Totally A Thing

The traps that end many app startups are covered in this talk as they apply to how you and your team work to build your app. I’ll talk about the cycles, milestones and how those fit with launches. Then I cover the role of two critical professionals in the app development team: the UX Designer and Product Owner.

Resources: the cycle index card I refer to …

Hey, I have a great idea for an app! Can you tell me, just roughly is fine, how much would it cost?

This question was one I fielded literally hundreds of times in the decade or so I was doing mobile app development in startup co-working spaces, after quit Google and Nokia to run my own app consulting business.

The number one thing I that stopped more than half of these starry-eyed appreneurs from going ahead was they had no business plan. Even if you’re trying for some sort of social enterprise, you need to keep the thing afloat.

This one pager canvas, inspired by the lean business canvas, is a way to quickly map out an at-a-glance snapshot of that strategy. Its not a pitch, its not a go-to-market, its not even a business plan yet. BUT: it’s the mud-map you must have as a minimum before you go looking for more buy-in from outside collaborators, such as your developer partners and investors.

Why Do You Need it?

Brian came to me with an amazing idea. His father had suffered for a long time with a degenerative disease necessitating more and more home aids of various kinds. Sadly when Brian’s father passed, those aids would be headed for the trash heap. But other folks need those aids for their loved ones!

What if there was an app where you could jump on, know that someone had already logged on and had some reputation to list the home aids, put up photos. Then you, also verified, go and buy them at a reasonable price. The aids avoid going in to landfill, both parties win: what a great app!

You just invented Facebook Marketplace. Except it will cost you $100k+ to build.

“So, Brian,” I said, “you want an app where first someone can log in and be verified, then list their home aids with photos. Someone else like that can buy them? I think you just invented Facebook Marketplace. Except it will cost you $100k+ to build. Why not start with Facebook marketplace first?”

Brian was so invested in the emotion of what he wanted to do - which is completely valid and important, you can’t achieve great things without passion - but he had forgotten to look at it from a practical angle. How would he differentiate his idea? What did he bring that made it any different from the options? What if his early customers were already waiting and he didn’t need a special app yet?

Brian could have saved himself feeling disappointed if he’d spent some time with the app startup canvas.

Do it with your Co-Founders

How do you do the canvas?

* TOGETHER

Most important: get the whole team in for the exercise. It’s something everyone needs to be giving their buy in for. Don’t be a solo-preneur. That is a losing proposition. I will do a session on this, in case you’re solo right now. But the number one thing you need, as someone with an app based business, is to work with others.

* WITH BUY-IN

Assuming you have the team, by the time you walk away from the session, everything on the sheet should be something you have all committed to putting in to the pot.

If you have one of your team members expertise or hours listed as a Unique Value or an Unfair Advantage then that has to be locked in at this session.

If you have one of your team members expertise or hours listed as a Unique Value or an Unfair Advantage then that has to be locked in at this session. If you’re the Ops person — like the COO for the startup — don’t accept being told to go do this on your own. It needs whole of team buy-in.

* KEEP IT LIVE

You can use a live shared whiteboard/doc eg Canva, or Google Docs, or a Microsoft Word 365 document - as long as you can take a private link to it that only your team can see.

* Set up a zoom call, with a shared doc, and plonk the canvas JPG on to it. OR

* Print out the canvas on A4, and then use a large sheet of paper & pens OR

* Get around a tablet/ipad and markup the canvas with a stylus/Apple Pen.

The whole thing should take 45 minutes or less. If you are solo now, sure — go ahead and fill it in — but you must do this sheet again when you have your team.

Sell a Product People Need

You’re going to start by using the focus statement at the bottom of the sheet. It can change, but start there. It’s based on a pitch framework from Anthony Gaddie:

* The Gaddie Pitch example

So for Brian above it might be:

You know how

* it’s really hard to deal with all the assisted living aids (problem)

* when you lost a loved one who used those aids (target = bereaved kin)

Well, what we do is

* know what its like

* provide a two-sided market place for aids

* with authentic buyers and sellers

So far we have

* re-homed 20k worth of home aids that would have gone to landfill

Enter the Items from the pitch line on the sheet

Brainstorm the Gaddie Pitch until you have it down on a sheet of paper. Then you can transfer it into the sheet:

Problem

* it’s really hard to deal with all the assisted living aids (problem)

* folks who have lost a loved one who used those aids? (target market)

Offering

* provide a two-sided market place with authentic buyers and sellers

Metrics

* 20k GTV (gross transaction value)

Unique Value

* authentic users

* founders personal experience of target market

Concept

* two sided marketplace

Just because its needed doesn’t mean it will work

Notice that I already mentioned a big problem with Brian’s idea was that it was basically Facebook marketplace?

