#startupbusiness Archives

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Pivot Your Startup Successfully

Posted on 01/06/202104/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Slack was not always the messaging platform that we have grown to love and use. The platform, compared to what it is now was born as a very small feature of a Tiny Speck game called Glitch.

After seeing the success and demand for the in-built messaging feature, the founders chose to launch it as a brand new application, while bidding adieu to Glitch.

This route which they took was an example of a lean methodology concept that we call startup pivot. Let’s get you some perspective into what is a pivot in a business model, why should startups consider it, and the best growth hacking strategies for startups to go about pivot business.

Table Of Content

What Is A Pivot in Business?
Know When Should You Pivot In Startup
What are the Different Types of Pivots?
Successful Tech Pivot in Business Stories
How To Startup Pivoting: The best strategies
Pivot Startup Pyramid: How We Help Founders Make Changes In Different Business Areas
What are the Alternatives to Business Pivot

What Is A Pivot in Business?

A pivot is primarily a shift in the business strategy which is applied for testing out a new approach related to the startup business model after receiving feedback. It is one of the core concepts of the lean startup method – a reason why it is also known as pivot lean startup. When we align lean principles in our software development process, we always consider making a scope for app pivot.

Many times, companies only have one question to address and need only one aspect to be changed (details in our pivot business pyramid below). To delve on it further, here are some examples of pivoting which you would have not considered a “pivot”

Turn one product feature into a new product itself
Turn one product into a feature of a bigger product
Change a platform from app to web app or vice versa
Focus on a different customer set
Use different technology to build a product

Know When Should You Pivot

With a number of hot-shot tech giants like Instagram, Facebook, and Slack, etc. having popularized pivot success, the new-age founders have grown to believe that pivot can be a great success formula for them too. But the truth is that pivoting must only be considered when you have exhausted all the other options. Here are the factors that can help you decide when to absolutely pivot in business model.

Your company is always trying and failing to overrule competition
There is only one aspect of your business/product that is getting the most attention
There is no response for your offering in the market
Your business objective and expectation has changed.

What are the Different Types of Pivots?

1. Pivot In Your Existing Market

It is one of the most common pivot business types. Businesses tend to change the direction in the market they are already in without offering any new market information or creating a new consumer segment. It is also the one of the pivoting business strategy that is most likely to fail. Since, businesses remain in their market in place of finding new areas to expand in.

2. Reposition Your Product

At times, an element of your product might show greater adoption potential compared to your entire application. This is what led to the creation of Slack. What makes it difficult for businesses in this situation is whether or not to let go of their legacy business. There are two approaches to handle the situation when you are looking for pivot in business strategy:

Launch a new branded service or product, keeping the legacy business intact
Launch a new business altogether and shut down the old business.

The choice of it depends on the cash flow situation. If your legacy business is profitable and seeing a constant inflow of customers, you can think of keeping it intact.

3. Do Something Entirely New

This is the last type of pivot business model and the most extreme. In this case, you let go of your idea to explore something new altogether. But if you are married to the idea of bottoms-up start, it would be worth considering shutting the present company and using the money for funding the new business.

Successful Tech Pivot in Business Stories

Instagram

Instagram is one of the most famous pivot software startup stories.

Instagram is today one of the biggest social media platforms. Owned by Facebook, it is estimated to be over $100 Billion. But before becoming a social media behemoth, Instagram was a prototype known as Burbn that was made with check-in features, photo post options, and the capability to gain points, in addition to other capabilities.

The founders, Mike Krieger and Systrom soon realized that the UI was too cluttered and thus they pivoted. They limited their Instagram startup software development to posting, commenting, and liking features – making it one of the most simplistic visual platforms in the market.

Twitter

Twitter was launched as Odeo back in 2005. It used to be a platform for finding and subscribing podcasts. But with iTunes making it a concentrated space, Odeo chose to pivot.

Jack Dorsey, the future co-founder of Twitter then came up with the idea of a microblogging platform wherein the contacts could share and read each other’s updates in the real time.

Today, Twitter has become a more than 355 million users’ brand that is being used to not just share updates but also for citizen journalism, social activism, and live tweets.

YouTube

YouTube as a brand needs zero introductions. With over 2 million users coming on the platform every month, the brand is the ruler of the video sharing platform market.

However, YouTube did not start as your homely video sharing platform where you go to watch DIYs or follow A-listers. It was a dating website which enabled singles to upload their videos – sharing whom they were and what they were looking for in a partner.

The founders soon pivoted and allowed people to upload videos of all kinds – something that makes YouTube what it is today.

Slack

Stewart Butterfield’s company Tiny Speck started creating a game known as Glitch. The idea after a brief launch was announced unviable. Its internal communication tool, however, developed to establish communication between Canada and US offices emerged out as a real opportunity.

The messaging platform, named as Slack was founded in 2014 and went on to become a unicorn in the first year itself.

How To Pivot Your Startup: The best strategies

1. Develop a prototype before you pivot

If you are thinking about pivoting startup, develop a prototype first and see if people would use it, find it valuable and give feedback. Feedback at the beginning stages is important for determining where the impact of the product would be the greatest. The prototype would also enable you to identify whether the product is a good fit for the brand.

2. Pick goals which align with your business vision

As an entrepreneur it’s important to know how your vision statement is changing. Gone is the time when there used to be one mission and vision statement. With the changing market, the statements are also frequently changing. It is important to reevaluate what needs to be done and then draw a business model pivot to meet the new objective.

3. Ensure your pivot give out growth opportunities

Pivoting is a useful next step when you have encountered roadblocks. But if you pivot in a completely new direction without giving much attention to the plan, you would fail again. To ensure you don’t hit another roadblock, we would recommend two things – A. not expanding in the current market, since you have already explored it and B. perform an extensive market research. In case you find the market to be too small, the customer base too diverse, and a lot of competition, it won’t be beneficial to pivot. One way to go about this that we recommend is hosting a product discovery workshop.

4. Consider alternative technology

The technology world is not what it used to be a decade ago, even 2 years ago. For a startup to pivot, it is extremely important to be on top of the technology trends. Only when your business is able to incorporate the latest technologies you would be able to pivot with the probability to succeed.

5. Keep the investors in loop

At every pivot stage and when you are taking the decision, make sure the investors are kept in the loop. In case you think the company’s mission and objective is going to change, start talking about it with your internal stakeholders including investors in advance at least six to eight months in advance. Any drastic change without any discussion with the investors can harm the relationship and make pivoting unachievable.

Pivot Startup Pyramid: How We Help Founders Make Changes In Different Business Areas

Over the course of our establishment as a startup app development company, we have held a number of pivot business consulting sessions with our clients looking to make a difference in how they have been conducting business or in their value set.

We make use of a Pivot Pyramid to help our partnered founders evaluate which business area to change in order to drive maximum growth. This is the same pyramid that investors use when measuring up your business.

Layer 5: Customers

The customers are the base of any startup. Everything – from the issue you solve, product you develop, and the technology it is built on, depends on who the customers are. You can change and pivot the customers, but doing this will make you re-evaluate the entire pyramid.

Shopify started out by selling snowboards online before realizing that the tools to develop modern day ecommerce platforms are not enough – thus giving birth to the modern day Shopify that has helped more than 100,000 SMBs sell online.

Layer 4: Problem

There can be instances where the customers’ choice is right but the problem that you are looking to solve does not matter much or is not existing. If you pivot here, you would have to relook at the solution, tech, and growth plan.

Criteo began as a recommendation engine for the online retailers. They then went on to become a successful brand which helped online retailers perform retargeting campaigns.

Layer 3: Solution

If you have identified the problems which your customers are facing, the next step is to develop a product which would resonate with the customers than the ones in the market. The changes made at this stage, like in case of other elements of the pyramid, should be growth focused.

Meerkat achieved growth through this route when they began live streaming videos on Twitter.

Layer 2: Technology

The technology choice is the key to develop your solution – one that we focus heavily on when performing app development for startup, even if the products relate with the customers the technology choice should be hindering your retention and growth.

An example of how technology setbacks can affect a business growth in the Friendster failure. The brand failed becoming a mainstream social network because they were not able to keep their servers up with the demand.

Facebook pivoted this way when they let go of Python language.

Layer 1: Growth

Every change in the pivot pyramid should be growth driven. But a great number of experiments does not call for any change in the technology or product. This is why marketers tend to experiment with the startup growth strategies to avoid the growth channels from becoming saturated or overly expensive.

Airbnb took the growth route for pivoting by posting their listings on Criaglist. This, in turn, boosted visibility and led to higher demand.

What are the Alternatives to Business Pivot

Value Iteration

Sometimes all a business needs is a tweaked product or offering iteration. While Mac and MacBook are one of the hottest commodities now, remember the time when analysts predicted Apple’s demise because of a stale hardware set in the ‘80s and ‘90s? Apple then added newer product lines like iPhone and personal computers.

In instances where you don’t have a product or it matches the market trend, you can think of revisiting your brand message – ensuring that it is aligned with your brand’s value.

Develop a spinoff brand

A spinoff company, by definition, is a division created by a parent company, which even though being an extension of the original brand is treated like an individual entity.

Take an example from Shelter Insurance. It was established in the 1940s – a time when the insurance market used to be extremely relationship-driven. But with the advent of the internet, the consumers could now interact with the insurance companies. However, if Shelter Insurance abandoned the model, it would have lost a massive number of their customers.

