market this website. Iterate over different versions of the website, different features, price points, etc. If you've done your customer development well enough you'll know which marketing channels are most likely to yield some good traffic. If you're unsure you'll need to go back and do more customer interviews (use this score system when doing customer interviews to see how important your problem/solution is - http://quickmvp.tumblr.com/post/91107184650/how-to...). Iterate over different marketing adverts/strategies to try and improve your traffic and then conversion rate.

You could even scrap the idea of a website and use Indiegogo or Kickstarter effectively as a pre-order system.

From the result of either of the above two ideas you'll now know whether your idea is worth spending time and money on.

Now, go and talk to a number of software houses about getting your app developed to get an idea of time and cost.

If time and cost is low, use the data from your website/kickstarter campaign to get funding then pay a developer to create the app. Up side - you've not had to give any equity away.

If time and cost is great then weigh up the pros and cons of either getting seed funding and project managing your own contractors or bringing in a tech person/team in return for equity.

silent k

783 posts

230 months

Sunday 26th October 2014
quotequote all
Lots of good advice on here. I'm a freelance app developer - I mainly do iPhone apps but have done a couple of cross platform (Android & iOS) apps. Would definitely agree if you can get someone technical involved in the project as a partner then that would be a good way to go. If you can find someone fresh out of Uni like you are, then you may be able to persuade them to work for a share in the business.

It is really hard to make money on apps though. It's incredibly competitive and very hard to get noticed on the app stores. You really need to push people to your app from somewhere other than the app store if you want to get noticed, relying on Apple or Google to do it for you doesn't work (unless you get lucky and are featured by them). It goes without saying that the app needs to be slick and very well presented to get anywhere as well.

As I said, I'm an app developer and I'd be happy to have a look at your idea an give you some honest feedback if you'd like? It'd at least give you an idea of the feasabilty and cost of developing it if you were to hire someone. Happy to sign an NDA to if you want too.