Do This Before Building Your App (Part 1) - App Startup Series

What is up app nation? It is Steve P young founder of appmasters.com. The place you go when you want action packed, content related, helping you grow your app downloads, and your revenues had a slow it down for the most important parts of your app business. And in part one of this YouTube series, we're going to talk all about how do you take your app idea to startup, to ultimate success? And these are the things that you need to do before you even build the app.

Joining me for this YouTube live series is Hime from dev. Go check them out. If you're looking to build your app, it is B7dev.com. I'm welcoming. Hi, Steve. How are you? Thank you for having me. Alright. Hi, let's talk about this. One of the critical mistakes that you and I both see is when app creators treat their app as just an app, like a hobby and not a real business. Yeah. We always says. We always say that you need to create a company, not an app.

Okay. What is the idea behind this? You need to foresee the budget and your energy and your ideas for more than a, just building an app. Okay. Be an app is one of the few steps we will see. Right now, what is, is the natural natural progression to create an app and then a creating, developing there. Finally, it's not the end of it. It's just a part of the beginning. Okay. Is you need to create a company you need to take care of, not just the.

Up per se, but you need to foresee the budget or your energy, your techniques, your techniques, your strategy for marketing, for customer service, for improving there all the time for content, for selling a what do you need to resolve? Or a, I mean like a brick and mortar. A business, like any physical store or any physical service that you can find on the real world. This is just translated to an app. Maybe even you will tell me no, but I will do, I will develop a game.

Okay. But the game also, you need customer service. You need. Marketing, you need to make this game known, but by all the people around there, maybe some specific game for a specific niche, you need to reserve the niche before you do the development. Okay. Maybe the reset is special date that you want to release it because a happens to be something special so that people will be more receptive, will be more open and we will receive a better the idea of an app or a game or whatever it is inside there.

Okay. So it's not just the app per se. You need to do you need to build the company. If we see the, the, the apps that they are doing well, it's not just as simple as, okay. It's not just a game. Maybe they're a cases. I don't know. Some simple games that they do great, but again, they have marketing. They have some, a strategy strategies to grow. Okay. It's not doing their job. Releasing they're during the lunch and forget, it's not, never works like this.

So you need to create a company. And a company is more than enough in my specific business, we create the app and then we'll always a recommend other people. If we have to, for example, you with the marketing, they grow in the strategy, et cetera. We always recommend to work with professionals. Okay. So let's. By the beginning. I have this idea. I was taking a shower. I have this brilliant idea. Never, no one did it before.

And I think that this is a gold book. Okay. Is the next big one. Okay. But just that idea. Okay. It's just an idea. You need to be able to develop the idea. You need to be able to explain the idea to others, to your partners, to your friends, to your, your, I don't know, to your family. If you want somebody that you need to put into paper. I mean, by paper that you can put it into a doc. But you need to put it in some text or graphical format to explain to others, to get a quote or to know what are the developers needs to do.

Okay. So we have a process that has four parts. Okay. The first part is the research. Okay. You have this idea. Number one, the thing number one that you should do is to research. Okay. You need to research first of all, without. Doing nothing. Um, of thinking about that, what other apps are doing the same? Because you always says that a, the, a, maybe you think that no one is doing that exact idea, but you will find something very similar to it.

Okay. Other than these, we have a lot of tools today. You have, you can just Google it. You can go to the app store, you can go to Google play and see. Same ideas, how they did it. Okay. You can go even a step or level up going to professional sites, such as AppAnnie. Okay. Sense of tower, such to such sites, just to name the two or the two of the most famous sites. When you can get all kinds of insights of this kind of idea.

Okay, so you can browse, you can take, you can take a look on different apps or similar apps. I mean your idea, but with different different take, and then you will discover a lot of stuff yet. Well, you didn't. Eh, you didn't think about, and then you can do your idea more, a more consistent. Okay. So first of all, to their search, go to the reviews, check what the people is saying about. Yeah, let me stop you there.