What Shelter did is that they created their spinoff company – Say Insurance – for delivering an online-first experience. Both of the brands provide auto insurance, but Say Insurance is completely focused on the Gen Z and Millennial user base.

Their strategy worked quite perfectly. The parent company continued to grow in the established market, while the spinoff brand tapped into the new digital market.

Relook at your mission plan

Trying to grow too fast almost always ends up bad for any startup. It can be a better option to relook at your mission strategy and see where you deviated. Following that, realign your present efforts with your planned stage.

But doing this can get difficult.

To realign with its mission of “the only short haul, low fare, high frequency, point-to-point carrier in America,” Southwest Airlines went on to cut down a number of their routes. The decision was taken to free up the planes for the routes that were in greater demand.

Python-The Ultimate Choice For Startups, Why?

Posted on 12/05/202102/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Being in the market for over thirty years now, it is indubitable that Python has become the epitome of simplicity with effectiveness. The gradual increase in its popularity is something that raises the question of “why and how Python is becoming the most popular programming language?”.

Upon confronting any developer on this matter, one would come across responses such as – “It is highly readable”, “Building applications with Python is very easy because of the understandable code”, “It makes complex processes easy”, and so on and on.

However, today we will discuss the validity, feasibility, and scope of Python app development from the business front, i.e., from the vantage point of startups and establish why Python is the top programming language for your startup.

What Does a Startup Need from a Language?

To effectively deduce why Python poses as an absolute option for startups to go with, we should first discuss what are the factors that are prominent for a startup business.

High scope of scalability and the ability to add new features
Faster development of Minimum Viable Product
Quick yet efficacious iterations
Integration with other technologies and software
Time and cost-monitored development process

Now, when that is out of the way, we can positively move on to discussing whether Python actually fulfills all these needs of a startup to emerge as an exemplary choice.

Features of Python

1. Smooth integration

Unlike many programming languages out there, Python is pretty mellow when it comes to integration. You can easily integrate with other languages such as C, C++, Java, and so on.

2. Support TDD

Python is very popular for its test-driven development. It is quite easy for developers to create prototypes with it, and they can later convert them into fully-functioning applications by simply refactoring the code and testing it instantly.

3. Wide range of standard libraries

Though the list of why Python is quickly ascending the ladder of fame is tediously long, this is one of the primary reasons why. The easy availability of standard and robust libraries is what attracts developers and startups towards Python.

4. Ideal for ML and Big Data

Machine Learning and Big Data are two of the emerging technologies that have acquired eyeballs of many establishments globally. They both come blessed with tons of locked potential, something we are tapping into slowly. Among other kinds of applications written in Python, you can also develop apps integrated with these technologies, including a wide range of AI technologies as well, as they have many robust libraries to support the development.

Reasons Making Python An Ideal Choice For Startups

Let’s have a look at the reasons for why to choose Python for business and startups.

1. Remarkable choice for MVP

Being a startup, time is of the essence for you. You need to unleash your app in the market, targeting a certain niche before anyone else does it. Moreover, as a startup, you need to convince your investors that your app idea is something that is going to be a huge hit, and for that, you need to show them a working prototype of your soon-to-be-developed Python mobile app, hence an MVP.

Now, one of the best uses of Python is MVP development because of its expeditious nature. Python encourages robust and rapid development by allowing the software developers for startups to do quick iterations after getting the feedback. It is the pre-built modules and packages of Python that render it the ability to expedite the product completion process.

In fact, it has been observed that Python in comparison to languages like Java can provide a fully functioning MVP in weeks as compared to months; it is time-efficient, something that every startup requires.

2. Scalable

Scalability is one inevitable component that any startup cannot afford to overlook. As a business grows, its users grow too. Under such instances, it would become a priority for any business to have an application that has the scope of growth as well. This is what Python is good for. With the help of the Django framework, a series of wired-up and ready-to-go components, Python is able to provide highly scalable apps.

The components in the Django framework are decoupled, i.e., independent from each other so they can be replaced and unplugged as per the demands of the business. Moreover, with a wide range of libraries available for Python, it is a piece of cake to add new features to a product.

3. Versatile

Versatility is another great reason that makes Python an ideal choice for startups. This means if you need a code that works phenomenally across all platforms such as Windows, macOS, or even Linux, then Python should be the language of your choice.

Additionally, if you need to integrate technologies like Machine Learning and Data Science, then you need nothing but Python as the programming language to help you achieve the app you envisioned but better.

4. User-friendly

“Beautiful is better than ugly.

Explicit is better than implicit.

Simple is better than complex.

Complex is better than complicated.

Flat is better than nested.

Sparse is better than dense.

Readability counts.”

As you can see in the extract of Zen of Python philosophy, Python language works for of certain principles and guidelines that render it to be the most user-friendly language. This is one of the many reasons why developers love Python and have made it the second most popular language on Github beating even Java.

5. Community support

Community support becomes prominent when the team of developers faces problems during the product development process. Hiccups are unavoidable, but what matters is how active and capable is the community to provide possible solutions to certain issues that Python may face. Thankfully, the Python community is among the best ones out there as it strives towards curing all the issues the language may possess and improve its features and functions from time to time.

6. No need for extra developers

It is always good news for the startup mobile app company whenever they can save a few bucks. In comparison to other languages, Python offers a concise and rather easy code to app developers for startups, thereby eliminating the need for big teams for the same task while delivering the product of impeccable quality. This also helps developers to provide software development services for startups without any hassle. Let’s look at the example of the code in Java and Python which cater to the same function and purpose –

7. Security

Speaking of security, Python is evidently more secure than some other prominent languages, like PHP. It is because of frameworks such as Django that come loaded with built-in security features protecting the application from many security threats lurking on the internet.

This framework is capable of hiding the site’s source code from direct viewing by dynamically producing web pages and employing templates sending data to web browsers.

8. Helps combat complexity

As Python is very simple in nature and associates simplicity with effectiveness, it is a great medium to handle complexities. It is ideal for web solutions as it can overcome complexities related to the integration of different systems, among others. Qualities such as these are what together make Python ideal for a startup app development company as it is time-efficient, fast, and easy to work with.

9. Ubiquitous in nature

Do you know what makes sense? – Developing a solution that is based on ubiquitous technology. From Youtube to Dropbox to Reddit- all are avid users of Python language. It is something that is unprecedentedly proliferating as of now and will become a standard to which other languages will be assessed. So, if you want to develop an application that is going to perform just as remarkable as it would do in the present, then there is nothing better than Python for you.

Which Startups Use Python?

Look at the list of Python startups that opted for or are using Python as their choice and are now thriving in their particular niche. These use cases of Python are an ideal example of why Python is perfect for startups software development companies.

Ometria

Ometria is one of the perfect examples of startups using Python. This startup gives marketers the ability to create personalized experiences throughout the customer journey. They offer services such as cross-channel marketing, AI-enabled customer intelligence, and others.

Weglot

Weglot seamlessly integrates with your website, adapting to your technology, and delivering it in any language. It has solutions for e-commerce, marketing websites, and web agencies.

Paddle

It is a SaaS commerce platform for payment processing, billing, sales tax management, merchant of record. With Paddle, companies are finally able to transform their revenue delivery infrastructure into a strategic growth lever to respond faster and more precisely to every opportunity.

Stripe

It is a well-known American technology company that offers a platform for startups and big companies to accept payments, send payouts, and manage their businesses online. They also help companies to beat fraud, send invoices and manage business spend.

Virail

It is an online platform that provides the fastest way to choose the cheapest ticket or hotel. They also help to search for all routes and choose the best one for you. The platform works with 200 transportation companies and offers you the best travel solutions across the world.

Final Thoughts

According to many startup app development companies in USA, it is no contest that Python may become the programming language of the future. Every quality, feature, and function that we have discussed above is a clear indication that Python is the best language for startups.

In fact, besides startups, many fully grown organizations such as NASA, IBM, to name a few, are bending towards mobile app development using Python to fulfill their needs. Moreover, because of its ubiquity, it gains a little more edge over the other languages.

Cross-Functional Teams Building Better Digital Product

Posted on 07/05/202102/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Did you ever feel like your organization is working in silos? Designers want to deliver meaningful experiences, the Marketing team is keen on entering a new vertical while sales are focussed on bringing in more and more leads, but all of this happens in isolation. Even though the roles of each of these departments are varying in nature, their priorities and end goals must be clear and consistent. Otherwise, it’s a sheer wastage of the business’s resources spent across different directions. Cross-functional teams foster cohesion within the company, reduce wastage of valuable resources and enable you to maximize your efforts in order to accomplish goals faster.

More often than not, the underlying reason why companies struggle with building better digital products is how they prioritize milestones and the linear approach, where work is passed from one team to another without fully channeling the skill and expertise of each discipline.

Building a digital product requires a team effort. Each discipline has a role to play and sometimes, these roles are overlapping. A great idea can come from any person and any team. Organizations looking to grow with agility and speed need to build cross-functional teams and bring them to the center stage. When the skill of each discipline is valued, their perspective is heard and every discipline is represented at the table, it results in quality solutions.

So, What is a Cross-functional Team, anyway?

