How I searched for a niche for a startup and did a mobile application designer
At the age of 14, I started off like everyone else - I started my own web design studio . By the way, he created it for a couple with a friend whom he met on the train to the children's camp. The studio brought a small (but significant for the student) income, and after it was sold for a good amount.
A student with money and no business experience is a disaster. Therefore, on the next project, I collected almost all the errors of the possible . The MJ.ru business idea was simple: it is the equivalent of a live journal, where the best authors received fees. Instead of a team of professional programmers, I rented a huge office and hired a beautiful secretary. About the business model began to think already when the money began to run out. So I got the first valuable experience.
Below - a few more iterations and a detailed story about the choice of a niche for a startup.
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For some time I just worked in the field of design, and then again decided to do my project. It was just then that the start-up “gold rush” of startups began, and I decided to work a little higher level, that is, to help other teams get investment. It was possible to interest Igor Ustinov (the founder of the company "Buka"). It turned out quite successfully, by the way.
The next step was to become a really large project, so I approached the choice of model and position in the market for a very long time. The initial data was as follows: at the time the project was launched in 2011, 55 billion application downloads were made on almost half a billion smartphones with iOS and Android on board. At the same time, few of the business representatives had mobile apps.
So that you more accurately understand the situation - about the same explosion occurred at a time when the Internet in our country was gaining popularity. Do you remember these slogans “a company without a website simply does not exist”, “it is embarrassing to work without a website” and so on? It is clear, then the large studios making exclusive and small ones won. Many who "burned" on the fact that a lot of money was put into the sites, but there was no result as such.
Looking ahead, I’ll say that mobile apps really give a good result. For example, one catering network (our partner) increased the number of orders approximately 7 times after the launch of its application. So, seeing such examples around, almost all entrepreneurs want to try to launch something of their own. The problem is that the market is overheated, and the cost of development is quite high for the experiment.
Actually, by that time we had already made several applications for clients, but the process was, to put it mildly, far from optimal. In fact, the tasks were similar, and we started to make our own framework analogue, which allows us to solve them extremely quickly. We pretty much invested in IT, in particular, we developed our translators from Java to C.
A little later, I looked at the developments and decided to make a designer of typical applications. Well, you know, as a site builder, only instead of a site is an application. It is designed for small and medium business. At the core - ready-made blocks like order forms and so on. The interface was supposed to be very simple, at the Lego level, took blocks and assembled an application for itself.
Almost anyone. Someone makes application templates for iOS, someone has already assembled designers, plus there are just small studios that can put the process on stream in the future, as it once happened with business cards sites. Therefore, the main feature of the new project should be the ability to include modules for a specific business (for example, a restaurant or a taxi), plus synergy between the business segment and the segment of ordinary users. Now I will tell you how and what we did on the basis of this.
Here are examples of modules that a user can choose:
Next, the user selects the design and design of the application. As in other cases, there are several pre-prepared templates to choose from, but they can be changed to fit the goals and objectives of the application as best as possible.
The next stage is the detailed configuration and customization of the necessary blocks that the application will contain. Contacts, map, catalog of goods - everything you need.
At the request of the user, he may be provided with the file of the assembled application for self-publishing, but through us it is much more convenient to do it. After assembly, the publication for Google takes about an hour, for Apple - about two weeks (this is the standard approval period).
Before publication, the application can be viewed in the Apps Viewer utility, which we developed specifically for viewing and editing unpublished applications.
The monetization in this case is simple - the monthly payment for the application, the base rate (sufficient for typical tasks) is 600 rubles per month.
If it is a question of creating an application using an existing designer, no knowledge from the user is required. No need to be a designer or programmer. If you want to modify the blocks - the developer must know Java (without this in any way), to have some kind of development experience for the necessary mobile platforms. Also, knowledge of IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) is also worth it.
This is one of the most interesting parts. Because we have our own translator, which allows you to receive applications at once for all markets.
So far, the code is being broadcast only on Objective C, almost completed by C #, in the plans of JavaScript. Performance remains at the level of the native application, that is, code translation affects the performance slightly. If we compare it with Java itself, then performance is even better in some cases, but we should not forget about the features of the language (for example, the Garbage Collector), because of which applications may be slightly inferior to the native.
The time of writing a custom store on our technology SDK and translator is roughly comparable to the time of writing a store on the native toolkit, only the result is a version for both mobile operating systems (now), and later will be under all three leaders (MS Marketplace in the near future).
If you use only the designer My-Apps, then it is really 5 minutes for any business with the content that you want. You can try building an application here .
Now the service is already used by online stores, taxi services, pizzerias, restaurants and cafes. Quick applications turned out to be a boon for conferences and events. Plus, of course, there are other business representatives.
We managed to find investors very quickly (they were a business incubator and later a large venture capital fund) - during the work on the previous project I already learned how the market works and who needs such startups. When signing and evaluating, I was advised to divide the project into two parts - corporate, where there will be an opportunity for good customization as a client by our forces - and for individuals, where the constructor will be simple.
Over the year, the team has grown from 4 to 20 people, mostly recruiting developers. We are not tied to the place at all, so a little later we plan to move our office to Florence and expand a little more.
For a start, we launched with 20 partners using applications built on our constructor. Now we have been working for a wide audience for some time: the theory of necessity works. As I now estimate, the niche was found very accurately.
