Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today, we're gonna talk about coming up with app ideas.
Alright. So today, I want to answer a question that came in ages ago from
Lyn Scott, who said, "Hi Eric, I would like to know what you have to say about how
to find good ideas for apps. Your experience having hundreds of apps for
sure give you an advantage of knowing what app could be a chance potential,
market appeal, tech complexity, resources innovation, etc. How can we evaluate an
idea objectively?" Thanks. Now, I've talked about this before. I have, I mean, I put
out a lot of my own apps.Some of them do really really well. A lot
of them don't. So, I just want to put that out there. I am NOT an app ideas guy.
I don't generate ideas all the time. Oh, I don't want to say that because a
lot of times, when people call me they say, "Eric, I'm more of an ideas man and
I'm looking for a developer." And they'll just rattle off all their ideas and it's
just - it should be overwhelming at times, right? But this is
one thing I hear all the time. And because we have Overpass, I talk
to people with app ideas all the time. They'll call up and it's usually the
same kind of thing. It's like they'll say I've been looking around and nobody's
doing this or they they're come up with a completely unique idea or something
they think is really unique. Sometimes, I've been able to go in and
find that same app concept like within minutes on Google Play, or on
iTunes, and they're like, "Alright, I can't believe that someone must have
stolen my idea." Which is pretty funny and then sometimes, it's so -
then when I show that to them they go, "Oh, I can't do it now. So, whatever.
And if they know, it gives me about, I know - I hate people who - I
hate copycats and I talk about this all the time. My apps have been
copied like if I - and I'm talking more about visual imagery copying, the brand
and all that kind of stuff, of the concept. I mean, people come to copy
concepts all the time. You know, this is a - we value the app idea too much where we
think ask me completely 100% unique. Now, one of the things I do when I try to
think of new ideas or even want to talk with clients, it helps a lot with clients
when they come to the stuff. it's just knowing the
building blocks of everything. You have to work with, you know, you have -
yeah, you got all the stuff that web ha, but you also have the camera, you
got GPS, you've got all the different sensors, you've got high beacons, you've
got cloud services, you've got maps, you got all this kind of stuff. But
when you think of all those like, it's like knowing - it's like being in a
kitchen and knowing what everything you have, so, you know what you can cook, right?
So, a lot of times, you're coming up with ideas, you just have to know what those
are. And a lot of those, you know, I just - as app developers we know what those are.
Anyway, because that's what captivates our minds and everything, but when it
comes back to app ideas, I don't think it has to be totally unique. Just when you look
at all the things that we take for granted today, you know, Walmart,
McDonald's or iPad. I mean, you know all the big brands, all the big companies,
they're not necessarily the innovators of those things. I mean,
they're innovators, incremental innovators, but they weren't the
inventors of them. You know, Ray Kroc didn't invent the hamburger. When he's
done - when he started McDonald's or when the McDonald's brothers started McDonald's,
you know, Steve Jobs did not invent the mp3-player, Apple did invent the mp3
player. They didn't invent the computer. They didn't even invent the graphical
interface at all. I think that was a Xerox. So, you know, and
Windows, they didn't invent Windows. Walmart didn't invent retailing. You go
through and you read some of this stuff. They didn't invent them, but they
found a market and they capitalized on it. Cuz this is one of the things -
if you do something that's completely and totally new, you are not only
building something that hasn't been built before, but you have to build a
market that's not there before. I think as developers, a lot of times, we
think it's the idea that matters. As normal people, they think is the idea
that matters. I get the most calls after there's been a big news
story about, some big acquisition of something like Flappy Birds, made things
go crazy. The fart machine made things go crazy. That's what everybody thought. I
could come up with a better idea than that. But it's not just that. It's a lot
of the marketing and all that kind of stuff and everything. So, I just - I know
Lynn that's really not a really good answer but yeah. I think just because
I hear app ideas all the time, I don't put as much credibility into the idea
itself as I do with the persons capability of actually going out there
and promoting it. Of having the enthusiasm to make it work and you know,
because there could be apps out there or there could like - let's take a look at
social media. There could be social media platforms out there that are way better
than Facebook, way better than anything else, but nobody knows about them. So, they
don't take off. I hope that makes sense. I hope that was not too
negative today. Anyway, it's a beautiful day out here today., I hope you, guys, have
a great day! That's it! I'll talk to you tomorrow!