A Cross-functional team brings people together from different functional expertise. By mutually exploring the prospects of a project and through shared expertise the team accomplishes a common goal.

There are so many crucial roles in digital product design and development– Designers, Product Managers, Business Analysts, Engineers, Quality Analysts, Marketing Specialists, and the list goes on.

The approach behind a cross-functional team is to gather a good mix of people from various disciplines to work on a project together. It is about brainstorming ideas, uncovering different and unique perspectives, and channeling an umbrella of expertise towards achieving one common goal – how to build a unique digital solution.

The idea behind cross-functional teams stems from agile methodology. Every discipline deserves a seat at the table regardless that their department’s primary phase is underway.

What’s the need for a Cross-functional Team?

When teams collaborate together in every phase and stage of creating a digital product, the result is impactful. In a cross-functional team, each person understands the role of other team members and views the product not only from the perspective of his/ her field but as an entire product and as a team effort.

Having a Cross-functional team is extremely crucial because every person brings so much value to the table. When a diverse set of people come together, a problem is approached in all possible ways and we are able to uncover unique perspectives.

For instance, when an Engineer has a seat at the table right when the project kicks off, identifying the best technology to build a product becomes easy. While others in the team may not be technically adept, an Engineer brings a different level of technical understanding to the front, especially when they have worked with cutting-edge technologies in the past.

As a full-cycle app development company, we believe in agile development with cross-functional teams. By building cross-functional teams, we were not only able to reduce the cycle time in new product development, but our teams also demonstrated flexibility in adapting to changing market needs and were able to develop innovative solutions at a faster pace.

While the number of Designers involved in a project will be more in the Design phase and the number of Engineers will rapidly increase in the Development phase, having representatives from each discipline throughout the app development process regardless of the phase adds a lot of value to the product.

The approach behind a cross-functional team resonates quite well with the practices of DevOps.

DevOps can be seen as a cultural perspective on how teams should be engaged in working the right way.

In today’s fast-paced world, with more advanced projects coming up, the need to move faster and be agile is ever-growing. DevOps addresses this concern – it makes development, operations, and other groups within an organization come together, collaborate closely on shared goals, and deliver software faster and more reliably.

Just like DevOps emphasizes close collaboration between software development and operations, having a cross-functional team for the entire product-development process improves collaboration across disciplines like Strategy, Design, Development, Testing and results in quality outcomes.

Benefits of Cross-functional Teams in Digital Product Development

The advantages of a cross-functional team in digital product development are manifold.

When all disciplines collaborate closely and everyone is invested in maximizing their contributions towards the project, it results in the best product possible.

1. Knowledge Sharing

The key idea behind accomplishing goals through interdisciplinary work is the exceptional variety of talent figuring out how to create something that is meaningful and brings value to end-users.

Confronting new perspectives, learning from others, and looking at things holistically impact the quality of solution and results in a robust product.

2. Alignment on Goals

In a cross-functional team, people look beyond their roles and responsibilities and are focused on accomplishing the common goal. There is total alignment on set milestones and people collaborate together to achieve them in the best way possible.

3. Less Handovers

When you collaborate across disciplines and everyone is present throughout the product development lifecycle, it minimizes handovers and speeds up the processes.

4. Teamwork

Working together facilitates teamwork. It brings people closer and improves communication. It is easy to talk through the issues and brainstorm great ideas. Collaborating closely builds respect and trust in teammates.

5. Identifying issues

When a project is handled by a cross-functional team, everyone is up to date with the project’s progress. When people work at the same time and don’t focus solely on their disciplines, it is easy to identify bugs and flag issues that may trouble the user.

6. Iteration

As mentioned above, cross-functional teams are up to date with all the issues within a project, which implies, making changes to the design or the code becomes easy. Testing and iteration can be done at the same time and it saves a lot of time, effort, and money.

7. Positive customer experience

While there are many different roles in an organization, each of these functions exists to serve the customer. By encouraging effective communication across teams, it becomes easy to provide a meaningful tailored customer experience.

8. Increased Innovation

When a group of people from different functional expertise comes together to solve a common problem, it is relatively easy to generate creative and overall solutions.

Companies that use cross-functional teams include marketing perceptions, sales conversations, product usage data, and other relevant sources of information into keen consideration when making product decisions which result in smarter decision making. The power of cross-functional teams is to drive better decision-making through business-wide learning.

Challenges faced by Cross-functional Teams

Effective cross-functional team collaboration is the key to tackle an organization’s biggest problems. However, there are certain problems with cross-functional teams and sometimes they can be difficult to manage.

Conflicting Goals

Each discipline comes with a set of roles and responsibilities. Oftentimes, when functional experts from different teams come together, they tend to give less priority to the project and are more focused on their own goals.

In such cases, it is essential for leaders to identify strategic goals to make sure there is clarity of purpose and the whole team is alined, on the goals of the team or the company.

Too much or too little Communication

With a cross-functional team, it is crucial to decide the right measure of communication. Too many unnecessary meetings lead to loss of time and can harm productivity while little communication regarding the project status and dulication can negatively impact a project.

Choosing Ideas

In a cross-functional team, you may give up on good ideas when others don’t like them.

While sometimes, it becomes easy to let go of complicated ideas and work more efficiently. This is where Discovery Workshop and operating in an agile manner comes into the picture. Scrum Methodology helps cross-functional teams encounter the biggest challenges and achieve great outcomes.

Leadership

In a self-organizing team with no clear leader, there is a possibility that the team may get lost and feel there is no clarity of purpose. It is essential to have a leader that can provide sufficient oversight so that small problems do not snowball into a bigger crisis and the team is able to collaborate efficiently.

Conclusion

Cross-functional teams often struggle because the organization lacks a structured approach. Teams are affected by insufficient oversight, conflicting goals, lack of accountability, and the organization’s failure to measure the impact of cross-functional collaboration.

Corporate structures are reorganizing themselves into cross-functional teams since the advantages are many. It may take time to adopt the cross-functional team approach to building products but it has nearly three times the success rates and is worth the rewards.

Seeking a CTO for your startup? Here’s How!

Posted on 22/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

You have a great idea for a new (or improved) software product. You’re ready to work hard for it and build your own company. You know a lot of startups fail, and you also know the people that make up your startup can either cause your startup to fail or to flourish. Talent, persistence, great communication skills – these are traits you look for in business partners. This is true for a potential CTO as well. But how do you go about actually finding a CTO? This post attempts to give some pointers.

Why is it Hard to Find a CTO?

Joining a new startup is risky. This isn’t different for a CTO too. What’s more, great CTO talent is scarce but startups are not. A potential CTO should be willing to take some risks, but you’re going to have to show him/her a potential reward too – This could be either a great compensation package or the impact your startup is going to have or a mix of the above.

Also, making the CTO feel like an important decision-maker and stakeholder in the company is also going to be crucial. A generous ESOP’s share may be important in hiring and retaining the right talent.

How to Find a CTO For your Startup

1. Be clear about your requirements

You must have a clear picture of your requirements. For example, you must have a list of technologies that are a must-have for your project. That could act as a filter to select the most appropriate candidates. Once you have filtered the candidates based on their technical skills, you can further get to know them and filter them accordingly. In a perfect world, you need to discover somebody who will consider this to be as a bar up on the stepping stool in their profession, for example, a senior programming engineer or specialized group captain who is ravenous to take on the CTO job. You may need somebody who’s strolled your way previously. Discover somebody who approaches things from a “try to get” point of view, not somebody who thinks they have every one of the appropriate responses.

2. Go to places where you’re likely to find good technical talent

It is always a good idea to go to cohorts where there are like-minded people as you and these places could be an answer to your question “How to Find a CTO?”. Hackathons, conferences, meetups, summits are all great opportunities to discover a potential CTO who would be a great asset for your company. Search for somebody who can get various innovations (maybe including back end, front end, and mobile). Keep away from individuals who state they’ll just program code in one language.

3. Look for developers at just below the CTO level at startups similar to yours

Jobs like VP or Engineering Lead where there’s as of now a CTO at that startup implies that they presumably have the experience required to be a CTO yet probably won’t get the open door where they at currently are. You can scan for individuals like this through LinkedIn. Ensure they have at any rate had experience shipping a product in the event that you need to give them the duty of building yours

4. Utilise the power of the internet

The internet is a potent tool in today’s world. Make sure you make the best use of it and benefit from its huge pool of talented professionals. There is an endless list of platforms which are dedicated to finding technical professionals such as a CTO. Some of them are listed below:

СoFoundersLab
Founders Nation
Angel.co
Indie Hackers
Co-founder’s subreddit on Reddit.com
Co-founding threads on Discordapp and Slack channels.

5. Pitch for the position

Beginning with the expected set of responsibilities and enduring through the offer, remember that the best CTOs will have many offers. You must sell the job to them all through the meeting procedure. You would realize that your startup is the most energizing, imaginative, astonishing organisation to work for but remember that the candidates presumably don’t have the foggiest idea about that yet. You have to sell your startup. Don’t simply list the characteristics you need in a CTO; list what they will gain from working with you: energizing challenges, the chance to be a piece of x, y, and z. Will the CTO get value? Will they have autonomy? Whatever novel characteristics your startup has, sell them well. Make certain to clarify the situation with impartial language to draw in a decent and differing candidate pool.