Also we can see that folks who have lost a loved one who used those aids? (target market) is not a big TAM (total addressable market).

Finally the Unique Value of “authentic users” is a tough thing to sell. Brian’s story is one from the heart with his bereavement. But how when you expect every customer to see that value, what are you going to do to get cut-through?

Facebook users are already authenticated, and they try to have real profiles with authentic profile photographs. But there are a lot of inauthentic profiles - sometimes for privacy reasons. How will you solve this problem when even Facebook struggles?

Use the Canvas to Distill out the Truths

The Gaddie pitch is great for being bullish about your idea, and it’s a fantastic elevator pitch. But when you’re looking to make an app, that is a big investment of time and money, so some realistic modelling is needed.

What the app canvas will do is help you see that. By stripping it back to a simple proposition on the top-left part of the sheet, you can move across the top of the sheet and see if you can make it work.

I could not get people to buy [an app I built that people needed] because there was already competitor apps out there, and people already had workarounds.

Quick story: I built an app that people needed. I could not get people to buy it because there was already competitor apps out there, and people already had workarounds. My app was better, and had more features; but when your target market is a niche - like Brian’s and like mine - you must be willing to build a go-to-market strategy that can reach those folks where they are.

List the Current Alternatives

This needs to be not just what is actually a straight head-to-head competitor, but what people are using right now.

Talk to people who have the problem. What is it that pops up in peoples heads when you raise this problem right now? What has mindshare? What do you face when you find a go-to-market strategy for your app?

For Brian it would be:

* Facebook marketplace

* Selling it back to the pharmacy, community groups etc

In Brian’s case, he and his team/family had already used these above alternatives and established some good social proof by re-homing 20k worth of aids.

So your first MVP might actually be built out of these alternatives. Providing that there is a market, and the first step for your go-to-market plan, might actually be meeting your market where it already is.

Workarounds

Also workarounds, that don’t have all the benefits of your solution, must be listed:

* Taking the items to the dump (wasteful, contributes to landfill)

The app is only a channel

If there is only one thing you take away from this, please let it be this:

your app is only a channel, its not a golden goose

Go ahead and write in the top of the sheet:

Channels

* Mobile…

Apps are part of the fabric of the Internet

Apps seem simple when you look at them! But we know companies like Facebook and Google; Twitter and Snapchat have hundreds, even thousands of people working on apps.

Get the benefit of 20 years of experience in mobile development to understand the real factors that should play into your choices about which platform to build your startup’s mobile app on.

This is a free episode! Enjoy. If you get something out of this one, or on hearing my background want to find out what else I have in store on tech, culture, apps and startups then definitely subscribe - you get a free unlock for my “How to Build an App” series when you do.

You have limited runway, wrong decisions could be very costly. So you are going to make a business decision, not one based on whether someone’s very techie cousin says Android is “the best”. Or whether all your friends use iPhone.

Or then there’s that really promising sounding cross-platform system. Surely with Android and iPhone it’s best to just “sell it to the world”, right?

I wish I had a $100 for every keen entrepreneur who thought that they would “go global” on all platforms and wound up with their business being consigned to the dustbin of history.

In this talk I will dig into the history of the two platforms and show how deep those cross platform differences go. I’ll take you to Silicon Valley, and that time I talked to the founder of Android, Andy Rubin himself. I’ll talk about the the other cell phones, the ones that have been the poor cousins to iPhone and Android - and what we can learn about them.

I’m going to talk about the power of niche - something I will cover a lot in future Totally A Thing episodes - and how platforms can play a huge part in it. And finally I will talk about going to the stores, and some object lessons from my time making my own apps - both cross-platform and single platform plays.

Totally a Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Thanks for listening, and please, there will be more unmissable talks and actionable information coming from TotallyAThing. So your next step is to click this button and I will see you on Saturday for more on How to Build an App.

Have you ever wondered what goes into building an app? What different kinds of apps are there? How can I get an app built?

Follow this series of blog posts (indexed below) to find out the answers to these questions and all your other questions about building mobile apps.

I’m Sarah Smith and I have been working with apps for over 20 years. I worked for Google and Nokia and then began building apps for start-ups. I’ve been a start-up Chief Technical Officer and I’ve coached start-ups. I’ve built my own apps. It’s tough!

The good news is you can succeed with your app without a lot of technical knowledge.

The most important thing is a good understanding of your business.

