Welcome to Raw Startup today I'm going to show you what to do if you have an
idea for an app and take it from the idea to building an actual app. Every
week I get the messages from people that have ideas for apps and I get a lot of
them I get some good ones I get some mediocre once I get some really really
bad ones I try and help people move on and sort of get to from the idea to
actually building an app and this video is about what to do if you have an idea
and take it to an actual app just to be clear this is not a video about
programming this is a video about taking the idea from your head on to something
on a piece of paper to really communicate what the idea is here's what
you're gonna get from this video first of all we're gonna do a sanity check
just to check if this is an idea worth pursuing
secondly I'm gonna show you some tools on how to take the idea onto a piece of
paper so you actually know what you're gonna build and lastly I'm gonna tell
you what the next steps are to actually build an app first of all ideas are just
ideas they don't have any real value till you actually build something always
remember that investors don't invest in ideas you have to build something before
it has any value ask yourself the following three questions number one is
there a problem that needs to be solved number two can actually build an app
that solves the problem and number three is the problem frequent enough far
enough people you need a pretty clear YES on all three of these especially if
you've never built a piece of software or an app before this is for all
startups so you have to be brutally honest with yourself here really be
devil's advocate because we're doing now we're avoiding a major failure so try
and be honest really don't try and argue for this app just be devil's advocate
and find out is this really something that makes sense let's try this for Vivino
number one yes there is definitely a need for this a lot of people have this
problem so yeah there's definitely need for it number two on Vivino was a little
bit of a maybe we actually weren't sure we could build this and that
a big gamble for us are we able to build the data we're able to build the reviews
and ratings and so on now eight years later we have a hundred million ratings
so we definitely got it but that was a gamble for us
number three is it the problem frequent enough for enough people definitely
people are in the supermarket looking for wine and can't really figure out
what to buy everybody has this problem they have frequently maybe every day or
every week or whatever step to do a mock-up of the app we're still at basic
computer skills here so anyone who knows how to use word or generally a computer
could actually do this I use a tool called Balsamiq there are a lot of
different mock-up tools out there I like this tool I've used it for many years
but I'm sure there are other good tools out there it's a free tool so you can
just download it and and try it out with Balsamiq you can easily drag and drop
button screens whatever you want to do so you can just start building and the
cool thing about Balsamiq is that it it shows what you want to build it doesn't
have any sort of design so you don't make those decisions yet just shows a
mock-up of what you want to build so generally you know start by building one
screen find out what the most important screen of the app is build that and take
it from there you can't build multiple screen if you
really want to show more of the app or how it's gonna work and so on you can
even link things together so you can do clickable buttons and so on not needed
but that's something you could do now let me introduce you to a concept that I
think is very very important in building any sort of software it's called Minimum
Viable Product it means that whatever you build you build the smallest
possible thing every single time so as the word says minimal but still viable
so I recommend anyone who build software always to live by that philosophy try
and build the smallest possible thing and then take it from there
this should really be the philosophy when you design software or an app
doesn't matter Minimum Viable Product only put features in there that you
really need no nice to have features only need to have features so go ahead
and start building it is your idea you decide where the buttons are what
buttons are in there just go ahead always remember minimum viable product
only the features you really really need small as possible in the first version
very very important step 3 next steps how to build an actual app this can go
in different directions but if you're a non-technical person you need to find a
co-founder that's clearly my recommendation find a technical
co-founder somebody who understands the tech part of building an app he or she
doesn't have to be a programmer that helps but someone who understands what
it takes to build a product a software product there are other ways to do this
you could pay somebody to build your app I generally don't recommend that it's
really really difficult to have a partner to build your idea that you
actually pay to do so they just have a different interest and I've rarely seen
this work honestly so that is not something I recommend another way to go
is to use an outsourcing website and find a freelancer that can build build
there for you someone in a you know in a faraway land that can build it for a low
cost this is also difficult but it can be done we've we've done it before it
takes you know takes a bit of management and it takes a lot of discipline to get
it right but it can't be done this video has come to an end and if you've
succeeded and really following these three steps and built mock-ups of your
app please let us know we definitely want to follow up with another video and
tell you what next steps are after this so send us a comment in the on YouTube
or a message somewhere else and we will we will followup with another video so
good luck on building this has been Raw Startup thank you very much for watching