6. Ensure that you have a technical advisor before a CTO

How do you differentiate a technical advisor from a CTO? A technical advisor keeps their regular job but works for you 2–4 hours out of every month and fills in as somebody who’s not in the weeds with you, every day. They may do week by week or month to month code surveys and go about as a substitute for your CTO. On the off chance that you discover a technical advisor first, this individual can be immense aid in finding the CTO. Finding a technical advisor will probably be simpler than finding a CTO, on the grounds that you aren’t requesting that somebody quit their job to come work for you. Or maybe, you are requesting that they keep their current job and take on an advisory role that takes a couple of hours a week. Sometimes, you can pull off having a technical advisor and not having to hire a CTO.

What Qualities Should Your CTO Have?

Technical Expertise

This is obvious, but still important to note. In software, often a huge amount of tooling and software libraries available for many routine tasks that software developers face. Knowing what exists and the pros and cons of each tool and library can save your company a huge amount of time and money. It also saves your company from reinventing the wheel or using a less efficient tool.

Great Network

While everybody should have a great network, this is especially true for your CTO. As your company grows, you will need new employees. A CTO with a great network of skilled developers will have an advantage.

Experience

Experience is needed to have the previous point: expertise. Furthermore, it’s important your CTO knows what generally makes or breaks a great product. This knowledge can come from experience (ideally from other startups) and/or learning from other companies.

Communication Skills – Tech and Non-Tech

Your CTO is the one translating business goals to technical goals for your software developers. This means your CTO must not only have technical expertise but also be excellent at communication. You need to figure out how your CTO fits with the rest of your team (and especially with you). It’s important that your people share values with each other and understand each other since your company is made up of these people. What’s more, your CTO must be able to communicate with non-technical people too, especially those inside your company.

Deadline Management

You’re running a startup. Your team is going to be busy, and probably extremely busy. There will be deadlines, and a great CTO should be able to know how much his team can deliver in how much time. Not only that, he should be able to inspire his team to successfully meet these deadlines.

Team Management

Your CTO should be great at technology, but also at managing a team. He should inspire his team to keep focusing and working towards the same goals. It’s his responsibility to facilitate an environment where employees reach their maximum potential and to make sure the team is more than the sum of all employees.

Where to Find a CTO?

It helps if you have a great network of people where you can tap-in and ask for referrals. If that is not the case, start building one! Go on LinkedIn, connect with new people and start great conversations with them. If you click with someone, ask them if they are interested or know anybody who might be.

There are also websites designed specifically for finding a business partner. CoFounderslab.com is one of them. They have a community of entrepreneurs for you to build relationships with. This seems incredibly valuable even apart from finding your CTO. Other similar websites include indiehackers.com, founderdating.com and founders-nation.com. There are (many) more options tough, which are easy to find.

What Alternatives Are There to Having a CTO?

If you consider your own technical expertise to be high enough, you could consider taking on the role as CTO next to being CEO. Whether this is a good idea also depends on the type of product you’re building: an extremely high-tech product might need a CTO, but a less high-tech SaaS product might not.

You could also consider outsourcing the work of a CTO. However, this does have certain disadvantages, with the most important one being dedication. When outsourcing your CTO tasks, the person doing the work isn’t part of your company and is (probably) much less passionate about your product than an actual CTO would be. However, this person could be much more knowledgeable in the technical area than you are and could potentially join your startup faster than finding someone who’s willing to come in full-time. It really depends on the details.

Hopefully, this article has given you some useful pointers in your search for a CTO. There is a lot more material out there to read, but this can serve well to get you started.

2020’s Finest Startup Ideas

Posted on 21/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Regardless of how well paying your job might be, finding the best side business thoughts and in the end turning out to be completely financially independent is significantly important than incredible compensation and strong advantages. Picking the way of being an entrepreneur, and taking a shot at discovering extraordinary business thoughts, is unquestionably more hazardous than being content with holding a 9-5 employment. It requires far more penance. Be that as it may, when you’re receiving the lifestyle rewards of working for yourself and hustling your way into getting fundamentally more cash with your business thoughts than you ever could at your normal everyday job, the difficult work will have all been justified, despite all the trouble. In this way, let’s talk about some trending startup ideas for 2020.

Top Startup Business Ideas

You can now start a business from scratch without investing a lot of money. Following are the best startup ideas for businesses in 2020:

Plastic Recycling or Alternatives

What if you can build a big business and save your environment at the same time. Sounds impossible, right?

But it is possible with the Plastic Recycling business. “Rethinking Plastic” has become a global consumer trend for the year 2019. Businesses that help people in lowering plastic waste find it easy to strike cords in their hearts.

You can recycle any plastic material or offer its alternative at competitive prices so that a consumer prefers to buy your product over the old fashioned plastic one.

For example, you can recycle plastic straws to make a lot of appealing decorative items. Plastic Recycling business requires less investment but will give you good returns.

According to the report from Statista, the value of the recycled plastic market will amount to nearly $57 billion all over the world in 2024.

Buy and Resell Used Goods

If you are someone who loves sales, flea markets or local auctions, then it can be a great startup idea for you.

You can buy antiques, art pieces, collectables, retro clothes, and furniture, etc. at low prices and resell them at higher prices to the respective market at much higher prices.

But if you want to grow your business, then you have to become an expert on the value of goods and the right place to sell them.

According to threadUP, the secondhand economy (a $24 billion market in 2018) is projected to grow to hit a staggering number of $64 billion within the next 10 years.

Senior care services rank as one of the best Startup Ideas for Businesses in 2019. Although seniors are expected to live longer lives as compared to previous generations, unfortunately, it is not valid. They are expected to spend more time in hospitals, daycare or sickness.

Fortunately, they are wealthy and can afford to pay for the services required to maintain their lifestyles. This includes continuing to live at home in their communities. According to research by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), nearly 90% of seniors want to live at home near their friends and family.

Many affluent seniors suffer from various health issues and find it challenging to drive and perform household chores such as cleaning, cooking or caring for their pets.

Therefore, plenty of opportunities exist for entrepreneurs who wish to start their own business from scratch.

Senior Care Services

Not all senior citizens are taken care of by loved ones and a significant number of them could utilize companionship and care-taking services all the time. At this age, senior citizens feel very vulnerable and regularly need to stay at home yet may require help because of handicap or action limitations. In the event that you’re passionate about this, this could be a considerable business idea for you.

Senior care services rank as one of the most trending Startup Ideas in 2020. Although seniors are expected to live longer lives as compared to previous generations, unfortunately, it is not completely true. They are expected to spend more time in hospitals, daycare or sickness. Which would affect their physical as well as mental health?

Home or Office Renovations

If you love construction and enjoy turning people’s dreams into reality, then Home Renovation business will suit you the best.

Almost everyone nowadays wants to renovate their homes or offices, but it is tough to find good contractors. It is a type of business that will do well even in the worst economic conditions.

According to Statista, an average homeowner in the US spends $3000 per year on home improvements. One of the most significant advantages of renovation business is that it requires less capital investment in tools and equipment than new construction. It is a perfect choice for individuals looking for a home-based business.

Virtual Reality

If you are tech-savvy and love to experiment, then Virtual Reality is the perfect start-up idea for you. Hardware and software vendors are working profusely to introduce new VR products in the market, and it is estimated to become a $40 billion market by 2020.

There are unlimited uses of Virtual Reality for either business or personal enjoyment. Real estate market is a great example.

Providing a virtual tour of an advertised house to a potential buyer can help in closing the deal. Hence, it can be a massive market for your Virtual Reality business to target on.

Some other examples include- 3D movies, gaming, social media, training and meditation. Even the trend of VR lounges is also growing on a rapid scale.

Meal Kit and Delivery

How many times have you ordered food online in the past week or month?

Whatever the number is, it must be higher than the number of times you have gone out to eat?

Yes.

Customized Healthy Meals delivery is becoming more popular day by day as people don’t have the time to shop and prepare healthy meals at home. It has already become a billion-dollar industry on its own.

The primary purpose of this start-up business is to make sure people get to eat healthy and fresh food whenever and wherever they want. If you enjoy cooking or love to bring a positive change in others’ lives, then meal kit delivery business will be the best for you.

Digital Detox

In today’s digital world it has become nearly impossible to stay away from modern gadgets. Life has begun revolving around smartphones and taken a toll on people’s health and lifestyle. The initial step towards coming out of this addiction is to accept that we are addicted to digital temptations. Luckily, countless individuals are attempting to detach and decrease their screen time. It has gotten well known to such a degree, that on the off chance that you look for the term Digital Detox on Google, you will get around 101 million outcomes. The year 2020 will be the time of advanced detox, and consequently, there are a lot of chances for new companies/organizations to assist individuals with eliminating screen time. For instance, a few new companies arrange a bunch venture out occasions to remove individuals from gadgets and find new encounters.

Luxury Pet Care

This year we’re seeing extravagance in pet care, which is basically childcare or providing a better and healthy lifestyle for pets. Regardless of whether that is taking pooches for strolls in the open country, offering a rich settlement for felines while individuals leave or throughout the day dog-sitting services in a customized setting, many pet guardians presently need these services for their adored hairy little companions. Owners need the best services and care for their pets, and they couldn’t care less about the amount they need to spend on this. From dog-keeping to premium pet care organizations, there is a huge requirement for growing business people who love furry friends and can fulfil owners high expectations. It is a sort of childcare administration for pets.