The most important thing in app development is not understanding tech: it’s understanding your business. This is true even if you plan for your business to flow from your app after it’s built. So if you understand your business that’s already a great start.

From there you need to know how apps work to connect your customers to your business.

Apps seem simple. You probably have some favourite apps.

But search for “How to Build an App” and you get coding videos. Not helpful for folks who want to understand how apps are even built in the first place! Even if you’re an engineer like myself that is not a good place to start.

What does it mean to have an app built? How do they get into the App Store or Google play store? And what if you want to change it after it’s done?

That’s what we’ll cover, and more, in this series of articles.

Why did I create this series of articles? Because I want to help you avoid all the traps and mistakes that I have seen so many folks fall into when they go off to build an app. It does not help you — or folks like me in the app development business — when app-based businesses goes off the rails.

Why Would I Give Away Expert Secrets For Free?

You could go and pay for a online course in project managing apps or starting an online app business - and if you are here, and need to learn these things first, go click those links and learn about that first. What I’m about to cover in these posts will set you up with what you need to know to build a successful app, and I’m doing it a bargain rate by putting it here on Substack when my normal consulting rate would put it out of the reach of many startup entrepreneurs.

Here’s why.

I started working on apps for my own business in 2012. All around me in the co-working space where my business was based were other business owners: people who did online training for thousands of students, a husband and wife team who took orders for their custom printed t-shirts. There were some folks who had a business for new parents, a pet sitting business; even Uber rolled out its Australian operation from right in this co-working space.

I worked alongside several hundred different businesses over those years. It was an amazing experience.

The most awkward conversations I had when coaching was with would-be app-entrepreneurs who did not have any business strategy for their app. I had to send them off to the Lean Business Canvas to plan their business strategy, before I could help them.

You have to have at least a basic business plan before you even begin your app journey (which is why I like Lean Business Canvas, not just because its free). Stay tuned as I’m going to post about how to do your Lean Business Canvas for your mobile app startup or business very soon.

Use Lean Business Canvas to map your business strategy, then build your app.

During that time I helped out advising folks who were struggling to engage with the digital space, and spoke with a lot of business owners.

I heard from some folks their stories of heartbreak after spending savings on tech, only for it to go horribly wrong. I had to do something.

What if I was able to give folks new to digital business a bit of free advice? That could end up saving them thousands of dollars due to costly but easily avoided mistakes.

So that’s what I did. And I’m continuing to do that in these articles. I’m going to record these as video tutorials as well.

In this series I’ll cover the mistakes that new app entrepreneurs make — and how you can avoid them. I’ll show you how to succeed in getting your first app built. And I’ll unpack the best business strategies for making your app a success.

Here’s the Articles

* How do apps work?

* What kinds of apps are there?

* How do you Build an App? Pt 1 (Design)

* How do you Build an App? Pt 2 (Coding)

* Can I make money from my app?

* How does my app work with my business?

* How to Harness the power of apps?

These articles are ready to go & I’ll be linking above as I get them published. Let me know if you like what you see by hitting the applause or subscribe button, or sharing with others.

Any questions? Sub to comment or post below. Thanks for reading.

In my career of mobile app engineering I have been asked this question a lot.

“How much is a mobile app?”

Well, the question you should be asking is “How much could it cost if you try to do it on the cheap?”

When you partner up to build a mobile app for your business, you expect that it will be simple to get the features you need for your app to succeed. These days even if your app is part of some larger business, or if its an “appreneur” play in its own right, you cannot do without an app.

But partnering with the wrong people can cause your dreams to go horribly wrong. I worked with startups and had apps of my own in the app store. I know how tough it is to succeed.

The good news is you can do well, just by following some simple guidelines. Ones that I’m going to share in my Substack series on mobile app development. Much of it will be for free. My consulting services were charged out at an eye-watering hourly rate. But I don’t want to see businesses fail for lack of a few basic lessons.

I’m not about to sell you my services. You’ll get much of what I have to communicate in this series for free. When it drops, typically even the premium episodes will be free for a time, so its a no-brainer to subscribe so you get onto it while its fresh.

Totally a Thing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

And, I’m sure you want to know - how much is a mobile app? Check my video above and I have a teaser for you! You’ll want to know how many screens you have. Starty by using my app napkin template to sketch out the basics of your app and find how many screens you need.

Comments or questions?

Love to hear them! Subscribe and put your asks below. Thoughts about my video quality? Me too! I do not have access to an expensive studio and that is how I can offer my advice at a rate that is not going to break your bank.

Subscribe to the paid plan to get all the content that is going to be in this series, and help me make better videos as well!