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Fastest Way to Build an App?

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DeletedUser0287

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Most of the multi-paragraph posts you make can be summed up in a single word; PRODUCTOCRACY. MJ gave us a single term that perfectly encapsulates your entire perspective on product development and promotion.

He did also say get started.

Are you ever going to give the world this magnum opus, or are going to spend an entire lifetime in pursuit of its perfection without a single sale?

Even Charles Goodyear was out there trying to sell as he spent a lifetime searching for the miracle of vulcanized rubber.

Due to the physical nature of the my product, ain’t nobody gonna buy without the final product being finished. It is a modular system as well, so I have to essentially think of all future designs and make sure they are compatible.

The app is part of the branding vibe mostly.

I do have some accessory products that are already selling, but I have read the startup stories of productcracies. Most of them 1-3 years of development. In those years they had no sales. That’s what it takes. They were just developing, feeding the business. Delayed instant gratification. It takes time and money to build a remarkable/productocracy. Obviously if you are a money chaser, you won’t be able to handle the development time.

This is better than how others are thinking: how do I build a business with $100 and be profitable in less than a month. 99% of the time these are the lowest barrier businesses that get destroyed by the slightest breeze. Or their R and D consist of 3 months or something. The end result is garbage.
 
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broswoodwork

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Due to the physical nature of the my product, ain’t nobody gonna buy without the final product being finished. It is a modular system as well, so I have to essentially think of all future designs and make sure they are compatible.

The app is part of the branding vibe mostly.

I do have some accessory products that are already selling, but I have read the startup stories of productcracies. Most of them 1-3 years of development. In those years they had no sales. That’s what it takes. They were just developing, feeding the business. Delayed instant gratification. It takes time and money to build a remarkable/productocracy. Obviously if you are a money chaser, you won’t be able to handle the development time.

This is better than how others are thinking: how do I build a business with $100 and be profitable in less than a month. 99% of the time these are the lowest barrier businesses that get destroyed by the slightest breeze. Or their R and D consist of 3 months or something. The end result is garbage.
Screenshot_20191220-085751.png
Put something out there, and let its sales finance the r&d of the perfect product.

I'm not attacking you personally, please understand this, but every question you've ever asked on this forum can be answered with, "start selling something. "

I can't remember where this quote came from, but it was from one of the big guys...

"If you're proud of your product on day one, you waited too long to bring it to market. "

Ok, I'm out of here to build hopelessly imperfect products.

I've got so many orders, that I'm either going to have to outsource for more help, or refund people. Love that selling these low-barrier middling quality things is financing the prototype of my exceptional and unique fastlane product I intend to start shipping by tax return season though... makes it all worthwhile! :hilarious:
 
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DeletedUser0287

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View attachment 29268
Put something out there, and let its sales finance the r&d of the perfect product.

I'm not attacking you personally, please understand this, but every question you've ever asked on this forum can be answered with, "start selling something. "

I can't remember where this quote came from, but it was from one of the big guys...

"If you're proud of your product on day one, you waited too long to bring it to market. "

Ok, I'm out of here to build hopelessly imperfect products.

I've got so many orders, that I'm either going to have to outsource for more help, or refund people. Love that selling these low-barrier middling quality things is financing the prototype of my exceptional and unique fastlane product I intend to start shipping by tax return season though... makes it all worthwhile! :hilarious:

Heard that quote before.

My target demographic has high standards which another reason I cant really settle on mediocre. On one of my lower standard products, I showed my target audience and some of the guys were being extremely anal about usability and tried to bring me down. Nitpicking, essentially. That is the nature of my target demographic. They willing to spend big money, but the product better be damn flawless.

The Apple computer was a different time. If you put something out like that today forget it. But at that time, it was remarkable. Standards are higher than ever now.
 

broswoodwork

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I showed my target audience and some of the guys were being extremely anal about usability and tried to bring me down.
Is your demo the keeping up with the Jones' crowd? If so, their money isn't green enough.

