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5 tips for launching your first app

By In Technology

Almost everyone wants to have an app these days. But how do you go about finding the right designers, programmers, and marketers to take your app from an idea to millions of downloads in the app store?

  1. Validate your idea. Not all ideas are as great as you my think, and no one wants to call their baby ugly. Validation can be done quickly and cheaply by creating a simple “Pros and Cons” spreadsheet of your competitors, and running online surveys. But you got to do it.
  2. The planning stage is the last time your have total control – You can save a lot of money in development costs if you have drawn the entire app drawn out on paper. I’m not talking about just the main screens; I mean EVERYTHING. Each pop-up message, every menu option. It seems like overkill, but you’re really designing an architectural blueprint here. Designers and engineer have to follow these “wireframes” so they know what to build, and even so that they can give you accurate estimates. You wouldn’t give a build a blueprint for your house with a downstairs bathroom missing, and expect them to just fill in the blanks would you? If you don’t want to do this, expect to pay your developer team to do the wireframes for you, and never use a company who doesn’t offer this step.
  3. Find the right team for you. In any technical endeavor, it’s hard to pick a good team, especially if you are not very technical yourself. You can be techno-babbled to death, or won over by shinny demos. There are a few simple questions you can ask to make sure the team you’re picking is a good one:
    1. Where is the actual development done (in the US? Or is it outsourced to India?)
    2. How does the team manage their source code? You want to hear them say that they use a version control system like GIT (This is like the Track Changes function in Microsoft Word, but for software code).
    3. How is the team going to help you through the planning process? Are they going to build you a functional wireframe you can play with? How about a basic prototype? The more steps they have early on, the more likely you are to succeed.
    4. Ask to touch and play with real life examples of systems the team has worked with.
    5. Find our if they’ve worked on similar products or in similar industries. A little bit of previous experience goes a long way. Find a team who has already made their mistakes on someone else’s dime, so that you don’t have to pay for it.
  4. Understand the process – You don’t have to become a programmer yourself, but spend sometime educating yourself on the technologies and jargon you will encounter. Unlike building a house, you probably have never seen a software project being worked on as you drive down the road. So your frame of reference is very difficult. The process can be extremely opaque as a result. It’s your money; learn a little about how the sausage is made. I’d suggest learning at least a little bit about how databases work, and how source control works – these two topics alone will allow you to have much honest conversations with your developers.
  5. Don’t launch it and leave it – When your app is all done, getting it in the app store can be tricky. Start finding out what you need to do to get into the Apple store early on – this includes reading their terms of use, which isn’t as bad as you think. Make sure you have a business entity set up, and a registered Dunn and Bradstreet number if you’re going to charge money for you app, include ads, or in-app purchases. And finally, learn about how to promote your app in the stores and on the web. You’ve all heard about SEO, but there is such a thing as App Store Optimization as well.
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I help companies turn their technical ideas into reality.

CEO @Sourcetoad and @OnDeck

Founder of Thankscrate and Data and Sons

Author of Herding Cats and Coders

Fan of squash, whiskey, aggressive inline, and temperamental British sports cars.

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Don’t Fall Into the Trap: Why Startup Software Development Isn’t Like Corporate Development

In Startups, Technology

So, you’ve left the corporate world, and now it’s time to build your own startup. You’ve probably managed dev teams before, overseen product launches, maybe even helmed some fancy project management tools that made everything run like a well-oiled machine. You’ve done this before, right? Not exactly. When it’s your startup, everything changes—and, as I’ll explain, if you assume it’ll work the same way, you’re heading for a few surprises.

Startup founders often fall into a dangerous trap when starting a software project from scratch: thinking it’ll be just like building software inside an established company. Here’s why it’s not—and some advice on how to navigate the differences.

1. Switching from Product Manager to Teacher

In an established company, a software team already has two things that give them a serious edge: an existing market and a deep understanding of the business. They’re working within a proven model. Developers in that environment know what questions to ask, can fill in gaps intuitively, and likely understand why they’re building what they’re building.

