You are at an exciting phase of your entrepreneurial journey. The beginning! There are a lot of opportunities ahead of you with the potential for life changing experiences. This app idea you have is going to change everything for the world and especially you.

But where do you even start? How does anyone build an app business in the days of AI, behemoth companies, and critical investors?

It's tough.

But it's not impossible.

The key steps to start building your software business

Through our experience at Uptech Studio and seeing what successful founders do, we've compiled the best ways to get started building your first application business. It doesn't matter if your business is SaaS (Software as a Service), a marketplace app, a mobile app, or an internal application for an existing business. These strategies and activities will help you make the best strides to building your software business.

Don't Start Building

"If you build it they will [not] come" is the true motto of software entrepreneurship. There are so many things you can, and should, do before you build anything. To become successful will require you to zig zag, back step, and circle around for a bit in order to find the right path to go down. That's why we encourage people to not start building the app right away. Getting a little money and hiring an outsourced development team in another country is never the way to start. Your business is more likely to fail, and you'll be out of money that would have been better spent elsewhere. We'll share what you should do instead, and know the best advice will never start with "just build your app".

Verify the Problem

Verifying the existence of a problem and determining if custom software is necessary to solve the problem are crucial steps in starting a successful software business. Depending on the problem space, customer experiences, competitive landscape, and financial impact, some businesses may not require custom software applications, while others do.

Questions to Answer

To help our partners make informed decisions about whether custom software is necessary for their business, we encourage founders to perform thorough research of the problem and market space to answer the following questions:

Is it really a problem that software needs to help solve?
Is the idea a plausible business?
Do enough people experience the problem to sustain a profitable business?
Do people want to pay to have the problem solved?
When and how often do people experience the problem?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of other businesses solving the problem?
What differentiates your approach to solving the problem from the existing solutions?
Are there any regulatory or legal implications related to the problem?

‍This is not an exhaustive list of questions but are meant to encourage founders towards finding the answers specifically for their business.

Tactics

There are many ways to verify that the problem is real and worth pursuing. A founding team that is tenacious and creative in verifying the problem will have the information required to make strategic and difficult decisions when building the business. While each of our partners' businesses are different, Uptech Studio has identified common areas of research that founding teams should invest time and resources investigating.

Competitive Analysis
User Interviews
Acquisition Strategies
Financial Modeling
Team Assessment

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but should be a launching point to get creative in researching a new business idea.

Competitive Analysis

Evaluating and comparing your business, products, or services to those of your competitors

Possible Questions	Possible Activities
Who are the top 3 direct competitors? Who are the top 3 indirect competitors? For those competitors what are the historical and/or current: Pricing strategies Marketing strategies Acquisition costs Customer satisfaction Funding and financial positions Market share Are there partnership opportunities with any competitors? What are the current trends affecting competitors?	Interview past employees and investors of competitors Interview past and current users of competitors Review public financial and industry reports Identify their social media usage and growth Use Archive.org to see digital history Attend trade shows or conferences Research feature requests made by users

User Interviews

Conversations with potential or existing users to understand their needs, behaviors, and pain points

Possible Questions	Possible Activities
What segments exist of the potential user base? What are users' unsolved pain points? How do they currently address these pain points? What are their concerns and reservations about using existing solutions? What is the user’s ideal solution? What is the user's willingness to pay for a solution to the problem? Are your users and your customers the same? How much will a user/customer pay for a solution? Can the founder find users to join testing groups?	Attend meetups and conferences that users attend Find and participate in social media of the users (e.g. Reddit, Video, chats, message boards) Investigate customer service forums for trends Observe users currently solving the problem with available solutions Performing user surveys Personally use existing products and services

Possible Questions

Possible Activities

What segments exist of the potential user base?
What are users' unsolved pain points?
- How do they currently address these pain points?
- What are their concerns and reservations about using existing solutions?
What is the user’s ideal solution?
What is the user's willingness to pay for a solution to the problem?
- Are your users and your customers the same?
- How much will a user/customer pay for a solution?
Can the founder find users to join testing groups?

