Last weekend, the YouTuber Dave, one of my absolute favorite youtubers, his new app startup Zave.it and has thus already achieved over 100,000 registrations in the first 48 hours. An incredibly successful start and quite a few may have now come up with the idea of founding their own start-up company, but what does it actually take?
This is the harsh reality that we have to confront our customers with time and time again. Quite a few come to us and ask for a confidentiality agreement first before we even find out anything about the young company. Sure, you want to protect your idea here, but an idea alone is worth nothing. Computers existed even before Microsoft, Netflix wasn't the first streaming service, and Facebook was even just a brazen copy of another social network. So why have these companies become so successful compared to their competition?
The most important thing when you want to start a start-up is not the features of your app, the design or the name, but that there is a market for your product. Netflix initially started sending VHS tapes on a subscription basis, as broadband Internet was still a few years away. Even then, they knew exactly what their customers wanted: entertainment and that on demand.
In the beginning, Netflix developed a product in which you could always have 4 tapes at home. When you were done with your favorite movie, you simply sent it back and magically received the next movie from your wish list the next day. For the first time, Netflix made it possible to have enough movie selections for an entire evening at home without having to worry about it. Convenient analog binge watches.
What you can see particularly well in this example is that Netflix identified and successfully solved a problem even before the Internet. The Internet only further fuelled their business model!
Netflix has shown very successfully, albeit unintentionally, how important it is to evaluate a business model, even before setting up a company. In the startup scene, you often hear “That has to scale” when it comes to business models, but the fact is that most business models that are focused on scaling fail at the start. The problem with this is that scaling a product or service often loses a lot of added value.
Think about it for a minute - the ToGo coffee from the supermarket is a scaled product and is sold 100,000 times, but still you'd rather go to the barista who can only make one coffee at a time - but maybe the best you've ever drunk. Scalability often leads to sacrifices in quality, which is why it is important to find a sweet spot here - greetings go out to Starbucks. Expensive coffee with a “done for you” feeling, in one of the biggest franchises in the world.
Yes, I know the headlines are getting more and more lurid right now, but stick with me for a moment and I'll explain to you why you can avoid one of the biggest mistakes that most start-ups make. When customers come to us, they often want everything to remain completely secret and also to equip their app with thousands of features. The problem with this: An app is developed for a lot of money for 2 years and in the end, customers realize that no one is interested in it. Unfortunately, it has to be said that many developers only see the quick money and that the customer's success doesn't matter much to them - the development was paid for
But since we don't just develop apps, but build startups, we first test their idea together with the customer as a UX/UI designer. There are basically 2 types of customers. One has an idea and wants to build a company out of it, the other already has a company and wants to expand it further with their own app. It must be clearly stated that the second type of customer has a huge advantage here, as they already know their market well. He knows exactly who his customers are and what they need, which is why it is often much easier to build up another, profitable income stream through an app
Don't worry, even if you don't have your own company yet, that doesn't mean that your startup can't be successful. Many founders we work with built their first companies with us and are now multi-entrepreneurs. Once you get the hang of it, it's much easier to start another company than it was the first time.
When you look at why most startups failed, you often realize one thing: It wasn't the product. 90% of all startups set up at least one prototype, but then they didn't manage to find customers for it. This shows how important it is to know if you're finding customers for your app before you invest money.
Influencers like Dave can make excellent use of this fact, as they have very low costs for acquiring new customers. With a loyal community, you can drastically minimize the risk of not finding customers for your product. We are therefore particularly happy to serve customers who already have a large following, as the focus can be fully on the app — the marketing is virtually self-evident.
That is why it is often not the startups with innovative ideas that are the most successful, but those that know exactly how to reach their customers. That is the decisive difference between a successful startup and one that has failed.
To find out now whether there is a market for your app, it's important to get a first feel for your customers. To do this, we recommend setting up a so-called “research campaign” and showing users advertisements for your product on social media.
Yes, you heard it right, a marketing campaign for a product that doesn't even exist yet. What sounds like burning money at first glance actually saves a lot of money if your idea doesn't work after all
At this point, we primarily want to find out whether customers would buy your product that doesn't even exist yet, they don't even need to know at this point. We recommend a simple one to start with Set up a landing page, which briefly presents your app. Of course, customers won't be able to download the app there yet, but instead we offer the option of signing up to a waiting list to be notified as soon as the app is online.
With this strategy, we can kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, you know from the pre-registrations that it's worth developing your app, but on the other hand, you can also build up a user base before your app even exists.
Customers who already run a company or have followers on social media naturally have an advantage again here, as they have no costs for online marketing. A story or email campaign can be more effective here than any paid campaign.
Have you been able to evaluate your idea and found customers who have signed up to your waiting list? Very good, because that makes it clear that there is definitely a market for your idea. But before you have your app developed with all the features you've come up with, you should think about one thing in particular: What do my users really want? What did the users who signed up to your waiting list jump on particularly well and, above all, how complex is the respective feature?
It is not uncommon for us to see founders completely lose focus on their project, as new ideas are constantly being added over the development period. The result: extremely high development costs.
To prevent this from happening, we always recommend the “lean startup” approach. To do this, divide your app's features into two groups: Nice to Have and Core Feature. As the name suggests, nice to have features are exactly the ones you could do without. Core features, on the other hand, are essential and decisive for the business success of your app.
It is important to remember that Nice to Have Features in particular will also be available later via update can still be integrated into the app as a further expansion stage without any problems. Therefore, these are not lost, but are presented to the user later as a new function.
This phase is grossly underestimated by many startups and we often hear from developers that they UX/UI design “Do it right away.” It is roughly as if the construction worker on a construction site also “goes along with it” the construction plan for the house.
The UX/UI design phase alone determines whether your app will later be used by customers or not. Because not only are pretty graphics created here, but also a blueprint for your application. Anything that is not considered here cannot be improved later in development.
We therefore always compare the process of UX/UI design with the work of an architect. In the app design process, we work with you to think in detail about how your app should be structured later and how the whole thing can be used as intuitively as possible. Because only when customers feel comfortable using your app will they be willing to pay money for it.
Even during the UX/UI design phase, we always develop a so-called click dummy for our customers. This allows you to test during the design phase what it feels like for users to navigate through the app later and where which function is located. In addition, the developers will later know exactly how the app should work and be structured.
With the help of this click dummy, you can also obtain initial user feedback and adjust the structure of the app again if necessary. Because once the construction plan is ready and programming starts, there is no turning back here for now. Adapting the design during development often results in significant additional costs, which is why it is important to prevent “scope creep” at all costs.
The biggest advantage of good app design? You can have an app developed for a fixed price, which is an absolute game changer for startups. Because it is not uncommon for developers to simply calculate after hours and estimate the effort. This may not be a problem for large companies, but it is often a broken neck for startups.
Additional costs of 20% - 50% are not uncommon and may mean that your app may not be fully developed. So our final tip: invest more time in app design and ALWAYS have your app developed at a fixed price. This is how you can ensure that you actually have a finished product in your hands after development
Finally, a few motivating words, because even though the term startup often means a lot of sweat, tears and long nights, it was the best decision of their lives for many of our customers. You don't have to make a billion US dollars with your startup, we have many German start-ups in our portfolio that have simply become a solid, medium-sized company. So trust yourself and feel free to write to us if you have any questions!
Do you want to talk to our team about your project and just hear what we could do for you? Then simply book a free video call with us now!
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