I've delivered rough and rustic imperfect furniture to people who's homes were basically art museums and took up a whole building floor in Brooklyn, and they're the nicest people on earth. Steer clear of the 4 bedroom colonial posers drowning in debt. They consume and consume and consume, because they believe that's what will make their lives make sense, but they become more miserable with every swipe of the visa.
 
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Last edited:
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DeletedUser0287

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Is your demo the keeping up with the Jones' crowd? If so, their money isn't green enough.

I've delivered rough and rustic imperfect furniture to people who's homes were basically art museums and took up a whole building floor in Brooklyn, and they're the nicest people on earth. Steer clear of the 4 bedroom colonial posers drowning in debt. They consume and consume and consume, because they believe that's what will make their lives make sense, but they become more miserable with every swipe of the visa.

Some of them can fall under that crowd and some don’t.
 

broswoodwork

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Some of them can fall under that crowd and some don’t.
Is your product a higher quality version of something that already exists, something that already exists that you are adding a new feature to, or is something completely new?
 
D

DeletedUser0287

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Howdy!

Give a try to Glideapp.
It's a nocode solution.

I'm in no way affiliated to them, I just saw this tweet a while ago:
View: https://twitter.com/tomosman/status/1184032431776645121

I tend to avoid nocode solutions. Big hinderance on flexibility. Dependent on an app builder. Lack of control.

also spending time to solve issues related to the builder doesn’t build any skills.

If I struggle with real coding, at least I’m building marketable skills
 

André Casal

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Right now, the most efficient way I found was to look for a Udemy course that has many projects in it. But this is just learning code. The issue being that the projects don’t relate to anything I want to build... I feel like I am wasting a lot of time learning things I don’t need to.


Looking for advice for fastest way to build an app yourself. The online courses have a lot of waste knowledge.

Edit: What I mean is that, These courses teach me to code, but that’s not what I really need. I need to learn to build my specific app. So even after going through some of these courses, I still don’t know how to build it.
Hey MoreValue, I may be able to help, I've been a web developer for quite a few years.

Here's my advice. If you're looking to become a world class software engineer (like me), I'd recommend starting with mastering the tools. My tools of choice are VS Code and the VS Code Vim extension. With these two I can edit code at the speed of thought, which is something I can't do with any other tool. If on the contrary you're not looking to become fluent in software engineering, then don't bother too much with mastering the tools and go for Just-In-Time learning instead. In this vein, it would be important to have the basic knowledge to have your build tools (things like WebPack, Rollup, TS to JS transpilation, live reloading, etc) tightly integrated with your project and code editor. This will prevent you from doing thousands of repetitive tasks like this: edit code -> Ctrl+S -> Alt+Tab to terminal -> run build command -> Alt+Tab to browser -> Ctrl+R to reload (and repeat every time you make an edit). Integrate these processes so that code is automatically saved, compiled/transpiled and reloaded. Spend as much time as you need to get to this level and look at this integration phase as not only part of the development process, but one of the most important parts of the development process. This will not only save you tons of time, but will remove all extra cognitive load and you'll be able to focus purely on your code.

Since you already know how to code, you now need to become aware of what's possible. For that you need to get an overview of what the language you're using is capable of. I'll give the example of JavaScript. You don't have to know everything JavaScript is capable of doing and how it does it, but you need to become aware of the standard built-in objects (like JSON.*, alert(), console.*, etc) - the built-in things you can already use out of the box. For JS I'd recommend skimming through Standard built-in objects from MDN. Then I'd recommend skimming through the JS browser APIs and finally, if you're also using JS for backend, JS Node APIs. Extrapolate to whatever language you're using and use JIT-leaning when you need to accomplish something.

That was the knowledge part. Now comes the build process specifically. You need to start designing your software. A few prompts that might be useful would be:
Do I absolutely need a database?
If so, what kind, SQL or non-SQL (I prefer non-SQL, like MongoDB)?
REST or GraphQL (I prefer GraphQL)?
Do I need an API (probably yes)?
What conceptual parts does my app have? Start defining the classes and API endpoint.
What does my client look like? Draw a few sketches (maybe use Invision to get a feel of how you're app UI will flow).
Do I need a state management in my client (like Redux, if you're using React)?
What modules will my client have? Draw it out.
Then start coding.

