A Milestone Day

[MacQNE]

Hi Community,

Hubby and I had very successful careers (Information Technology) in the Corporate world. We were model slowlaners, but something didn't make sense. We reached a ceiling of some sort.

In 2012, we quit our jobs to start our own business. We tried a few things. Some worked. Most didn't. Hubby heard about the CENTS commands on a YouTube channel. We bought the book in October 2016 and devoured it. We realized that we had to create a product if we wanted to add value.

We had some programming experience but wanted to take it to the next level. In January of 2017 we picked a "product" and started developing this product while teaching ourselves different kinds of programming languages, which included mobile app development. I knew about the forum back then, but decided that joining the forum would be a form of action faking (for me personally). I would join the forum the day my product was done. In my mind, that would prove that I was serious about this journey, and that I would be the type of member this forum aspires to reach.

It has taken just over two years. Our product is done. In both the native Apple and Android programming languages. And although I am certain that I am no expert just yet, I believe the product we have is one of quality. Regardless of whether this product works in the market or not, the knowledge and skill we gained was worth the effort.

So I'm joining the forum today. I am still very new to entrepreneurship seeing as I've not been able to successfully generate sustainable income from what we have to offer.

I'm excited about what we can achieve. Always worried about avoiding BIG mistakes. Happy to learn from trial and error along the way.

I'm looking forward to reading through the Progress/Execution section to see how you guys are kicking a$$ too!

Mac

 

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[astr0]

Welcome to the forum!

Two years sounds quite a lot for developing a product. Do you have paying customers?

Good luck on your journey!

 

[MacQNE]

Welcome to the forum!

Two years sounds quite a lot for developing a product. Do you have paying customers?

Good luck on your journey!

Thanks!
Yes, it is a long time. We had contracts for customers that we had to service in the meantime. When we had contracts, we worked for customers during the day and learned to dev till 2AM if we had to. In between contracts we spent more time on learning dev. We also didn't renew (or look for new) contracts, so the last couple of months we developed full time.

Nope, not one single paying customer (insert serious blushing emoji here). We've spent some time thinking about that approach and realized that we may have done this awkwardly. It would have been better to create a product for customers that were waiting for it, ready to pay. But on the other hand, I wasn't confident with my skill. I realize you do "learn on the job" to some extend with most things you do when you're experienced, but didn't want to risk it when I was such a rookie.

That decision has to go down as "lesson learned". We will try our app in the market and see how it goes. If it takes off, great! If not, we will quickly pivot to the next thing and make quick work of it now that we have the skill.

 

[astr0]

But you're pretty sure that your app fulfills an actual need, right? Otherwise, you probably won't be doing native versions for both iOS and Android, correct? 2 years is a really long time, I would probably give up much sooner. Great persistence and discipline! Doing it in free of service business time also sounds like a great idea, we have pretty similar plans).

It would have been better to create a product for customers that were waiting for it, ready to pay. But on the other hand, I wasn't confident with my skill. I realize you do "learn on the job" to some extend with most things you do when you're experienced, but didn't want to risk it when I was such a rookie.

Sure, that's a much safer approach. And yes, failing to deliver something to your clients is a completely different thing than just failing yourself. However, having customers early opens more options and you can hire/partner/outsource parts of the project.

Often it takes some time for the snowball to get rolling. Don't count on instant success and don't pivot really early. Get it to the market and in front of your target audience and see what happens first.

Good luck again! )

 

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[MacQNE]

Yes, it definitely fulfills a need - the most important part of CENTS. We decided on an app that addresses one of our own challenges and asked around in our community casually to see if others had the same concern.

The challenge, however, is to find out if people will pay to solve the problem. We’re starting beta testing soon and will get feedback from the market.

Thank you for your kind words and motivation. You have made me feel welcome! It means a lot.

I’ll look through your posts to see what you’re doing and wish you great success with your ventures too!

 

[astr0]

So that's solving a need from your main domain and that's really awesome. As long as a need is big enough and the pricing is right you won't have problems with customers. Have you checked how's your competition is doing?

Thank you for your kind words and motivation. You have made me feel welcome! It means a lot.

I’ll look through your posts to see what you’re doing and wish you great success with your ventures too!

Everyone is welcome here, I guess. You're in business for 7 years and transitioning to products now. Would be really happy to see a progress thread here soon . Probably you had interesting stories to share with a service business too.

Don't spend too much time reading my posts, there's a ton of much better context here. In case you're still interested here's my progress thread, that's more of memory for myself:
Failure is not an option

TLDR; Leaving 9-5 at the end of this month, doing niched software development service business with 2 partners, trying to get a share of the products we build in exchange of reducing the development&support cost for the clients. One product has paid for itself but doing so-so. Another one is doing better than expected so far.