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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Is Anyone Working on Agentic Authentication?

Everyone is building AI-powered tools, even people who shouldn’t be. Agents seem to be the next obvious (and big?) step. But these little bots need a secure way to act on behalf of users without causing chaos.

Richard Dulude at Underscore VC wrote about the lack of identity standards for AI agents in this LinkedIn article. I don’t know Richard or Underscore VC (sorry). But, he’s right, traditional authentication assumes either a human or a machine with static credentials, and that doesn’t work for AI agents that need to make decisions and take actions. Companies want accountability (and probably liability), and users need control of what their potentially psychedelic robot is doing on their behalf. This balance doesn’t exist yet.

This is probably for another blog post, but right now, everyone, including the bots, are using human interfaces as a stopgap. OpenAI’s Operator is a great example, agents pretending to be humans to interact with systems that weren’t built for them. That’s fine for now, but eventually, the human interfaces will be an afterthought. Like how “mobile-first” design took over, we’ll be doing “agent-first” design with human-accessible backups. Having a dedicated standard for agentic authentication might be a good first step in that machine-to-machine way of thinking and designing systems.

Agentic Proxy Credentials (APC): A Solution (A Term I Totally Made Up)

I made this up. It’s probably a bad term, but naming things is fun. This doesn’t exist… if you are a large battery and power supply company, don’t sue me. I’m spitballing here.

One possible fix is the “sucked out of my thumb” Agentic Proxy Credentials (APC). This would let users grant their AI agents secure, limited permissions to interact with systems while making sure the right level of oversight are in place. There are things that I wanted to do this very week, but I don’t trust my bots with my actual usernames and passwords:

Stop me talking to Airline Idiot Bots

Talking to airline chatbots is painful. Right now, they can only regurgitate FAQ answers. With an APC, my AI assistant could log into my airline account, check flights based on my loyalty status, and rebook me without you having to touch anything. This would make AI actually useful instead of just a slightly smarter help page.

Paying for small things without having to deal with entering my ACH data AGAIN

I don’t want to give an AI full access to my bank account. But I wouldn’t mind letting it handle small transactions in a controlled way. With APCs, I could grant my assistant time-limited access to approve payments or move money within strict limits. The AI does the work, I stay in control, and my bank account doesn’t mysteriously empty overnight… unless I’m Ambien shopping again.

AI Dungeon Master’s Assistant

D&D is great, but session prep is a time sink. I want an AI that logs into my D&D Beyond account, manages stat blocks, generates lore-friendly content, and even takes session notes. The AI handles the boring admin work, and you get to focus on making your players cry (or cheer, if you’re nice). Yes, serious stuff here.

How It Could Work

There are a few ways to make this happen, I think. I’m no longer allowed to do actual engineering at my own companies I founded, so this blog is my outlet. Everyone needs a hobby.

Is Someone Already Building This?

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Okta, OAuth, or OpenAI are already working on this and I’m just ranting for no reason. But if they aren’t, they should be. The pieces are all there, someone just has to put them together.

I need this, but I can’t find it. If anyone is working on it, let me know. I’m too busy trying to solve employee gifting at scale at Thankscrate, implementing AI into every existing business at Sourcetoad, and making sure passengers can watch TV and book dinner reservations in the middle of nowhere at OnDeck.