This last part was fairly superficial because I don't know your context, but let me know if you'd like more tailored advice according to your context.

Cheers!
 
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A_Random_Guy

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My advice to you is to set up a landing page for your app, and get some pre-sales. Offer a discount to the first people who let you test it with them while you build it. Promise that you'll incorporate their feedback into the app, so the app will develop in the direction they want it to develop in from the get go. (And deliver on that promise).

Once you have your customers who're happy to pay you money right away for you to develop the app on their behalf and solve whatever problem you app solves, you'll focus on building it. My advice is, since you'll have at least part of the money, is to hire a developer. Sort out a deal with him to pay him the rest of the money later (if it exceeds your budget) or something of that nature. Whatever you do, DO NOT share revenue, unless he commits by contract to work on the app for a long period of time providing maintenance and improvements.

Now if you insist on building your app yourself, it will be very difficult for you. You will need to learn algorithmic thinking (no, don't go buying a course on algorithms off Udemy - hold on a moment...)

You need to learn the first thing about algorithmic thinking. You need to break down your problem into as many small steps as possible. What ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY functionalities will your app have? (I don't mean what functionalities it would be ideal to have, rather what functionalities your app absolutely needs to solve the problem it solves) List them out. For example, does your app have a user registration functionality? Does it have login functionality? Does it have a forgot your password functionality? Does it have a save your results functionality? Does it have instant messaging functionality? Does it have file sharing functionality? Etc.

List ALL your functionalities.

Then prioritise them. Which comes first in the app? Well, registration is first - the user needs to register. Do that until you have them sorted in an order.

Now you need to take them one by one. Look for tutorials (you'll be able to find a lot of FREE ones) which show you how to do each step. How to do user registration in whatever language for an app? Etc.

Start building each functionality, one by one.

It will suck.

You'll get frustrated.

But you keep going.

Otherwise you will waste your time.

And by now it will be a really long time wasted.

You may want to curse your days for ever beginning this...

No matter...

You just keep going.

If you get through all that, you'll have a complete MVP app.

And you'll have paying customers.

From there on, you have to find people to help you. If you've done the coding, keep doing the coding, and find a marketer. If you've done the marketing (as you should), then find more people as needed to help with the coding, while you focus on scaling the app.

Learn about sales funnels, learn how to drive traffic, and all the other juicy stuff.

And finally, you can print the dough brother! :)

P.S. Before I go... one more piece of advice about hiring developers. About 1 year ago, I invested in a tech startup with a relatively non-active role, just acting as a consultant for the CEO. He hired a team of software engineers from India. I advised him to focus on getting sales instead of being so focused on the product. When problems started appearing in the 2nd month of development, I advised him to fire their asses and take them to court. He didn't listen, and kept going his way. To this day, the app is still not ready, the old CEO has been replaced, the team from India fired, and many thousands upon thousands of dollars later, there's still no app. Now it is going in the right direction fortunately, with one developer hired on a revenue share model - 5% (the app is in a market that is just EXPLODING!). So be careful who you hire. And if they're not doing a good job, get rid of them early. Otherwise it won't end well for your venture.

All the best mate.
This deserves a thread of its own. The advice is gold.
 

Roli

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Looked at this, and that is kinda the thing I want to avoid. This is the stuff they would make you do in school, but not have much real world application in my case. I am going through the list and trying to see if one of these things would help me build an app and it just looks like busy work. Not moving the needle forward.

Well you seem to have it all figured out so go for it.
 
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S.Y.

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Well you seem to have it all figured out so go for it.

Ya. Looks like OP already has his answer and is looking for validation.

Right now, the most efficient way I found was to look for a Udemy course that has many projects in it. But this is just learning code. The issue being that the projects don’t relate to anything I want to build... I feel like I am wasting a lot of time learning things I don’t need to.