Inclusive Beauty

Gone are the days, when the market was flooded with make-up products for mainly 2 types of skin colour-Fair and Dark. Many international brands and models within the beauty industry such as CoverGirl, Missguided and Rihanna, have realised the importance of making beauty or skincare products for people with different gender, age, colour and race.

This type of industry is still quite nascent and hence offer a golden opportunity to aspiring beauty startups and beauty entrepreneurs.

Whether you want to start your make-up brand line for men or women of all colours, you can also begin to your vlogging channel to help women get their make-up perfect.

Internet of Things Security

Various difficulties forestall the verifying of IoT gadgets and guaranteeing start to finish security in an IoT situation. Since systems administration appliances and different objectives are moderately new, security has not generally been viewed as top need during an item’s plan stage. Moreover, on the grounds that IoT is an early market, numerous product designers and makers are progressively keen on getting their items to showcase rapidly, instead of finding a way to assemble security in from the beginning.

Event Planning

One of the primary things you have to do is visit each potential area in which you intend to work. Work with the marketing manager to visit each site and realize what is accessible in every area. Start a database that will permit you to sort settings by differing highlights, for example, the number of individuals each site holds, AV hardware accessible on location, on the off chance that you should organize rental seats, and so on. At that point when you are starting to plan an event with a customer, you can discover what the key parameters are for the occasion and effectively pull up the three or four locales that meet the essential criteria. also, engagement parties, etc.

Vocational Consultant

On the off chance that you are leaving a corporate job with a decent understanding to begin your very own endeavour yet have no clue where to start, this one might be for you. There are a few people out there who need to figure out how to excel at a promotion interview or request for a raise, or just land a lucrative occupation. On the off chance that you have valuable tips for them, you can simply begin your very own consultancy and individuals will pay you great bucks to gain proficiency with the subtle strategies. In the event that you aren’t prepared to fire up your very own site or simply need to try out the waters, you should see joining to platforms such as The Muse or Coach Me where others are searching for individuals like you to guide them.

Web designing

Web designing services have become a key piece of the market and have developed as the need of great importance. The main venture required in this business is a PC, internet connection, and significant aptitudes. An occupation as a website designer includes web organizing and content creation. You can complete this duty all the more easily when you are outfitted with the data, ability, and involvement with this area. You can likewise work from home as a freelance website designer.

So there you have it, 12 startup ideas that can help you get big bucks in your pocket. Most of us don’t have the advantage of having the option to leave our day job to seek after beginning a business idea today, without stressing over how we’re going to meet our money related commitments pushing ahead with no salary. That is the reason were an immense backer of continually beginning a side business while working all day, with the goal that you can test your way into your new product or services, get input, approve the thought, and start creating pay before you quit your day job. On the off chance that you can ace the craft of scaling one of these business thoughts while keeping your normal everyday employment, you’ll experience no difficulty succeeding once you’re completely independently employed. With such an extensive range of choices that span across different market segments, you should hopefully be able to find your next startup idea and transform it into a money-making machine.

CONCLUSION

The market is bursting with opportunities for tailored security solutions. So, gear up for your new and exciting startup journey. You can also go out and meet people and take advice from other entrepreneurs, but ultimately, you have to decide which business idea fits your budget and aspirations. And, if you still find yourself stuck or want to build your business idea, then Anteelo can help.

How to Build An Appealing Mobile App Business Plan

Posted on 12/04/202129/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Benjamin Franklin was an exceptional man with even exceptional wit and wisdom. Though the statement is subjective, it is apt in every situation involving planning.

A rather important part of the whole process of starting a company is devising an astute and accurate mobile app business plan.

A goal without a plan is just a wish. If you do not want your goals to become far-fetched wishes then you have to invest your time and efforts in creating a descriptive business plan for your app.

Now, I understand this is not something that you might be inherently proficient in since you are an entrepreneur and this is not necessarily your niche of expertise. So, if you are unsure of what you are supposed to incorporate in your mobile app business plan or even how to start one, refer to this detailed article to help yourself.

Nevertheless, before we start our discussion, I feel we first need to sit down and ponder on the “why” of creating a business plan for your mobile application.

Why make a mobile app business plan?

Magnetizing investments

The most obvious reason why mobile app startups make a business plan for developing an app, as you might have surmised as well, is to bring in more and more investments. This is to attract investors and even start-up co-founders – the choice is yours to make, and sometimes you need to have the support of both.

An efficacious business plan will help your vision be represented in a crystal-clear way while displaying the scope of your mobile app concept and idea as well.

Reducing the risks

Un-planned actions pertain to risks, and risks in business are synonymous to cost-inefficiency and loss.

When you devise a business plan, you actually map out the whole journey of your business, something that can provide you great insights into the many unanticipated and probable risks.

Helps you keep everything in perspective

When making big decisions, it is common to forget and leave out certain important aspects that can make or break the foundation of your business at a much later stage. However, when you have a blueprint including a set of points acting as a reminder of those crucial aspects, it becomes easy for you to remember them. Business Plan is that blueprint.

Now, it’s time to move on to our main discussion answering questions such as “How to build Business Plan for a Mobile App Startup” or “How to Write Business Plan for Mobile App Idea?”

Steps to create a business plan for your mobile app

1. Executive Summary

Essentially a short overview of your detailed mobile app business plan, this stage is something you must pay special attention to, since, this is going to be the first thing the potential investors will encounter.

Things that make this section ideal are – convey more while writing less, refrain from mentioning the working of the product, etc. Instead, focus more on market scenario, targeted users, and this-

Focus on problems addressed

‘Problems’ are something that always prevails. Meaning, there is always room for improvement and innovation. What you are supposed to do here is analyze the problems users are facing with the existing solutions and find out –

the needs and demands of the users at the moment
problems users are facing with the products similar to yours
why these solutions fail to satisfy – what are they lacking that you can provide in a better and different way, and so on.

State your proposed solution

Try not to divert from the path of the problem while explaining its solution, i.e., do not go into the functioning and features of your app, rather stay focused on the problem and the ways in which your app addresses them.

Unique Value Proposition

This is where you can boast of the things that differentiate you from other organizations and businesses, something about your app that is unique in itself. Not just better but definitely different. For example, the USP for Domino’s Pizza is “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less or it’s free.”

End objective of your app

After everything’s said and done, it all comes down to this – The goals you plan to achieve with your app.

You MUST state the vision of your app’s future, i.e., how many downloads you are initially expecting on your application, how much profit you are expecting, and much more. It is best to visualize your short-term plans and then improve your answer through metrics.

2. Introduce your company

The next step while making a detailed and convincing business plan is to prepare your company’s information. Since the future is unpredictable, the things you have mentioned in the above section may not be as appealing to the investors as you may conjecture.

Firms like Y Combinator, TechStars, to name a few, are known to select startups for funding based on the team and the founders. So, you see how crucial this section just became for you. Moreover, it would add as a plus point if you could provide information about the MVP or a prototype you have developed.

The things you should cover here are –

Provide an overview

There are some questions that you need to address in this section to help investors understand your organization and develop trust in it.

Type of entity – Are you an LLC or privately owned organization?
Location – Where is it housed?
Duration – When was the organization established?
What is the team size of your company?
Do you operate off-shore as well or not?
What are the problems your company is currently going through?
What is the ultimate goal of the company?
What is your vision?

Take it from the top

Like a novel, you must tell the story of your organization while briefly touching on all the preliminary motivations, ideas, problems, etc. that you encountered at the time of its inception.

List everything about the history of your company that is worth knowing, since it could be a lot damaging if any crucial information is withheld from the investors and is revealed later. It can include the locations you have operated in, early hires, major pivots, product launches, and such.

Management team

Remember each and every person in your company is an important cog in your organization’s machinery. This is why you are required to mention the names of all the members of management with all the relevant information related to them, i.e., qualification, professional experience, expertise, KRAs while mentioning the organizational hierarchy.

Advisory panel

Almost every mobile app development company is backed by an advisory team. The panel consists of industry experts with years of experience under the belt. More often than not, they are the makers of some successful apps. Creating a list of such advisors can immensely improve your brand image and credibility, boosting the chances of getting funds.

3. All about the Industry

Essentially, your end product is going to target a particular industry. Hence, it is obvious for you as an entrepreneur to know every grain of major information, from market history to current trends, related to your targeted industry.

Market size

The most basic thing that you must know and also showcase in this section of your business plan is the size of the market. This includes – total available market (market demand for the app), serviceable available market (number of users you can target say in 3 to 5 years), and serviceable obtainable market (the segment of your initial users in 6 to 12 months).

If you are wondering how to do so then, you can always refer to the credible data provided by some trusted third-party platforms, namely, Sensor Tower, App Annie, and Statista.

Keep updated with market projections

You need to understand the market’s past and present to gain insight into future predictions. The best thing to do here is to compare and analyze the market size of the past 5 years, mention the number of new entrants in the industry, the number of total fundings, and so on.

Competitors analysis

Competitive analysis is an indispensable element of any business on this planet. Regardless of the organization type, industry, size, etc. – all religiously perform this step.

