At what point should funding be sought? And what are the options?

Dave!

Hey,

Apologies if this is a newbie question that has been asked many times before. I'll be digging through the forum history to see if there is anything to help, but thought I'd start a thread about my own specific circumstances anyway.

So the situation is that myself and my brother have an idea for an app, which would be targetted at a specific industry, domestically initially (but no reason why it couldn't expand).

I'm a software developer (albeit a relatively junior one), he is an IT Manager. So we both have good tech knowledge and abilities.

At the moment I'm working on a proof of concept/MVP, which is an API and a web application to talk to it. I don't have any mobile app skills, which is inconvenient! However I'm not far off having a product that could be released and would be useful (if a bit rough).

Anyway, what I'm wondering basically is, when can I quit my job? Seriously though, I'm wondering, once the MVP is done, what would be the next step?

• Should we release it and start trying to acquire customers, while continuing to work on it in the evenings?
• Should we try to secure some sort of funding so that we can focus on it full-time?

I think what I'd ideally like to do is get a grant which would cover my salary for at least 6 months, and work full-time on completing this. I think there's a lot of scope for it to be useful, but initially anyway we're trying to limit the functionality to keep it simple.

While I have good technical skills, I'm no expert, so it would be a learning experience for me also. For example I've had to learn a bit more about systems administration lately in order to deploy the app initially! If I had more time, then maybe it would be possible for me to learn about mobile app development, so I could do some work on those.

However I'd rather not have to do everything myself - e.g. a friend of mine recently started a company which builds mobile apps! I'd like to have some cash to be able to pay him to develop it. I'm also realising that hosting this thing isn't as cheap as I thought it could be! So some funding for that would be useful.

Anyway - I'm rambling at this stage. I'm really just looking for a nudge in the right direction, because I'm clueless here. Neither myself nor my brother have business backgrounds, and I'm not at all familiar with what kind of grants and/or funding options are open to us (checking out the EI website now though).

Am I getting carried away even thinking that far ahead though? It might not catch on at all, could easily be a ('nother ) waste of time. I'd rather have some sort of live/working product that I could scale as I desire, but then I think about the company I work for, which is a (rather well-funded) startup: I don't think there was much of a product in existence before funding was secured, and the company scaled very quickly on the back of that.

Is there somebody in Enterprise Ireland who's job it is to talk to clueless people like me?

Thanks for any thoughts

miju

To answer your question about Enterprise Ireland have a read of this page.

Unless you can deliver that they wouldnt deal with you. (Its' late I'll provide a better answer tomorrow)

Graham

If you're still at the MVP/proof of concept stage I'd leave the fund raising for now, concentrate on POC/MVP before you start throwing (anybodies) money at it.

A couple of things do jump out from your post

Dave! wrote: »

I've had to learn a bit more about systems administration lately in order to deploy the app initially!

I'm also realising that hosting this thing isn't as cheap as I thought it could be! So some funding for that would be useful.

Is there any reason you need to manage/maintain/administer your own infrastructure? Does your project have some particularly unique back-end requirements?

You can't move these days without falling over a couple of dozen cloud providers. Could you move to a PaaS/BaaS? AppFog, Heroku, EngineYard and Parse.com are all worth a look.

A cloud based back-end:

• Generally free to use (until you start to scale).
• Quick and easy to administer/configure.
• Someone else manages/maintains the infrastructure
• Supports multiple development platforms.
• Easy to deploy apps using GIT.

All of this frees up time/money for you to do the vital bit, develop your product.

Caveats:
Do the maths before you pick a provider, make sure you can afford to scale as you onboard new customers. When picking a provider, do consider vendor lock-in. You can get cloud solutions which still leave you with the option of moving to your own infrastructure if/when you need to.

Dave! wrote: »

If I had more time, then maybe it would be possible for me to learn about mobile app development, so I could do some work on those.

For proof of concept, you already have most of the skills necessary, PhoneGap, Sencha and Titanium all support mobile Apps built with HTML and/or JavaScript.

For a recent project I went with:
AppFog as a PaaS provider.
ClearDB as a database provider (via AppFog).
Titanium for native mobile Apps.

Dave!

Thanks Graham

In the end I did go with Engine Yard, albeit after lots of frustration trying other options. I'll have to look into other options though, because EY will only give me a few days' worth of free hosting.

Good point re: app wrapper. My app would rely on the camera quite a bit, so I was concerned that would be lacking in Titanium etc, but perhaps not. I'll look into it once the web app is in decent shape.

Graham

I plumped for AppFog in the end, €20 a month option has worked out really well so far in being able to predict costs and supporting loads of dev environments.

Sencha/Phone gap are HTML 5/JS apps in app wrappers, Titanium Apps are not, they're written in JavaScript but 'compile'* as native apps.

*They don't actually compile but for the purposes of this discussion it's close enough.

Meathlass

The New Frontiers programme run by Enterprise Ireland and Institute of Technologies would give you €15,000 for 6 months to work full time on your product but it's extremely competitive.

Casarina

You could contact your local Enterprise Board - they can give you advise on what funding is available. www.enterpriseboards.ie to find your local one. Enterprise Ireland have an Innovation Vouchers scheme which people have used in the past for developing apps through colleges. www.innovationvouchers.ie is the website. the next round is open towards the end of September as far as I know. Best of luck with it.

amen

Forget the grants, searching for funding etc.

Should we release it and start trying to acquire customers, while continuing to work on it in the evenings?

Do this. Get it up and running, get some customers, a revenue stream (no matter how small will show there is interest and potential profits).

Contact your initial customers and ask for feedback. Help them to develop your idea, find bugs, they might have ideas for new functionality.