Looking for advice for fastest way to build an app yourself. The online courses have a lot of waste knowledge.

Edit: What I mean is that, These courses teach me to code, but that’s not what I really need. I need to learn to build my specific app. So even after going through some of these courses, I still don’t know how to build it.

I don't think you will find a resource to build your specific app unless if it has been built already by someone else.

The fastest way is to pay to have it built for you.

If you want to code it yourself, @lowtek has a very great guide to learning that can speed up your learning curve. But you will need to learn how to code. I don't see how you could use a tool without understanding how it works.

Tagging you @TreyAllDay because I think you learned to code online, then use to build a successful business.

Heard that quote before.

My target demographic has high standards which another reason I cant really settle on mediocre. On one of my lower standard products, I showed my target audience and some of the guys were being extremely anal about usability and tried to bring me down. Nitpicking, essentially. That is the nature of my target demographic. They willing to spend big money, but the product better be damn flawless.

The Apple computer was a different time. If you put something out like that today forget it. But at that time, it was remarkable. Standards are higher than ever now.

If they are that nit-picky, maybe ye product doesn't address a real need?

And dropbox had a very minimal 3 min videos...
 
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DeletedUser0287

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And dropbox had a very minimal 3 min videos...

I guess I wasn’t clear. My products are physical. E-commerce is the business. The app I need built is for branding purposes and user experience. Mandatory to get the “vibe” right.

Although I could sell it to other businesses, but that is secondary.
 

AppMan

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Right now, the most efficient way I found was to look for a Udemy course that has many projects in it. But this is just learning code. The issue being that the projects don’t relate to anything I want to build... I feel like I am wasting a lot of time learning things I don’t need to.


Looking for advice for fastest way to build an app yourself. The online courses have a lot of waste knowledge.

Edit: What I mean is that, These courses teach me to code, but that’s not what I really need. I need to learn to build my specific app. So even after going through some of these courses, I still don’t know how to build it.
What kind of app you want to build ? if it is simple there are some tools to generate app, but serious and more complex apps require a team of developers to produce them in reasonable time , you dont want to spend years coding your app, right ?
 

MaxKhalus

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Right now, the most efficient way I found was to look for a Udemy course that has many projects in it. But this is just learning code. The issue being that the projects don’t relate to anything I want to build... I feel like I am wasting a lot of time learning things I don’t need to.


Looking for advice for fastest way to build an app yourself. The online courses have a lot of waste knowledge.

Edit: What I mean is that, These courses teach me to code, but that’s not what I really need. I need to learn to build my specific app. So even after going through some of these courses, I still don’t know how to build it.
hire
 
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DeletedUser0287

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What kind of app you want to build ? if it is simple there are some tools to generate app, but serious and more complex apps require a team of developers to produce them in reasonable time , you dont want to spend years coding your app, right ?

Complex App definitely, like I said above. I don't have the cash to hire one developer, yet alone an entire team.

Been learning code non-stop ever since.
 
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splok

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I just feel like it’s a waste because the tutorials include the typical to do apps and what not.

These courses teach me to code, but that’s not what I really need. I need to learn to build my specific app.

I can't seem myself to get to do these things because I quickly realize it has zero application in my project.

It sounds like you're looking for a step-by-step guide to building exactly what's in your head, and that's just not how things work. A really important part of development is chunking features down into their lowest common denominator that work similarly across tons of different use cases.

You don't go through a to-do app tutorial because you want to make a to-do app. You do it because once you know how to make a to-do app, you can probably make a basic version of 99% of all apps that exist. You need to be able to draw elements to the screen. You need to be able to accept user input, store it, load it, display it, edit it, etc. If you want to store the data online, you need to be able to do all of that to a remote location and add authentication. etc. etc. It's all just a stack of similar blocks. You don't need to reinvent the software development wheel. You just need the right stack of blocks.

Once you can look at things as a stack of blocks, you don't need to do tutorials on full apps, you can just cherry pick the bits you need. Need to learn authentication? Great, google that. Need to learn how to display 3D models? Great, google that. If you can't figure out what you need to google to accomplish what you need to accomplish, join a dev forum or chat, explain your problem, and ask someone to point you in the right direction. Sometimes you just need to know a certain keyword to make a giant problem entirely vanish.