The main thing - a beautiful secretary
A student with money and no business experience is a disaster. Therefore, on the next project, I collected almost all the errors of the possible . The MJ.ru business idea was simple: it is the equivalent of a live journal, where the best authors received fees. Instead of a team of professional programmers, I rented a huge office and hired a beautiful secretary. About the business model began to think already when the money began to run out. So I got the first valuable experience.
Below - a few more iterations and a detailed story about the choice of a niche for a startup.
')
Third approach
For some time I just worked in the field of design, and then again decided to do my project. It was just then that the start-up “gold rush” of startups began, and I decided to work a little higher level, that is, to help other teams get investment. It was possible to interest Igor Ustinov (the founder of the company "Buka"). It turned out quite successfully, by the way.
Then
The next step was to become a really large project, so I approached the choice of model and position in the market for a very long time. The initial data was as follows: at the time the project was launched in 2011, 55 billion application downloads were made on almost half a billion smartphones with iOS and Android on board. At the same time, few of the business representatives had mobile apps.
So that you more accurately understand the situation - about the same explosion occurred at a time when the Internet in our country was gaining popularity. Do you remember these slogans “a company without a website simply does not exist”, “it is embarrassing to work without a website” and so on? It is clear, then the large studios making exclusive and small ones won. Many who "burned" on the fact that a lot of money was put into the sites, but there was no result as such.
Looking ahead, I’ll say that mobile apps really give a good result. For example, one catering network (our partner) increased the number of orders approximately 7 times after the launch of its application. So, seeing such examples around, almost all entrepreneurs want to try to launch something of their own. The problem is that the market is overheated, and the cost of development is quite high for the experiment.
Actually, by that time we had already made several applications for clients, but the process was, to put it mildly, far from optimal. In fact, the tasks were similar, and we started to make our own framework analogue, which allows us to solve them extremely quickly. We pretty much invested in IT, in particular, we developed our translators from Java to C.
A little later, I looked at the developments and decided to make a designer of typical applications. Well, you know, as a site builder, only instead of a site is an application. It is designed for small and medium business. At the core - ready-made blocks like order forms and so on. The interface was supposed to be very simple, at the Lego level, took blocks and assembled an application for itself.
Competitors
Almost anyone. Someone makes application templates for iOS, someone has already assembled designers, plus there are just small studios that can put the process on stream in the future, as it once happened with business cards sites. Therefore, the main feature of the new project should be the ability to include modules for a specific business (for example, a restaurant or a taxi), plus synergy between the business segment and the segment of ordinary users. Now I will tell you how and what we did on the basis of this.
How does the project My-Apps
Here are examples of modules that a user can choose:
Next, the user selects the design and design of the application. As in other cases, there are several pre-prepared templates to choose from, but they can be changed to fit the goals and objectives of the application as best as possible.
The next stage is the detailed configuration and customization of the necessary blocks that the application will contain. Contacts, map, catalog of goods - everything you need.
At the request of the user, he may be provided with the file of the assembled application for self-publishing, but through us it is much more convenient to do it. After assembly, the publication for Google takes about an hour, for Apple - about two weeks (this is the standard approval period).
Before publication, the application can be viewed in the Apps Viewer utility, which we developed specifically for viewing and editing unpublished applications.
The monetization in this case is simple - the monthly payment for the application, the base rate (sufficient for typical tasks) is 600 rubles per month.
If it is a question of creating an application using an existing designer, no knowledge from the user is required. No need to be a designer or programmer. If you want to modify the blocks - the developer must know Java (without this in any way), to have some kind of development experience for the necessary mobile platforms. Also, knowledge of IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) is also worth it.
Why java?
This is one of the most interesting parts. Because we have our own translator, which allows you to receive applications at once for all markets.
So far, the code is being broadcast only on Objective C, almost completed by C #, in the plans of JavaScript. Performance remains at the level of the native application, that is, code translation affects the performance slightly. If we compare it with Java itself, then performance is even better in some cases, but we should not forget about the features of the language (for example, the Garbage Collector), because of which applications may be slightly inferior to the native.
How long does the development take?
The time of writing a custom store on our technology SDK and translator is roughly comparable to the time of writing a store on the native toolkit, only the result is a version for both mobile operating systems (now), and later will be under all three leaders (MS Marketplace in the near future).
If you use only the designer My-Apps, then it is really 5 minutes for any business with the content that you want. You can try building an application here .
Now the service is already used by online stores, taxi services, pizzerias, restaurants and cafes. Quick applications turned out to be a boon for conferences and events. Plus, of course, there are other business representatives.
Result
We managed to find investors very quickly (they were a business incubator and later a large venture capital fund) - during the work on the previous project I already learned how the market works and who needs such startups. When signing and evaluating, I was advised to divide the project into two parts - corporate, where there will be an opportunity for good customization as a client by our forces - and for individuals, where the constructor will be simple.
Over the year, the team has grown from 4 to 20 people, mostly recruiting developers. We are not tied to the place at all, so a little later we plan to move our office to Florence and expand a little more.
For a start, we launched with 20 partners using applications built on our constructor. Now we have been working for a wide audience for some time: the theory of necessity works. As I now estimate, the niche was found very accurately.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/190980/
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