Cause I want to take a step by step, but I think the most important part that you kind of just said in the first thing is treat it like a company. And like any of the company you have to think, where are you going to get your downloads? Is it organic ASO paid? Right? Is it then how are you going to turn these downloads into users? Right. How they, whether you have to register anything else or they have to actually use your app, not just download and leave.

And then secondly, how are these users begin to become paying customers? And so it's that funnel, that simple funnel that you have to really think through rather than just being like I've got this app idea and thinking about all the features, you really have to think about what features are going to be premium. What features are going to be locked with features. Are going to be unlocked. And then now let's move on to the market research, which is what you're talking about is really analyzing.

One of the things that I love to do too I'm is really looking at the top charts. And I'm going to show my app any screen with you guys here. And, you know, we, we bring up Bianca app, the co-parent teen app that we, we talked about, but like looking through, and I'm only looking through productivity right now. So this is the app, Annie, and I'm under the free account. I'm looking at other top charts and I've selected the productivity category.

Cause we have one to talk about. Chat apps as an example. But I talked about talking parents, which is a competitor and it's a co-parenting app that Bianca, our friend mutual client and friend has. And we, I kind of said, okay, look at this, right? Like you can go into here and Haim brought it up earlier, before I interrupted him, is looking at the reviews and kind of coming up with all right. What, what do people really love about the app?

What do people really hate about the app? And you can look at the ratings. Favorable one star five star, and really thinking through that process. And the other thing that I like to do Haim is look at the revenues. What's the potential revenues for me. When we look at sensor tower right now, and you can guys can sign up central tower.com for free. I looked up, I just search up talking parents, and then this is just the iOS and here's what sensor tower.

Now it's not always like. 90 a hundred percent accurate, but it gives you a ballpark number and they're pretty accurate in terms of accuracy in the revenue numbers. They're pretty close to what the real revenues are. And so it gives you some ballpark number of the potential market that your app has. Yeah, they, the excellent thing about those kinds of sites up any sense of tower is that you can get insights that some years ago it's just doing market research for this work was worth thousands of dollars.

Okay. Get the real, the real world data on, on your idea. Okay. So this is excellent because your idea, maybe it's great, but if no one is doing that, what that means no one is doing that because maybe there is no money on it or maybe no one already developed the idea. So. How, how you know that you need to a approach to the idea on the smallest steps, trying to gather as much information as we can get with those amazing tools that we have today.

Okay. Again, this is amazing. Getting those insights is something that it's a blessing, honestly. Okay. So the implicit step is, as we were talking about is to research. The more that then you can get from every possible angle, the better okay. Search the potential competitors, search what they did. Okay. What they did wrong, what the people labs about there, what the people hate about them? Not to do the same. Okay.

Try to even. Play a game when you improve what you will improve from this competitor, what you will copy from this competitor. Okay. Everyone is doing that. I mean, there is no shame in copying something because in the, in the long run, everything is a copy your son with something that was before. Okay. So. Eh, this is something that you have to do as a fear system. Okay. The second step, if you want to go into there is validating your idea, the fierce approach to validation.

Okay. I condense all the information and I did a brief, then I go to a friend to a developer to someone that I know that has the knowledge to tell me yes or no. I mean that qualified opinion. And they say, I have this idea. I want, what do you think about doing an app? That does this one, two, three, four. What do you think about that? I mean, just as a second opinion, a third opinion, a fourth opinion. Okay. And then we'll tell you, yeah, it's a nice idea, but I will, uh, to do, uh, well, this is great.

Did you also. Thought about adding this feature. Okay. So you are getting some real person opinion about this other developer culture. For example, you'll contact me and I will tell you, eh, this can be done with this technology and this thing will require this and this and that. Okay. But we are aware that this feature could be difficult to do. Okay. So maybe as this is expensive and then needs to be done in the future, you know, fields.

Feelings feelings, fears, feedback about this, just this is stage. Okay. They will help you to refine your idea more okay. To, to, to have, uh, I know that, you know, another pain advice is better than that. Your only conception about this idea. This is what I meant. Okay. The second step in this process is a, it's a very simple validation. Okay. Maybe someone would tell you, I don't think that this will work and then.

