Discovery/research is the beginning of a
journey towards achieving success in any tech startup. It is the stage where
maybe you only have a rough concept or idea in your head. One of the biggest
risks of building a product is to build the wrong thing. You’ll pour months
(even years) into building it, only to realize that you just can’t make it a
success. Recognizing the pain-point you and others have encountered is the
beginning of the process. Now, that pain-point needs to turn into a problem
statement that verifies that others experience the same pain. Startups are
never successful overnight. It's important to understand that running one is a process
that requires patience, perseverance, and a realistic evaluation of its
evolutionary stage. You might have a top notch idea for an app. It might also
be well designed and developed. But what really makes a product stand out in a
crowded marketplace? How can your company set your app apart in a way that
entices millions of users to download and actively use it? As a tech startup,
your sole purpose is to bring technology based products or services to market.
You have an idea that would create novel technology based products or services
or exploit existing technology products or services in new and interesting
ways. For example, Uber merged an existing service (ride-hailing) with a new
technology (their online app), to create the brand-new experience of on-demand
ride-hailing.
Uber was founded just six years ago, but it’s already one of the
fastest growing companies in the world.Other examples of successful start-ups include Tinder, WhatsApp and
Waze. These startup companies applied certain basic requirements early into
their business. They have become large enterprises as they worked with
developers who provided them quality tech consulting services and understood
their tech start up space as well. Their
business mobile apps were novel solutions to different real-world problems such
as finding dates, unpredictable and dangerous public transportation and traffic.
Tinder started locally having carried out efficient idea validation. Tinder
made women priority. Uber’s strength — and its sky-high valuation — comes from
the company’s ability to gain an understanding of the potential market and
market size. They understood the elements of Ideation which revolved round
their potential customers’ interest in their concept and their thoughts on the
potential solution. They created a
minimum viable product which gave them as an exact answer. Uber developed a
minimum viable product (MVP). It initially started with an extremely simplified
mobile interface, only used by the founders and friends. To gain access, you
had to email one of the founders. As the list of users grew, Uber launched
their beta version to a small group of people, which only connected drivers and
iPhone owners, and enabled credit card payments. Tinder threw exclusive parties
at USC. To enter, you had to install Tinder on your phone. You can just imagine
the amount of word-of-mouth they got out of that. They were able to understand
the number of users which were really interested in their apps and whether
these users were ready to pay for it. The early users’ left feedbacks and these
were used to shape and direct further development of their tech startups
raising more capital and further expanding their business. They scaled properly
and succeeded! By building an MVP, they understood their core functionality
better and underlined the most important tasks and features of their tech
startup.
It takes more than a cool idea to make it in today’s startup world.
For every success story, there are dozens of failed attempts. But there are
ways to avoid becoming another statistic. Often start-ups fail simply because
they don't launch lean enough. It's easy to get caught up in building all the
cool features you imagine your product should have. But ultimately, you're
playing a guessing game. Gone are the days when all you needed to launch a
successful startup was an outstanding idea. If you had a great idea, good luck
would follow in the form of angel investors and business funds willing to take
a chance on you. Now, in this innovation-hungry era, just a good idea is simply
not enough. Most startups rely on getting the word out, attracting an audience,
creating a connection and customer retention. But that is not the trend in this
era. You need execution and custom business mobile apps Development make a tremendous
difference to that end. They not only improve organizational efficiency, but these
Andriod apps or iPhone apps actually make it that much easier for startups to
keep track of their company vision and execute it, successfully. The cost of
developing apps like Uber is dependent on a number of factors. However, before
you decide if you will be creating iPhone apps or Android apps, you need to
carry out extensive market research. The solution which you would turn into a
software should be one that addresses a “must-have-fixed” problem for a
big-enough market. Just like Uber and
Tinder did, you have to confirm the true existence of these consumer problems
and validate their potential worth. Validate your business idea with real, paying
customers before going out and investing time or money into building skills for
your project. This is an important factor to consider before diving into your
venture. You don't want to invest time and money into a business that fails.
Once you have identified your target customer and generally defined their needs
through idea validation, you need to define your core offering. This means
finding out how your products, services and roles will meet one or more of your
customers’ needs either by tapping your unique background, expertise and passions.
Establish your true strengths and build your business around these passions or
expertise. Create a prototype (an MVP) of what your expertise or passion can
offer as solution. This will save you money during the actual development by
making tweaks to UX while it’s relatively cheap to do so, and you can begin to
validate your product by sharing your prototype to gather feedback. Your
product may be a great solution, but if it’s difficult to understand what it
does and how to use it, you cannot convince customers it is worth buying. Bad
UX can put users off in a very short period of time, and even if the software
or product is phenomenal in other ways, the first impression will last. UX is
the design behind the visual and when it is done well, using any type of
software is effortless, but when done badly, it is glaringly obvious. A good
UX-solution provides your product with credibility. Depending on the UX you
use, your potential customers will define for themselves how positive their
first experience is. It is UI/UX, not a product’s value or technology that
shapes a customer’s first impression. UI forms the basis for a prolonged
interaction with a user of a product.
To succeed in the market today, you need specialized technical
expertise. You might have the right idea but without the right technology in
place, you may struggle to translate your vision into action. Understanding the
role of mobile in your business is vital, to ensure that your strategy delivers
on key objectives. As mobile partners, Appsquare has been involved with many startups
right from the early discovery stages as well as continuing to help them with
strategy, planning and nurturing their businesses. Security, regulatory, and
compliance regulations are now a top concern for startups in the face of data
breaches. We understand this landscape for startups and we will give you the
experience advantage and help you navigate these challenges with ease and
assurance. Tech consulting services, we provide, will help you understand how
mobile apps affect productivity as well as research every possible avenue for
to expand your business. At Appsquare, we help tech start-ups determine the
role of mobile apps. We offer tech consulting services from which we can help
you in not only making the right technology choices that fit best with your
product but also assist you in identifying ways to make your product development
more robust and feature rich. We will work through your idea to develop
solutions to any challenges you face. MVPs are by far less expensive than
developing the actual product. Our team at Appsquare is dedicated to ensure that
your initial costs are kept low. This will be achieved with the help of MVP
versions of your idea. MVP at very low cost with manual technologies, and only
the key features offered. With our services, you would not need to rely on word
of mouth at the end of your product development. To increase awareness for your
app, we will go the extra mile and connect you with the right marketing and PR
companies for aggressive marketing. This will ultimately lead to the purchase
and increased awareness of your product. Having been a part of the technology
circuit, we will help your startup identify new need gaps and new market
opportunities making your product viable for a new market in expansion of your
services.
Many startups fail because of a lack of
market demand. Getting the foundation right is very essential to future
success. That’s because the point of your startup is NOT to make money. It’s
NOT to be famous. It’s to solve a meaningful problem for other people. Once you
understand the channels that are successful for initial customer acquisition
and retention, ramp up your marketing strategy in the areas that are effective.
You may have a billion-dollar business, but remember to start with a focused
plan and an open mind about what you're about to learn. A successful startup
requires MVP. Would-be businesses build MVPs in order to launch a product with
minimal investment, hedge against losses, and validate their startup ideas.
Prosperous companies like WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Tinder and Uber have started as
MVPs. These examples prove that you should first care about your customers and
make sure they like your product. Get in touch and tell us about your great
business idea! Who knows...you may end up changing the world.
