Hey, this is the daily overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today i wanna talk again about app ideas!
Ok so today I wanna talk a bit more about app ideas.
I know I've made a video about this in the past saying your app idea is worthless, which
is something I still kind of believe.
I'm still not a big fan of the app ideas.
Actually, that's not true because we all have to start with an idea, so an app idea is a
great thing!
If we didn't have one to begin with, we wouldn't get started, but the app idea is usually followed
by execution.
And last week I was watching a Gary Vaynerchuck 'The Daily V', and I don't know if you guys
watch it, it's really interesting.
A bunch of people on the street were asking him questions and somebody was saying "I'm
trying to get my app started - my app business started - and he was saying "why don't you
just get it started?"
"Because I don't have the money!"
And he's saying "well you'll have to do it yourself", which I agree with, and then he
says "yeah, but I don't know how to code!" and the advice was "then you need to partner
up with somebody who does know how to code".
And this is something that when you're an app developer, you get asked to partner all
the time!
People come to you with their app ideas, mostly it's an NDA followed by the app ideas, and
now it get's to the point where I don't really sign the NDA's anymore, but occasionally people
will come up with an app idea.
Now, the big news in the last couple of weeks is snapchat going public, so it's worth billions,
I'm not sure what the latest figure is.
So when something like that happens in mainstream news, then if you do client work then you
get a lot more client work, and if you're an app developer a lot of people wanna partner
up with you.
And it's those ones that look really simple that everyone kind of flocks into the market.
So flappy birds was a very simple game, and there were many like it and there were many
clones afterwards.
When people saw flappy birds, the first thing they think is - that's making all this money,
and I could do that!
And I remember thinking the same thing with Fart Machine.
Thinking "what if you did Fart Machine but with vomit or something?" and I was just sort
of thinking that, and then you start getting into the market and you realise that everybody
is thinking the same thing.
But it's funny because when you hear people's app ideas, I mentioned a few weeks ago that
I'd go to the opticians and he said "what do you do?" and I said "I'm an app developer,
and he goes "oh, you and I should get together, I've got a lot of ideas" and this happens
so many times when people say "hey, you know what?
I got all these ideas, I don't know what it is, they just come to me!"
And it's kinda funny.
You'll get several situations which I've been in where somebody will say they want to partner
up with you, my answer is usually no.
I mean, it's always no.
there's only been one time when I partnered up with somebody and that's because they had
most of the work already done and it still took a lot of time - a lot more time than
it should have - and we made no money off of it!
So it didn't work out well.
But there's this expectation that the idea itself is worth something.
Like I can remember - to give you an idea - I'll meet with somebody.
They'll say "hey, can we meet, I wanna discuss this idea that I have or whatever" and you
think yeah I'll go to this meeting, even though maybe I shouldn't, and we'd meet in like a
coffee bar or whatever.
And then they'll sit down and maybe they'll make you sign an NDA - I've signed so many
NDA's, I'm not sure what I'm allowed to talk about anymore.
One time I signed an NDA and I met with a guy with this project, and I just didn't have
time to do it.
It was a bigger project than I would have had time for so I declined it, and then 6
months later I met with some new prospects and they had basically the same idea and I
had to say no , it's too similar to another one I heard so I didn't take it.
Just because I'm not sure - I didn't wanna get stuck in any of the legal, because I'm
happy to sign an NDA and all that kind of stuff.
So you go to a coffee bar and you sit down with somebody and they'll make you sign the
NDA and they go "Alright, ready?
So basically, I'll give you my idea.
You build it and we'll split it 50 / 50.
Both of us will get rich and Eric, I'm telling you this idea is huge!"
And you think "ah, man!
I came all this way!"
He didn't say anything about the 50 / 50 on the phone so you say "alright ok, what is
it?"
And then they'll get in really close and they'll look around, make sure nobody...if somebody's
walking past they'll watch...
"Alright, ready?
Uber for babysitters" Huh!
Just came to me!
Here's another one - Flappy birds with kittens!
Just came to me!
And you sit there and you think "ah, man!"
And this happens a lot!
One of these days I'm gonna make a generator online, and those ones might exist, they might
do, I'm not taking anyone's idea, and if you do, don't tell me I stole your idea because
I thought long and hard about these!
These are two that I've never heard before, but uber usually figures into a lot, flappy
birds figures into a lot, and I guess snapchat will figure into it a lot going forward.
But like I've said before, the idea itself is worthless, it's the execution that matters.
And when somebody comes to you as an app developer, you might get approached as well and they'll
say "hey, I want to share with you 50 / 50 on this idea" and the fact of the matter is,
once you get to that point where you're actually building it, it's like that's the most work,
that's the biggest chunk of work, and doing that marketing bit is really really hard!
So the people that when I have partnered with somebody, it's almost like we take all this
big amount of work and then you do all this work, and because you're doing it for free,
it's really hard because if they wanna be a perfectionist, you find yourself working
these long, hard hours for no pay.
And then when it goes live, you find out that that person was in no position to market it.
They had no idea of the scale of marketing that they had to do.
And you could do that because a lot of the times when people approach you, you have to
look at how many twitter followers do they have?
How many contacts do they have?
And twitters not that important, but when you think about somebody saying that they're
gonna be able to market something for you, you have to think how are they marketing themselves?
So anyway, it's an interesting field.
When snapchat goes public, I expect to get more calls through!
And I'm happy to talk to anybody, I mean everybody has to start with an app idea.
So I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, a lot of times they are derivatives of other
things, like a mash up.
So you say uber and babysitters, or uber and chefs, or something like that.
You hear that a lot and there's nothing wrong with it, it's the execution that's important
and the marketing that's extremely important.
At least that's my opinion.
Anyway, that's it for today, I'll talk to you guys tomorrow!