That depends on you. If you quit or you say, okay, why you think that this one works? Maybe we can do something different. Okay. It's very long term explain, but, you know, from getting a set on a theater, for opinion, and a specialized opinion, you will get a lot of very valuable feedback. Okay. So after you have the research and you have some kind of fierce stage validation, you can go to the third step. Okay. The third step is condensing.

All these that you have in your mind, in a small part, in a small list on paper, you can throw it on it in the doc. You need to convert to something that. A theater party will understand a partner, a potential investor or developer. Okay. You need to create some kind of a simple document or complex document the way that you like it more, but you need to explain other people. Okay. What the app is about how the app will be.

Okay. You have several things should do it. You can do it by yourself. You can hire someone that is specialized on this process. We get a lot of a request for doing this for, for a making it on paper, your idea. So we will go on a process of, okay. Tell me about your idea. Did you buy it? Maybe we will buy you the total. So in this experience, Hmm. And then we just start to write about the idea to why framing to doing some kind of document, or maybe also, uh, aspect of limitation and a wife in documentation to express in that graphical text, to our way, your idea with this idea, again, you will explain how are behaves, how they have ease, what they use or should do what you expect the users to do.

Okay. In this, in this stage, eh, how many screens we'll have? How many buttons? Okay. Maybe when you weren't frame, you will understand that maybe you don't need so much buttons so much as screens. You can. Make it easier for the user to browse, to navigate to there is that proving process. Right. And we're going to go into detail on how do you build that MVP and how do you talk to your developer, your potential developers that you want to hire into more details of safety for that one, but what's the last phase you got the four-part so you've got research validation.

Mock-ups and then what's the last one. The last one is getting the funds, these, the, the, the most interesting part, because you can generally, you can go with self-funding. I mean, I have some money and they want to pull into the idea, or I don't have the money, or I don't have enough money for the whole idea. So I need some funding. Okay. So again, we need to do a very long talk about techniques for quitting, but basically you have friends and family.

To go for a funding or you have a ancient investors, people that like your idea, and they will help you with the money or you have a special venture capitalist. If the project is, is big or is on a very promisingly stage or, I mean, they will like for the special projects to fund, but then there's the, the simplest way is to go with yourself funding. If the. The idea is simple enough to develop with you, um, funding.

And then it's a generally when you try to save and to cut corners in all around all that is called bootstrapping. I mean, try to try to do it with them list possible money in order to stay alive up to the lunch. Having some money or some strategy for growing up, et cetera. Okay. So when you have the whole idea condensed in a document, you can go to a developer. You can, if you want to develop by yourself, you go bootstrapping and then you develop by yourself.

Or you can, you can try to go to a developer that will, will tell you what you need to do to bootstrap. Or you can go. To an investor and show these, these specs, this document until, eh, I got disqualified for a w from a developer, and then I need this and this and this money again. Don't think. Just about the app consider also the marketing, also the grill when it started this, she's also the customer support. I mean the cost for at least a few year of, of a function.

Okay. So with all these, you go for funding. These are bearing long talk about funding because they are. A lot of the strategies for this today, you have a lot of strategies for these, but basically what you need to do is go in. Even if you go bootstrapping, or even if you are looking for funding, you need to be very precise on what you want to do as an app idea. Okay. It's not that you will just throw money on something that you are not sure of what you are doing.

Okay. Got it. Love it. All right. In part two, we're going to cover all about how do you document, so I'm kind of talked about it in, this is three part phase, but part two of our YouTube series, we're talking about how do you build that MVP? How do you decide what those MVV features should be? So minimum viable product for those who are not nerdy on these acronyms, but even figure out what those features to be and how do you document put together a documentation with mock-ups so that you can get the most accurate quotes.

So make sure you tune in for that. Next video in this YouTube live series. And if you guys want to work with Hyman esteem, go check out the website. It is B the number seven dev.com. Be seven dev.com. I'll see you in part two. Thank you. We'll move on.