Attend meetups and conferences that users attend
Find and participate in social media of the users (e.g. Reddit, Video, chats, message boards)
Investigate customer service forums for trends
Observe users currently solving the problem with available solutions
Performing user surveys
Personally use existing products and services

Acquisition Strategies

Plan for reaching and attracting new users to your product or service

Possible Questions	Possible Activities
Where will you find users? Where do users spend time online/offline? What are the best channels for reaching an audience? Is there a referral strategy? Is there a social media strategy? How will you convert users? What messaging resonates with potential users? What is the initial budget for acquiring users? What is your anticipated cost per acquisition? How is acquisition success measured?	Interview marketing experts Research user acquisition platforms Estimate cost of acquisition Research competitor’s marketing strategies Research how similar companies measure success Find out what strategies are less effective

Possible Questions

Possible Activities

Where will you find users?
- Where do users spend time online/offline?
- What are the best channels for reaching an audience?
- Is there a referral strategy?
- Is there a social media strategy?
How will you convert users?
- What messaging resonates with potential users?
- What is the initial budget for acquiring users?
- What is your anticipated cost per acquisition?
How is acquisition success measured?

Interview marketing experts
Research user acquisition platforms
Estimate cost of acquisition
Research competitor’s marketing strategies
Research how similar companies measure success
Find out what strategies are less effective

Financial Modeling

Projection of a business's financial performance based on historical data, market trends, and assumptions about future growth and expenses

Possible Questions	Possible Activities
What revenue model seems most appropriate? What pricing strategy seems most appropriate? What are the cost estimates? What are the acquisition costs? Are there any fixed or variable costs? What are the unit economics? What staff/contractors do you need and what will they cost? What is the potential lifetime value of a user? What is the break even point? What are the projected profits and margins? How does the business reach profitability? What scale does the business need to reach for profitability? How long will it take to get there? How much capital is needed to reach profitability? What are potential cash flow projections? Are there any risks and uncertainties in the financial model? What current and projected economic trends might hurt or help the business? Are there any unique benefits that the business can leverage (e.g. government subsidies, grants, etc.)?	Gather one-time and recurring costs estimates Consider full time employees vs contractors Create a worst case scenario financial modeling Create 1 year, 2 year, 5 year growth scenarios Research similar business and industries

Possible Questions

Possible Activities

What revenue model seems most appropriate?
What pricing strategy seems most appropriate?
What are the cost estimates?
- What are the acquisition costs?
- Are there any fixed or variable costs?
- What are the unit economics?
- What staff/contractors do you need and what will they cost?
What is the potential lifetime value of a user?
- What is the break even point?
What are the projected profits and margins?
How does the business reach profitability?
- What scale does the business need to reach for profitability?
- How long will it take to get there?
- How much capital is needed to reach profitability?
What are potential cash flow projections?
Are there any risks and uncertainties in the financial model?
What current and projected economic trends might hurt or help the business?
Are there any unique benefits that the business can leverage (e.g. government subsidies, grants, etc.)?

Gather one-time and recurring costs estimates
Consider full time employees vs contractors
Create a worst case scenario financial modeling
Create 1 year, 2 year, 5 year growth scenarios
Research similar business and industries

Team Assessment

Understanding the capabilities and needs of the team; identifying and cultivating relationships with key individuals and organizations that can drive success

Possible Questions	Possible Activities
What about the founding team makes them uniquely qualified to solve this problem? What are the existing specialties and skills available to the business? What specialties and skills are still needed? Are there existing products and/or services that can accelerate success? Which angel investors and VCs invest in similar businesses? How can the team leverage available network and industry connections? Are there existing organizations to partner with that will enhance success?	Research the teams of similar companies (e.g. Glassdoor) Identify important current and future Linkedin contacts Interview industry specialists

Possible Questions

Possible Activities

What about the founding team makes them uniquely qualified to solve this problem?
What are the existing specialties and skills available to the business?
What specialties and skills are still needed?
Are there existing products and/or services that can accelerate success?
Which angel investors and VCs invest in similar businesses?
How can the team leverage available network and industry connections?
Are there existing organizations to partner with that will enhance success?