Various models around this have been devised to gain the attention of angel investors. Out of the many, the one we recommend is the 2 x 2 matrix model, in which variables portray these four aspects: challengers, leaders, niche players, and visionaries. In order to highlight the execution and vision of the app as it progresses, these four elements are displayed via an x-y axis scale.

Self-assessment through SWOT

SWOT analysis, representing four components – Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats is used for self-assessment by all organizations. It enables you to give a structured description of your company’s situation in an efficient way in your business plan for app development.

4. Marketing strategy

Acting as a bridge between your app and the end-users, a solid mobile app marketing strategy wields the most power. Your role is to devise such a marketing strategy that acts as a ‘deal-sealer’ between your firm and the investors. This will show the investors that you have the medium to make your app reach the users’ smartphones from an app store.

These are some points that you can include in your marketing strategy-

Describe the user persona first

Creating user personas is very beneficial. This is something you would be able to identify while you are doing your research on the market. In case there is more than one user personas, you must mention them in your app development business plan. The more in-depth it is, the more promising your business plan seems to the angel investors.

The said information is to be included in the user personas – Age, Gender, Occupation, Location, Income group, and Marital status. Other information that is classified as psychographic data includes attitudes towards money (price-sensitivity or value shoppers), the context of app usage, personal/professional aims, hobbies, preferred sites and apps, tech-savviness, and so on.

Customer acquisition strategy

Once you have identified the user personas of your app, you can determine your customer acquisition strategy. One thing you have to be absolutely sure about is your CAC (customer acquisition cost). You will be able to estimate the right cost once you have established which channels and campaigns you will employ in your marketing strategy highlighting your app’s USP (unique selling proposition).

Here are some channels that you can try to achieve great results –

Incentivized user downloads
Search engine marketing
Organic installs
Social media (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram) ads
Partnerships
PR
App store optimization
Content marketing
Push and in-app notifications
Retargeting campaigns
Mobile site redirection
Mobile app wall ads
Email marketing
Event marketing
Product driven growth

Change in product driven growth is one of the most common elements of pivoting a startup. If your business model needs a large mainstream user base, then it is of utmost prominence for you to build a referral program in your mobile app to leverage network effects. A well-known and effective example is Uber. For instance, Uber offers a coupon on the users’ next ride as a reward for referring to others and the referred person also enjoys coupons on the first ride.

Make a landing page

A landing page can really help you in numerous ways. One of which is that it can help you expand your horizons in terms of target users. It keeps the readers informed and updated about innovations and further updates of your app. One thing to keep in mind whilst doing this is to make sure it contains the name of your app, its description, promotional videos, etc.

{Also read: How to Create Success Story with your Mobile App Landing Page}

Define your key metrics

There are several metrics on the basis of which you can measure your business growth and popularity of your mobile app. This is something that you must include in the web or mobile app business plan. You have to be careful while picking the right metrics suitable for your business model. An example – if your app is a social media application, then your ideal key metrics should be the daily active users instead of the number of downloads.

5. Operational strategy

Stating the strategy regarding your daily operation imparts an impression of awareness and readiness on your part to the investors, something which always works in the favor. This also includes your strategy for customer relations.

You must describe and map out how you are going to handle customer services and maintain quality assurance. It also includes how you are going to perform the app development process and manage it. Other things to cover in this section are-

Users Process

You can mention information such as how your users are going to behave from the start to the end, i.e., when they first hear of your app and start using it.

Personnel plan

This outlines all the data related to the employees. It concerns how and when you will hire the employees, how salaries will be expensed, how will you set the hierarchy in the organization and so much more.

6. Financial plan

It is the stage where you could literally say “Let’s talk numbers”. What the investors would want to see in this section are the answers to the questions – how will you make money? What will be the cost to run the business? And how much funds do you need?

Devise an app monetization strategy

Just like for marketing, you need to have an efficacious mobile app monetization strategy, something that we have also covered in detail in our article named “How to choose the right pricing strategy for your mobile app project”.

Startup costs

According to CB insights, 19% of the startups fail because they get out-competed. In the graph below, you would find that 29% of the startups get shut down as they run out of cash.

You can avoid this fate by analyzing the costs you may need. Similarly, it is crucial for you to mention to the investors all the details related to the costs and expenses you would be needing and for what.

Since the devil is in the details, here is what you should include – one time costs, recurring costs (rent, inventory, etc.), fixed costs (rent, utilities, etc.) variable costs (i.e, the salary of employees) and a lot more.

Funding needed

It is here at this stage that you are going to ask for the fundings and reveal all the information related to it. Address these questions in this section –

How much money do you require?
What percentage of equity are you proposing to give in return?
Is this going to be a convertible note or a preferred stock?
For what duration this money will suffice before you need to propose for another funding round?

Regardless of what category your mobile application belongs to, the business plan for each one is essentially similar, for the most part. A business plan is static in contrast to a business model, which is dynamic. This is because it is a document created only once and is not rewritten after the purpose is fulfilled.

How to Create a Successful Mobile App Startup?

Posted on 11/04/202129/05/2021 by Tushar

Are you a startup geek?

Do you often look up to other successful startups and wonder how they made it?

Are you constantly pondering over an idea at the back of your mind, waiting for that defining moment to turn it into a reality?

So, if you have stumbled across your eureka moment, and are now faced with multiple challenges as to how to put into action what you have envisioned, you are on the right page.

We will break down the steps that can help you make the cut and are crucial to successfully run a startup in the mobile app industry.

Since the world is going digital, and the most amount of time we spend is hooked to a screen, any successful small business is involved in startup app development solutions.

We netizens are well aware that Playstore and App Store are flooded with innumerable mobile applications – Business, Lifestyle, Educational, On-demand apps, etc. But it is equally essential to realize early on that very few apps get trending.

Studies show that few startups are successful and most appreneurs tend to commit some common mistakes. So the first step in your startup journey should be to look before you leap.

1. Validate Your Idea: Ideate, Pause, Rethink

We understand that it is attractive to let your creative juices flow but it is equally essential to reflect on other possibilities and not dive right in without testing the waters.

Make a list of all your potential ideas. It not only gives you an insight but provides due clarity regarding which idea to pursue.

In case you are confused whether the idea is worth giving a shot, get it validated from leading experts and see if it sparks their interest. An approach that the best mobile app consultants follow when checking the validity of your product is through a product discovery workshop. The 5 days workshop is known to have brought a number of successful startups in life.

Another tip is to never overlook other ideas. Understand that there is always a scope for improvement, and sometimes the whole process of ideation leads to new outcomes.

After finalizing on which idea to pursue, make sure that you have a comprehensive understanding of the pain point and the solution you are offering.

After all, your unique idea, besides making you one of the most successful startups, is also solving a problem. This leads us to the next step.

2. Detail-oriented Market research

No matter how revolutionary your idea is and how likely it is going to transform the mobile application industry, if you do not conduct a thorough market research and are not able to establish a target audience, you are bound to fail.

Understanding the market and finding a product-market fit is a prerequisite to run a successful startup. The key is to ensure you are solving real user problems and even though what you may be doing is not overtly unique, you have to find a place for yourself in the market.

Study the competitive landscape and conduct a competitor audit. Download some apps that work on similar pain points, use them personally and determine the scope for improvement.

Research on apps that failed and explore the reasons for the same.

Why? Because it eliminates the chances of failure and learning from others’ mistakes is a usual practice in the startup ecosystem.

Conducting an in-depth market research can help you find your unique value proposition and ensure that you are way ahead of your competition.

Also, during the preliminary research, one should conduct surveys to understand the user demographic and engagement. Knowing what the target audience likes helps in building a product that they truly want.

Remember, user engagement is the key and at every step of the way keep your niche audience in mind.

3. Choose an Ideal platform

Choosing an ideal platform for your app is the next step in your mobile app development journey.

In order to decide whether your app will cater to Android, iOS, or both, you should take into account a couple of factors. The key is to research which platform is ideal for mobile startups and understand what aligns with your business idea.

According to Statista, as per the third quarter of 2019, Android users were able to choose between 2.47 million apps while Apple’s App Store offered almost 1.8 million available apps for iOS. This makes Google Play, the app store with the biggest number of available applications.

To choose a viable platform you should study factors like market share and revenue for both Android and iOS. Arriving at a conclusion would not be possible if you do not have an in-depth understanding of the respective play stores. So, carefully assess the number of downloads and revenue models for both the app stores.

The choice between native and hybrid apps is another factor to consider. Both come with their set of pros and cons, and factors like technicality, functionality, cost and time play a defining role.

4. Focus on Designing an Impeccable UI/UX

One of the common elements in most successful startups is the impeccable design that the applications are made with. No matter which successful app you pick up – Instagram, Canva, Telegram – you will find intuitive design being a part of them.

The role of UI/UX design doesn’t just lie in the eye-catching appeal. The application should be usable and functional as well. Additionally, it should meet the standards set by Google Material Design and Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines.

The UI/UX design guide that we follow at Anteelo is one that not just meets the guidelines but also solves a number of additional areas like – getting visibility, app spend time, and user retention rates.

5. Product Development

The next step is to jumpstart the development process and for that, you would require an app development team.

There are effective ways to choose an app development company and see months of planning and strategizing come into action.

To ensure that your idea materializes into a successful product, you need to give a lot of thought to the people you will partner with.

In that context, you generally get two options:

Hire an in-house team of developers
Partner with a team of remote developers through the mode of outsourcing.

