Software startups are as lucrative as Black Friday deals on Amazon. Whenever independent entrepreneurs think about becoming the next successful tech-startup owner, they always consider launching a software startup first. It is one of the fastest ways to boost business valuation and increase their net worth.
While you might consider this a juvenile dream, stats don’t lie. Numbers from App Annie say that people have downloaded various applications from iTunes and Google stores around 90 billion times in 2017. The numbers keep increasing every year. These numbers are enough to excite any fresh entrepreneur, but you must not forget that in the world of tech startups, it is quite easy to bite off more than you can chew.
What happens when you focus on perfection too early in the development stage?
It is the story of a service-based company that was on its way to becoming a tech-based company, thanks to its tech-savvy founders. The CEO and founders identified the USPs of their app and employed a developer team to turn their dream into reality. However, as time passed, they had spent over $200,000 with little tangible progress. Soon, they had creditors knocking on their doors, but they still had no idea about the development of their app.
How can you achieve success by embracing five simple steps?
It does not take a tech startup story to turn into a nightmare with little to no help from the bunch of new, inexperienced developers. It is up to the entrepreneurs to find out what their target consumers expect before they syphon money to the dev teams. Stumbles are quite common, especially when you are trying to turn entrepreneurship into a fully running professional tech business. However, these five steps can help you smoothen out the kinks on your way to success –
- What are your thoughts on manual automation?
Several super-successful startups we know today began as small tech-ventures that heavily relied on manual automation. Manual automation (behind-the-scenes) can help you forward a smoothly running interface to your end users.
Businesses like Uber, Dropbox, Groupon, and Zappos began as simple MVPs. Since more than 90% of new tech startups are likely to fail, it only makes sense for the long-runners to invest fewer resources in the first phases of their software design. Remember to keep it simple, till you can dish out massive cash.
- Shift attention to software development life cycle
The only way to fine-tune the creation and deployment process of your software is by adopting a software development model. You can pick the waterfall model, V-shaped model or Incremental model. Irrespective of the names, all three focus on the planning, implementation, testing, documentation, deployment and maintenance of the proprietary software.
Following a software development model can be beneficial for any tech-based company. A startup goes through hundreds of steps of experimentation that allows the founders and developers to test the different software versions without interrupting the customer experience. Focusing on a software development cycle can help the builders focus on the elements that keep the app functional and useful, instead of pushing the resources towards the scale-up of an unpolished product.
- Building, deployment and rebuilding will continue as a cycle
Rebuilding will always be a part of your software journey. You should worry more about consumer feedbacks and smooth operations of your app, rather than scaling up from the very start. There will be times when you will work and rework on the same aspect of your app.
Launching new versions of software, going back to older versions that worked smoother, are all parts and parcel of the software development process. You cannot focus on making your app perfect from Day #1. Instead, you should focus on optimal release management strategies to manage your software versions and their functions.
- Focus on a simple beginning
Keep the clutter out of the development process and out of your app interface. You can simplify your app use by dedicating a landing page that explains the purpose and use of your new app. Test the application to see if it caters to your target audience. Promote your application on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Complete the marketing and promotion even before you hand over the idea to your development team. That way, you will always know if you are investing your fortune in the right direction. If the plan falls flat, you will still have enough resources left to fund another idea.
- Don’t fall for the lure of launch parties
We all remember what the launch parties were like for startups in the 90s and 2000s. However, the moment you begin planning a launch party, you assume that you are dealing with a finished product.
That is no longer the case in 2019. When you launch an app, the feedback process begins. Therefore, instead of a final product, you have a beginning step that requires polishing, optimization and scale up. Tech giants like Amazon and Uber never see their products as “finished”. It should never be your startup’s goal to seek an endpoint, but rather to keep evolving and growing with market demands.
As new a software and tech startup, it should be your goal to achieve soft launches and set up a robust release management strategy. Do not turn your project dream into a money pit. Instead morph it into a flexible idea that is responsive to consumer feedback, backend manual automation and reliant on software development cycles.