My road to freedom

[Hagi]

Hi all,

Last month I introduced myself here in the community (INTRO - Had my cheese, saved my cheese, time to become the scientist)
It was time to make some changes and I was (and am) fully committed to make this happen. I decided to put my journey and thoughts in writing, and I hope that you can help me on my road to freedom.

First of all, I always considered myself as someone who is able to improve what is there, but not someone who is able to make something from scratch. I was always struggling to come up with ideas and thought that I lacked creativity. Wow, was I wrong. With the help of the books I was able to get into the right mindset and I'm experiencing on a daily bases how easy it is to come up with ideas. Sure, not all of them are great, let alone able to generate a profit, but some of them are. So over the last month, a thought just came up randomly while climbing up the stairs in my own home. A thought of a solution to a problem for many people, including myself. That was the beginning of my new to form business.
After I told my girlfriend (who was exited), a bunch of questions came to me.
- Is this really a problem for people?
- There are probably solutions for this problem, aren’t there?
- How is this solution able to get me to my escape number?

Then obviously I did some research. I especially gathered some soft proof about whether this was indeed something people needed. I read articles about it and asked a bunch of people randomly what their experiences where on this topic. I know the only real proof is money, but based on my research I see a lot of potential to create value for people.

The next step was that I looked all over the internet to see if there was competition. Turns out there isn’t any real direct competition. The few that are there are laughable at best. This also makes my a bit concerned, because why haven’t people filled this need yet…

We decided to facilitate our solution through the means of an mobile app. An app that people can use and which will help them make their lives a little bit easier. It is the only way we can see this working. Also, this needs to be a free app for people. With additional content it can perhaps evolve to a freemium business model, and I also have some ideas for in-app purchases, but this will not be implemented in the beginning. First the app needs to grow and mature.

So this is where I stand after the first month. I have two questions hopefully someone can help me with.

1. If the app is completed and is generating traffic, the primary sources of income will probably be in-app advertisement. I’m struggling with the potential earnings and how to calculate them so I know if this idea can in the best case be responsible to reach my escape number. I did analyze the TAM and TUM. TAM after development will be approximately 1,48 million people. TUM is mainly caused by decision to develop the app in Dutch. By adding English as a language and a couple of necessary adjustments, the TUM is at least 30+ million people. In this scale of TAM and TUM, what is the monthly earnings potential or how can I calculate this?

2. I have a whole lot of skills to develop, most importantly how to make an mobile app. My idea is to start with developing it for android first. Are there threads here (of suggestions) the help me in the right direction of where to get started?

I thank you all for your help and keep you posted on my progress!

 

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[Hagi]

Hi again,

It is approximately a month since my last post, so it is about time to give an update.

First of all I got an answer to my two questions:

• I used google adsense to give an indication about the earnings potential. Furthermore, I did some assumptions about my adoption percentage, in-app purchases, and premium versions of the app. I did estimations for a domestic version, and a version including the United States.
• In the domestic version (earnings per year):
• Worst case: € 11.187,96
• Normal case: € 643.723,68
• Best case: € 3.722.618,40

The international version (earnings per year):

• Worst case: € 215.551,80
• Normal case: € 5.486.389,44
• Best case: € 25.977.557,76

Of course, even in the worst case scenario we expect to have some adoption. Point is, this analysis indicates that there is more than enough potential for us to continue going forward with this business.

• I asked this question separately in de community and got some great answers. Java or Kotlin for native android app? | The Fastlane Entrepreneur Forum (thefastlaneforum.com)
• Thanks again for the valuable suggestions. In the end, I decided to go the flutter/dart way.

So one month has passed, and in the meantime I did a number of things:

• I bought a book teaching Flutter. This book starts with the basics from installing all the right programs, basic skills in dart, widgets in flutter and eventually building a complete test app. I’ve been experimenting with flutter for two weeks now.
• I wrote all the stories for the first version of the app. So what does a user expect from a certain part of the app, which chapters does that include, and which pages need to be build in android studios. All the stories combined we need to translate about 30 pages of stories into one app.
• We decided on colors based on a book we read on the topic.

The writing of all the stories gave us a lot of direction on what the app eventually needs to be. We made a lot of decisions and I now know exactly what I need to build.

In the next month, my goal is to finish the flutter book and have a decent understanding about how to build the app. I also want the dashboard/homepage to be done, and my girlfriend is going to make a deep dive into which marketing strategies we are going to aim for. I already saw some valuable content on the forum about this so that will give us a good start.

One thing that I am a bit anxious about is that I find it very difficult to understand the logic behind the dart language. I never programmed in my life so I know this is going to be a huge challenge for me. I am now on the boarder of the desert of isolation. I foresee a long and difficult road ahead, but I packed a lot of motivation to help me through the desert. Hopefully they have internet there so can keep posting my progress once in a while .