Reflect on the challenges you are currently facing.

Do you want an In-house team or do you plan to Outsource?

Take a decision based on what aligns with your business needs.

While the former ensures a faster level of communication and a deep understanding of your product idea, outsourcing provides you the opportunity to hire highly skilled designers and developers.

The next question you need to ask yourself is whether you will be able to monitor the development process yourself? Accordingly, choose an app development company.

Before hiring an app development company, make a list of potential partners, ask the right set of questions and go through their portfolios and case studies. Not only it documents their work, it gives you due clarity if the company is the right fit for you.

Get feasible options by analyzing the app development cost worldwide.

Hire the best developer but make sure you sign a Non- Disclosure Agreement.

Besides building a scalable app, your focus should lie in delivering a delightful experience to your end-users. Any user first perceives an app through the User experience. To retain your users in the long run, the

User experience should be immersive and the UI should be modern, innovative and intuitive.

Being ambitious is great but we suggest, you do not get lost in a maze of features. First, concentrate on building an MVP for your app, address the core pain points and then gradually shift to improved features after garnering feedback from your users. The emphasis should be on the ‘must-have’ features, the ‘nice to have’ features can always be added later.

Making a wireframe solves a lot of problems. It outlines the layout of an app and plays a fundamental role in structuring the product early on.

It also provides necessary insights on how the users will engage with your app and helps you identify the problem areas.

6. Look for Raising Investment

After spending a considerable amount of time on building your app, you need to consider the problem at hand- How to raise money for your mobile app startup?

Generating a large amount of funds implies greater resource availability and higher chances of success.

There are various ways to generate funds. Decide on ways for fundraising that align with your business model – Seed funding, Bootstrapping, Crowdfunding, ICO, etc.

Craft an Elevator Pitch and be on the lookout for potential Investors. Now is the time to be ambitious. Make sure you have a product that investors chase.

7. Create a Strategic Marketing Plan

How do you make sure your app gets traction quickly and reaches far and wide?

Through strategic marketing.

Marketing is one of the key startup success factors that makes a regional brand a global one.

Through compelling marketing strategies, you can create the buzz around your app and ensure people go gaga over it.

Use Social media and PR to gain market visibility and facilitate rapid user acquisition. Use effective mobile app marketing strategies and leverage the power of App store optimization to make your app go viral.

8. Have a Monetization Plan in Place

One of the ways of creating successful startup companies is to decide the best monetization strategy for your mobile app.

There are a number of options for the industry to choose from: Advertising, Sponsorship, In-app purchases, subscriptions, and pay-per-download are few options to choose from. Read into the pros and cons of each to understand which monetization model can be the best when seeking ways on how to run a startup. You should aim for ways that would guarantee

9. Update and Improve Your Application

If you think your digital journey ends by launching your app and diving into the market, you are wrong.

The mobile app development lifecycle does not end by launching the application. Regular updates improve app visibility and ensure you are providing value to the user at every iteration.

So, for lasting success, keep improving your app by taking user feedback into consideration. Maintenance, updates, new functionality, is an ongoing process. Ensure maximum user retention along with a steady revenue model in place. Another element that you need to consider well in advance before execution is pivoting your startup.

10. Have an App Retention Strategy

The reasons behind app uninstallation are numerous – and so are the instances of app uninstallations. Keeping users interested in your application, in the presence of 50s of similar apps.

Here are the different ways you can retain your customers –

Plan your notifications timing properly
Be transparent about the permissions and how you’re going to use their data. Being transparent continues to be one of the secrets of successful tech startups
Although your partnered startup app development company must take care of it. But, update the application only when necessary.

So here are the different ways you can ensure that the business model of app development for startups works for you.

Funding a Mobile App Startup

Posted on 26/10/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

There comes a time in the life of every individual with an entrepreneur-streak when they think of an app idea they truly believe in. But if you are anything like the majority of those dreamers, chances are you are sharing their state as well – lack of funds to convert the mobile app startup idea into a digital product.

A ray of hope, however, for every app entrepreneur with restricted funds is to get investors’ interest. An optimistic misconception among the would-be-entrepreneurs is that investors will automatically invest in a great app idea. If only getting app funding was that simple.

Or is it?

Let us walk you through the four most important things on how to raise money for mobile app startup.

How Much Funding Should I Raise?

How Do I Prepare My App to Become a Fund-Magnet?

How Do I Find Investors For My Mobile App?

What Are The Different Funding Options Available to Me?

FAQs on How to Find Funding For Your Mobile App Startup

How Much Funding Should I Raise?

Before you start making a list of prospective investors or binge-watching Shark Tank, decide the funding you actually need for your app. A miscalculation can be a double-edged sword. If you get less funding, it’d bring you back to the square one position post-funding and if you get more funds than planned, it can still be your loss.

The more funds you raise, the more you give away your company at the initial stage of the business. This can hamper your owner’s share and rights once your app becomes a brand. A good starting point of accurate estimation can be to know the average mobile app development cost.

When planning to raise initial capital for your app, you should ask yourself three questions to determine the funds you’d require:

How much money will I need to build my app?
How much money will I need to get traction?
How much will I need for post-launch services?

These questions will give you an estimate of how much effort you will have to put behind raising money for mobile app startup. Generally, the maximum amount goes into funding for mobile app development and the rest will go into the other two questions.

Even if you are partially funding your app from your savings or getting funded by family and friends, you should have an estimate of the fund needed. This will not only help you keep proper track of funds but also will help plan the app expansion.

Once you have estimated the funding you’d require, the next step is to get on the preparatory stage.

How Do I Prepare My App to Become a Fund-Magnet?

Solidify the app idea

Why would even one of the many mobile app investors fund your app if the idea isn’t validated or have the backing of a community need? This is the most asked question when getting funding for an app. To answer this accurately, even a seemingly profitable idea should work on the following factors:

Finding a problem that the app solves

A majority of the apps in the market don’t solve a real problem. Although it works great for gaming or video creation apps, the chances of them getting overshadowed are massive. Unless and until your app is solving a problem that no one has even thought about, it’s going to be tough to sustain.

Build an MVP.

The next part of solidifying an app idea is to build an MVP. A Minimum Viable Product will ensure that your idea actually works and solves the real problem. It is an app version built with key features with an intent to help you raise money. The added benefit of the MVP is that it can gather you constructive feedback which can be used to make improvements in the final product.

Confirm your app’s value.

The last stage of validating or solidifying your app idea is setting up a charge and checking whether people are willing to pay for it. The willingness count will help you understand whether or not your app’s monetary value.

Perfect your elevator pitch

Knowing how to pitch an app idea can be of great help in your quest to get funding for an app. An elevator pitch is exactly how it sounds. It’s short, informative, and can get the attention of the app startup investors immediately. You should always dive into the pitching process with the assumption that the investors will only give you 30 seconds of their time for listening to the app idea.

Know the market

Knowing the target audience and the competition in the market will always be fruitful for you. It is very important to know the veins of the market your app will be functioning in. A market that is made up of not just your target audience but also your direct and indirect competitors, the supporting stakeholders, and even the government regulations.

How Do I Find Investors For My Mobile App?

An important part of answering where to find app startup investors lies in understanding how the investment rounds are structured.

Now when we say structured, we mean the funding rounds move in a set order. Knowing which funding round you need to poach can help answer a number of questions – where to find investors specific to your stage, whom to seek out for funds down the line, is there and if there, then what is the funding timeline? etc.

Seed Round: It is the earliest money that goes into a company, app, or idea. The seed funding mostly comes from the insiders who provide the initial startup capital for establishing the business.
Angel Round: Angel round is similar to seed round, but is usually more formal. They are often outside investors who buy common stock in the company but with more formal terms than seed investors’.
Series A: This is basically the first stage or round of large-scale venture capital funding for an app business. The Series A rounds generally bring in $2 to $10 million and get entrepreneurs the necessary capital for the business to develop its product fully and grow.
Series B, C, D, etc.: These rounds are held on the basis of the capital requirement of the company.

Now that you have gotten insights into the first part of how to raise money for an app idea, getting a list of investors should be the next thing on your agenda. There are numerous investors to get funding for an app from but not everyone is the right fit. AngelList is a website that has more than 40,000 investors but you should pick only the top 40 or so to get your app funded. Other websites to find investors for app ideas are Funded.com, Angel Investment Network.

Get referrals

There’s no harm in getting some benefit off of your network. Referrals are a great way to see investors so if you know someone who knows an investor, ask them to help you. Connecting with mediators who can refer you to some great app funding companies will be a smart move. A platform like LinkedIn is great for forming connections and asking for referrals. Once you get their attention, send in your pitch email with all the necessary details.

With this, we have seen the second part of ‘How to raise money for mobile app startup funding’, and now let’s move on to the third and final section.

After you have done your part to get mobile app development funding, it’s time to look into the different ways of raising money for startup.

What Are The Different Funding Options Available to Me?

Angel or Seed funding

Angel investors and venture capitalists are the first options that a startup app development company advises to their clients.

Angel investors do not generally ask for much business control in exchange for the money they give and that gives you more freedom. Venture capitalists, on the other hand, ask for more business control in exchange for funds. They however also provide mentorship. In the end, both Angel and Seed funding for app startups are a great way to secure funds.