At a startup, however, your devs are going to need a whole lot more context. They’re not working with familiar requirements—they’re working with your vision, which may be abstract at this stage. If your development team doesn’t understand why something matters, it’s a recipe for ambiguity and frustration on both sides.

Advice: Think of yourself less as a product manager and more as a teacher. Your job is to make sure they understand the core problems, not just the features. Teach them why each requirement matters, help them visualize the end-user, and create that shared language for decision-making. It might feel tedious, but it’s essential to avoid future misalignment and expensive rewrites.

2. Beware of Perfectionism — It’s the Budget Killer

In a large company, products with an existing user base often have to be polished. Features need to be rock-solid, invoices have to be perfect, and everything needs an audit trail. Startups, however, have a different goal: get an MVP in the hands of users fast. It’s a classic trap for first-time founders—focusing on “perfection” and “polish” before knowing if the business model even works.

Startup perfectionism is budget poison. It’s shocking how quickly adding “nice-to-have” features can chew through funding, especially if you’re paying a dev team to build things like automated invoicing or churn management before you’ve even proven people want what you’re selling.

Advice: Ruthlessly strip down your MVP. If a feature doesn’t help you validate your market, it goes on the “later” list. Keep the scope laser-focused on what helps you test your business assumptions. Let the non-essential features wait until you know you have customers who’ll use them.

3. Zen and the Art of the Startup Pivot

Building software for a startup means embracing one cold, hard truth: the business model will change. According to research, 93% of successful startups pivot at least once (and often more). Imagine being asked to go out and passionately sell something that you know might not look the same next year—or next month. It takes a level of zen acceptance that your original idea will likely morph, but that’s what keeps you flexible and ready to capture new opportunities.

For founders, that requires a mindset shift. You have to believe in your product, while also knowing you might be building the “wrong thing” in some way. The focus should be on preserving capital and brainpower for what’s next. The game is less about proving you’re right and more about staying adaptable.

Advice: Budget with pivots in mind. Set your burn rate assuming you’ll need to make big changes. Don’t let ego get in the way of listening to the market, and keep enough gas in the tank for at least one big strategic turn.

4. The Hard Work of Being Your Own “Internal Customer”

Here’s another big one. In a corporate environment, you have internal customers—departments or stakeholders with specific goals that align with the overall company mission. For a startup, the only customer you have is you. You don’t have a preexisting feedback loop from various departments, and you don’t have established success metrics. You have to create that from scratch.

Advice: Start by building an internal customer profile based on your target market, then use that to set clear goals and success criteria for your dev team. If you’re focused on, say, usability for early adopters, set KPIs around usability testing and build from there. By acting as your own “internal customer,” you’re setting a clear direction and saving your team from working in a vacuum.

5. Get Ready to Build AND Sell

Corporate software development often has the luxury of a separate, dedicated sales team to deliver the product to the right audience. As a startup founder, you’re both the builder and the seller. That means you’re not just iterating on software—you’re iterating on messaging, product-market fit, pricing, and maybe even distribution models.

Advice: Factor in time for sales-ready iteration in your dev cycle. As you build, keep track of how each release or update affects the user experience. Ask yourself if the changes make your pitch clearer or simpler and how they align with the current market’s needs. Ultimately, this approach will help you bridge the gap between building the product and ensuring it’s market-ready.

Conclusion

Building software as a startup founder requires a whole different toolkit than you may be used to. You’re part-teacher, part-salesperson, part-zen master, and always the chief budget officer. By recognizing the unique mindset shifts and traps of startup software development, you’re positioning yourself—and your team—for the best chance of success. Focus on creating clarity for your team, set ruthless priorities, embrace change, and never lose sight of the fact that the first version is just the beginning. In the startup world, adaptability isn’t just a skill—it’s the entire game.