The fastest way to build almost anything? Start building, then google your specific roadblocks as they pop up.

It requires 3D rendering. It is a product customizer.

Also, just want to toss out that relentless simplification can be a life-saver. Not sure of you specific use-case of course, but this sounds like something that would be much better in 2D. Even if it needs to look like it's 3D, I can't think of very many cases where using 2D renderings of your actual 3D items wouldn't be both easier to create and a better user experience. Maybe if you need to actually manipulate verts or something like an actual 3D game... but then, if you're doing that, the software should be your product, not just something to add "brand vibe".
 

AppMan

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Complex App definitely, like I said above. I don't have the cash to hire one developer, yet alone an entire team.

Been learning code non-stop ever since.
If it is complex app, I expect to have server side too to collect, process data. The problem with complex apps it need someone who built them before (experience ). Your best bet is to look on some open sources apps and learn how good applications get built . then try to do that. or better built your application on the top of another platform if possible to save time on some layers , example if you are building POS app , just use exiting open source one and built on top of it, assuming it is license allow you that.
 

JWM

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Right now, the most efficient way I found was to look for a Udemy course that has many projects in it. But this is just learning code. The issue being that the projects don’t relate to anything I want to build... I feel like I am wasting a lot of time learning things I don’t need to.


Looking for advice for fastest way to build an app yourself. The online courses have a lot of waste knowledge.

Edit: What I mean is that, These courses teach me to code, but that’s not what I really need. I need to learn to build my specific app. So even after going through some of these courses, I still don’t know how to build it.
if you’re trying to turn this into a business and you can’t code, your best bet is to find a partner who can do the development side of things. Go halves in the business, yes you lose half the business but there won’t be that upfront development cost and you can get the ball rolling now, not in 2 years.

this being said, you need to consider what it is you are going to bring to the party apart from the idea, what skills do you have that will contribute to the project?
 
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Emilezgheib

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Udemy is a great way to learn how to code as you said, but it definitely wont teach you to code what YOU want.
In my opinion you need to draw a clear presentation of what you want your app to look like, and using all the knowledge you obtained and a little bit of self research online you can start to build the idea you envision, its gonna take some time and effort.
As well you can keep learning through youtube videos and other sources everything that you need for your project.
 
D

DeletedUser0287

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if you’re trying to turn this into a business and you can’t code, your best bet is to find a partner who can do the development side of things. Go halves in the business, yes you lose half the business but there won’t be that upfront development cost and you can get the ball rolling now, not in 2 years.

this being said, you need to consider what it is you are going to bring to the party apart from the idea, what skills do you have that will contribute to the project?

I am pretty much bringing everything else to the table. The app/website is only part of the business. Hard to find someone truly as devoted as I am.

This project is way over my head, I still have like a thousand other things to learn as well. Sucks that working full time is taking away from all this time that could be used to learn.
 

JWM

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I am pretty much bringing everything else to the table. The app/website is only part of the business. Hard to find someone truly as devoted as I am.

This project is way over my head, I still have like a thousand other things to learn as well. Sucks that working full time is taking away from all this time that could be used to learn.
It sounds like looking for a partner is your option. You’ve obviously identified the skills you can bring, the skills you need to bring in and that the project is too much for you alone. If all your initial research requirements have been met, start seeking someone who can develop the software. Find someone who truly believes in what you’re doing, even though you’re offering equity they will still need to believe the idea to work before giving their time away initially for free. May require putting together some documentation about the idea and your market research before they jump aboard
 
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James Orman

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Here's what I did to build an app in the past.
Make a list of what it needs. Then search on stackoverflow and other places for examples of the smallest features that will be part of it like buttons, audio, graphics, etc...

Each feature is then nearly copy-paste and some modifying. Also planning the overall structure of the app in model-view-controller design pattern helps a lot as well.
 

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