Creating an app

[Vaness859]

I have an app business concept but need to know if I should learn to create the app myself or hire an expert. In everyone’s experience, what was smarter? I don’t know how to create an app so I would have to put the time into learning how to do it. What do you guys think?

 

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[Drive2Riches]

How much can you learn yourself? How savvy are you with the technology that it takes to build it? In order to get someone else to help you build your app, you need to be able to provide clear instructions to the agency or developer about what you want accomplished. The more you dig into what it takes to build the app, the more you'll learn, and the more you can improve your resulting app. I'd say build as much of it as you can, and then hire an expert to quicken your development, teach you what you don't know, and help you reach completion.

 

[Val Okafor]

Do neither! Do not hire an expert and do not learn to code. Start the business instead. You can start the business by doing any of the following steps if not done already.

• Write the business idea down.
• Refine the business idea down to one sentence
• Create the business model, revenue model, and path to profit!
• Identify the target market and start talking to some potential users of your service to validate the need for your services.
• Start researching the competitive landscape and the missing gaps in the marketplace, learn as much as you can learn about the industry.
• Create and refine mock user flows, with pencil and paper of your proposed solutions.
• Create a landing page/coming soon page for your solution.
• Hire a designer to create the initial designs for the app based on the identified need from your market research.
• Determine your go-to-market strategy - IOS first, Android first or both
• Create a budget for your version 1, $20K for the development MVP of the app, the bare minimum.
• Ensure you have the funds for your initial product development.
• Use your app designs to create coming soon page, social media presence, etc. and start promoting getting email signups from prospects.
• Then hire an expert to start an app development - lean towards an agency for your V1
• Start learning app development just so you can engage in meaningful conversations with your developers.

Depending on your speed of learning, you may be able to start helping with bug fixes on version 6.5 of your app, however, you may not learn enough to make meaningful contributions to version 0.01 to 6.4 which is the first two years roughly.

If you skip the above suggestions and jump into the fantasy of finding a cheap developer to create your app for you, then that could lead to several thousand dollars down the drain, no shippable product, precious wasted time, mounting frustration and someone coming up with an identical idea.

The gist of the matter is that software development, especially, mobile app development is expensive and takes time and does not lend itself to be mastered just in time to develop your idea. The same way you hire a lawyer for an upcoming court case versus rushing to law school to study law yourself just in time to defend yourself so you save on legal fees.

Good luck!