What's the next step after development....

jimmybeige

Basically myself and a friend had an idea to build an phone app/website, which we pretty much did as we are both developers. It's coming the end of development and if we don't have a fully finished product, we definitely have a strong prototype to demo.

The problem is, as neither of us as business people, we are not sure where to take it next. Ideally, I think we would both love to not have to deal with investment stuff, and sourcing grants etc as neither of us know much about it and would probably do a poor job of it.

What should be our next step? Should we start looking for a partner who would have a better business mind, know how to get funding, how to run a business? Or should we look for assistance elsewhere, look for grants etc and hope that we could pick someone up again at a later stage if that ever arises? Our product is in the tourism industry.

Neither of us is driven by business, we enjoy the development and creative process more.

Gloomtastic!

I'm sure you'll get a few PM's from people willing to help you.

If neither of you are experienced or interested in business then, before you agree anything with anyone in writing, ask a family member, who may be experienced in business or law, to check what you are getting yourselves into.

Good luck to you!

ted1

Go to your local County enterprise board , also her friends and family to try and use your site. Let them see how user friendly and functional it is

jimmybeige

Thanks for the response! Yea, we're experienced enough in development, so we'll definitely send a version to friends etc before anything is released. We're just not quite sure what the next step should be, and don't want to fail from taking the incorrect approach. Yea, good advice, we should definitely get into a legal discussion before collaborating with anyone. All of that is a complete mystery to me. How you organise who gets what, and how much, and what does the person have to achieve to own part of your product etc.

ted1

jimmybeige wrote: »

Thanks for the response! Yea, we're experienced enough in development, so we'll definitely send a version to friends etc before anything is released. We're just not quite sure what the next step should be, and don't want to fail from taking the incorrect approach. Yea, good advice, we should definitely get into a legal discussion before collaborating with anyone. All of that is a complete mystery to me. How you organise who gets what, and how much, and what does the person have to achieve to own part of your product etc.

If your watch Silicon Valley series 3 you'll understand the need to not just send it developer friends

jimmybeige

ted1 wrote: »

If your watch Silicon Valley series 3 you'll understand the need to not just send it developer friends

Ha cheers, I do have non-developer friends too

ironclaw

Out field question, but have you validated the idea? Have you talked to the end or target user? And most importantly, got them to slate it? Sounds harsh but user feedback is the only want to really get an idea off the ground.

For example, I developed what I felt was a great application and targeted purely consumers. 12 months down the line I found downloads were stalling or non-existent. When I dug a little deeper, I found the business market was actually using the App the most and consumers were pretty much non-existent. Furthermore, they didn't really like the App, the prefered the information in a different format all together. Was a great learning curve and I can't stress enough how you should validate an idea at all stages of development, even before you put a single line of code in. Same applies for feedback, we built a back end application for a business and said 'hey, here it is' but we didn't actually understand their process within the business and it needed a completely redesign.

If you fancy an informal chat some evening, I'm based around South Dublin / Bray.

jimmybeige

Some great points there ironclaw. To be honest, it started off as a bit of a "hey, let's see if we can build this" as again, we are not business people, so even if we were told it was useless, we'd probably use it as a learning process either way.

As for validating the idea, other than discussing it with people, and showing a few friends at various stages, there has not been a lot more of that. It is hard to gauge from friends also, as their positive feedback mightn't always mean they would use something. I kind of had the idea that I would wait until I had something for people to play around with, so they could understand, before I would do too much of that, although this may very well be the wrong approach.

An informal chat sounds great. I'll drop you a PM next week or something if that's OK, as I am away for a lot of this week. Thanks a lot for the feedback.

mrawkward

If you cannot commercialise it yourself, sell it. If you get lots of purchaser interest, keep it and rent the missing talent..... You have already achieved industry endorsement!

magar88

Seems to me the best thing to is involve people you know that have the skills you require.Offer them a piece of the pie.If it's a good app and is what people need, over time it will gain momentum.I have two developer friends which build websites mostly.I fund them on some projects but so far nothing has come of any of them and we called a day on it.Also I fund the purchase of domain names with these guys and take some profits when they've built and sold.So there are people who will take the risk on you guys just make sure they have some savvy.

gargargar

Really you have gone about this wrong. I can echo some of ironclaw's comments. Often developers, the first time or two, will just build what they think is a good idea, then bring it to the market. I have done this and wasted a good deal of hard effort to find out that the market didn't want what I had built. It's not very helpful information at this point but may be for future projects!

CantGetNoSleep

I've got a business and law background (have a small involvement in an existing very new online platform start-up), and would potentially bring in someone with tourism too. Send me a PM detailing what the app is if you are interested. We are based abroad though (maybe an advantage in tourism)