Self-funding or Bootstrapping

How to raise funds for mobile apps yourself? You can become your own investor. Funding the business yourself in the initial stage will give you great benefits since you will have complete control over the business. And in cases where the apps become a success, you might not even need funding in the future. But you can always go to investment firms for loans in the later stages.

Bank loans

You can always go to banks for personal or business loans. Although you might have to keep collateral, the process of getting funds would be the fastest compared to any other option on the list. These days, governments are also being supportive of the startups’ growth, meaning you can expect more funding-assistance reforms coming in your way.

Crowdfunding platforms

Crowdfunding for mobile apps means raising money from a pool of investors where each one is offering a small sum of money. This kind of funding is usually done on crowdfunding platforms that are present online or on social media. In exchange for the contribution, you can give a reward or share of the business.

ICO & IEO

ICO and IEO funding is great for blockchain-based startups. The money is raised in the form of cryptocurrencies which makes it a little risky since such funds have an uncertain future. But this risk is hardly a concern for blockchain startups for being in the industry, they understand the pros and cons of cryptocurrencies.

This was our take on how to get app startup funding. Contact our team of startup app developers for further queries.

FAQs on How to Get Funding For Your Mobile App Startup

Q. How to raise funds for a startup?

The process of raising funds for a mobile startup is a multi-layered event. You will have to answer all these questions:

How much do I really need to fund my app?

How to get investors for an app?

What are the different ways to get funded?

On the basis of these answers, you will get several steps closer to getting funded on your mobile app idea.

Q. How to find investors for a mobile app?

There are many websites you can head out to for finding investors: AngelList, Funded.com, Angel Investment Network, etc. There are also several meetups that are held across the world for entrepreneurs and investors to meet and converse.

Q. When should I raise funds for my app idea?

According to our app developers for startups, the best stage when you should seek app funding is when you have crossed the app validation process and you have a basic understanding of what app features and technologies you have to focus on.

Enterprises Piloting the New Normal with Next-Gen Applications

Posted on 27/08/202009/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

Remote working, physical distancing, travel limitations, and the psychological effect of isolation have together changed stakeholders’ behaviors in every organization while creating unexpected challenges along the way. This pandemic has not just disrupted everything once denoted normal but has also been forcing enterprises to navigate the recovery period and develop a new normal for the post-crisis era. Even amidst the clear need for digital transformation, enterprises are grappling to remain competitive in a world filled with nimble startups. These enterprises were once dependent on their IT models as a key to a competitive edge. Now, however, the same IT cores have made it difficult for them to adopt a new normal centered around flexibility, speed, and efficiency.

With being nimble now accounted as the only way to survive and scale in the COVID-19 world, enterprises have turned their focus on the development of next-gen apps.

Table Of Content

The Need for Next-Gen Apps
What Does Next-generation application development Mean for Enterprises? Speed, Efficiency, and Flexibility
Key Transformation Areas for Enterprises
The Best ADM Approaches for the Creation of New Normal Enterprise Applications
Schedule a Discussion

The Need for Next-Gen Apps

Businesses need apps that will be able to adapt to changing demands and scale to meet customers’ and employees’ needs in real-time. An enterprise application development company by building next-gen apps based on business understanding and customers’ requirements gives enterprises a platform to transform digitally.

Next-generation mobile apps and other software help enterprises:

Lower the time to market when meeting the changes in customers’ needs.
Lower product complexity by utilizing a cross-platform, scalable ecosystem.
Make smarter business decisions through analytics-backed insights.

What Does Next-Generation Application Development Mean for Enterprises? Speed, Efficiency, and Flexibility

The need of the business hour for enterprises, as we noted before, is to look for next-generation application management services. This new normal in enterprise software revolves around a trio – Efficiency, Speed, and Flexibility.

Speed – Pre-COVID, release cycles came with a months-long completion time. Now, with customers’ needs changing by the minute, enterprises don’t have the leverage of taking up months for deployment. There is no guarantee of a problem staying a problem by the end of those months. The new normal enterprise will have to bring in agile methodology in its application development and maintenance process to offer its stakeholders value in real-time.

Efficiency – The success of every nimble enterprise lies in automation, a well-planned business integration, and the adoption of agile methodologies. And all of this can be achieved through practices like the integration of AI in mobile apps, re-prioritization of business processes, and weeding out unnecessary feature sets.

Flexibility – Zero downtime has become a success mantra. But its adoption is a lot easier written or said than done. In order to become truly flexible, enterprises must modernize or replace their outdated applications. However, letting go of the legacy system is one of the biggest digital transformation issues.

What enterprises need is a next-generation application maintenance program that would make proper use of the modernization spend while enabling digital transformation.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of what that next-gen application would look like, let us look at the areas that enterprises would have to work on to compete within themselves and with the startups flooding in the business ecosystems.

Key Transformation Areas for Enterprises

The best thing about enterprises is that they understand how COVID-19 would change them – on some grounds, better than their startups’ counterparts.

The speed of automation will expedite

The automation of key processes and routine tasks has remained at the center of business development for some time now. This need for task and process automation is not new. Back in 2017, McKinsey & Company forecasted that 30 percent of key tasks across industries will get automated by 2030. “Before the pandemic, automation was looked upon as a way to boost efficiency while cutting costs,” said H.I. Executive Consulting. “With social distancing directives likely to stay in place for a while, more and more businesses are accelerating their automation efforts in order to reduce close human contact to a minimum, free up employees to manage crisis response and focus on providing essential services.”

The movement towards remote digital service

The new normal for business after covid will be organizations changing their support and service delivery plans to meet the digital reliance of their employees and customers.

Here are some examples of what a remote digital service looks like.

The digital-powered Russian bank Tinkoff created a cloud-based call center with several freelance employees. The bank focuses completely on virtual servicing. To date, they have expanded into a team of 14,000 call center operators of which 6,000 of them make an average of 500,000 customer calls every day from homes. The bank’s cost of managing and training operators gets offset by the savings made from rental offices and equipment.

In the telecommunication industry, companies have started launching digital-only offerings that redefine customer experiences and gather considerable attraction. The USP of these services lies in customers signing themselves and moreover with more than 80% of customer-care activities being conducted online. In this digital-first model, online referral act as the biggest source for customer acquisition – estimated to be 15% of the total sales.

The success examples are prevalent across multiple industries. This has turned remote service into a trend that has a high-profit potential.

Supply Chain Disruption May Continue

Global lockdowns have resulted in a massive scale of supply chain disruption. Back in February, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV stopped production in their Serbia factory for they weren’t able to obtain automobile manufacturing parts from China.

The majority of the enterprises understand the manufacturing and delivery process of their Tier 1 suppliers while having little visibility on further the line. The business need is to make the supply chain resilient for the post-COVID period. And in order to do that, enterprises would have to:

develop strong backend infrastructure – possibly by combining blockchain and supply chain processes
remove the dependency from paper-based processes
share data with suppliers for gaining manufacturing stages visibility.

Partnerships will become collaborative and lean

Enterprises can meet the changing partners and vendors’ preferences by shifting to a more collaborative and flexible set of partnerships. These partnerships can be multi-form. Example: An IT consultancy firm could work with remote vendors to decrease their office and travel cost. There can also be enterprises providing agreements with their vendors for long-term opportunities. For example, how Alibaba supports SME suppliers with an extended line of credit.

As a part of the new normal for the marketplace, we are seeing partnerships brewing on the basis of an understanding of customer needs, wherein both the partners can mix knowledge and create value. For example, recently, WhatsApp started enabling its customers to directly connect with brands and make purchases through a simplified mobile experience on WhatsApp.

Management systems of a new model

Met with the unsurity of the new reality, enterprises have started looking for ways of adopting virtual management systems in enterprise application development services.

For effectively responding to a fast-changing environment, businesses will consider making use of advanced analytics tools, automation, and digitalized processes to meet customer demand fluctuations in semi-real-time. We can also envision enterprise application development solutions being built on human-technology interactions which would help businesses collect insights for IT-driven productivity rise.

To meet with the changes that a post-COVID world would pose, businesses would have to take a modernized approach – one that would help them become cognitive. While this can be achieved through the creation of new-age technologies backed next generation mobile applications services, it would need enterprises to get back to their legacy systems.

Here are some of the application development and maintenance approaches that we have been offering to enterprises coming to us seeking digital transformation consultancy.

The Best ADM Approaches for the Creation of New Normal Enterprise Applications

Optimizing the current IT systems

Enterprises can optimize their present IT systems with modern approaches and tools to cut costs and heighten efficiency. We advise organizations to make use of AI and automation capabilities for ensuring quality and following DevOps steps to lower the development cycle.

By deploying new-generation capabilities and features around existing systems enterprises will be able to innovate and keep their competitive edge – even when they are not prepared for complete cloud transformation. They can attain easier access and modification of the legacy systems through the use of technologies like containers, API integrations, and microservices.

Gather data and convert it into an actionable product in a minimal time range

When we build enterprise applications, we focus on benefiting from cloud-native, digital-first technologies to deliver growth at speed. Deploying speed-focused innovation abilities are generally backed with an MVP, small feedback loop, test-driven development, and a fail-fast approach.

The intent of this approach is to help enterprises take key business decisions and turn them into products that their stakeholders need in as close as real-time.