Research the teams of similar companies (e.g. Glassdoor)
Identify important current and future Linkedin contacts
Interview industry specialists

You've done your own research and you still want to continue?

The goal of doing all that work is to validate that there is a real and a potentially viable business behind solving a real problem for real people. Doing this work is a huge milestone and even if the result is that there isn't a business in your app idea, that's an amazing outcome! Sometimes founders waste a lot of time and money building an application that fails due to realities that could have been discovered through some thorough investigation.

But you've done your homework! Your app idea still looks promising! So it's time to start building right?

Wrong!

Create an Informative Pitch Deck

Once the problem has been verified, and the potential viability of the business has been identified, the founding team should gather the information into a pitch deck. This pitch deck is not limited to pitching to investors, but can be used to describe the business to potential co-founders, employees, and business partners.

Key Considerations

It is not intended to contain all the information that the founding team has gathered about their business.
Do not inflate or make up information.
Be prepared to revise the deck based on problematic and confusing slides as well as useful feedback.

Resources

How to Build Your Seed Round Pitch Deck - The pitch deck should be simple and contain the information identified in this post.‍
How to Design a Better Pitch Deck - Uptech Studio is more concerned about the software business potential communicated on the deck than visual design at this stage, but the concepts identified here are useful.

Present Your Deck

Get out there and start presenting your idea to anyone that can help you get your app idea off the ground. If you're concerned about your idea being stolen, you can get a basic NDA signed, but don't let that stop you. In fact many investors won’t sign your NDA and will just pass on you entirely if you insist on an NDA. Ideas are a dime a dozen, it's the execution that matters and the passion that the founding team has at solving that problem.

At Uptech Studio, we value hearing directly from the founding team to fully understand their vision for their business. That's why we'll work with you in a 30-minute pitch session to offer friendly feedback and discuss opportunities to improve the pitch and pitch deck. This process often results in:

Suggestions for improving the pitch deck
Identification of unanswered questions
New perspectives for the business to consider
Improvements to the founding team's presentation skills
Unforeseen problems with the business plan that need further research

After presenting to Uptech Studio, both teams collaborate to determine the best next steps for the business. This may involve presenting to a larger audience for unbiased feedback or making plans for the next steps.

Resources

Orai - Practice your presentation and get feedback on fillers, facial expressions, conciseness, and more.
1 Million Cups - A community that Uptech Studio partners present to for feedback and solicit help.

So are you ready now??

Perhaps! It's hard to say definitively. Remember this path is not a straight path, and every founder's journey is a bit different, but there are a few signals to look for that may indicate that you should start building your app.

You've found significant data points that indicate that you have a potentially profitable application business
Your team has a unique set of skills and qualities that make you perfect for solving this problem
You have found a unique way to build a moat around your business that waiting to build would diminish its effectiveness

Possible Next Steps

You may not have the signals in place that indicate that there is value in building your application yet. And that's ok! It actually might be a better place to be. To help you continue to decide if you should build the app, consider doing several of the following

Build a prototype using no-code tools to help you validate that building a robust application is worth it
Operate a version of your business by leveraging manual processes to validate that people are willing to pay for an app that automates
Continue talking to investors to get their perspectives and see if they are willing to invest in your initial build
Start a conversation with us at Uptech Studio and we'll help you navigate if you're ready to build or not

Remember, your path is going to be different from other founders, but there are things we can learn from the experiences of others that will help you find your way. Take the time to do a deep dive into the problem space before you start building your application. Do everything you can to prove to yourself that the business is viable before writing your apps first line of code. You'll be able to save so much time, money, and effort by not rushing into building that new app idea of yours!