What will I answer to the customer who decided to create blinkist.com ?
Hello!
My name is Aleksei, I share my experience and vision of possible technical issues in creating startups.
Having experience in web and mobile development, as well as organizing the work of the team and interacting with customers, I can give useful advice to those who want to create their own startup.
If you have an idea but don’t know where to start? This article is for you!
Today I would like to review a startup:
Blinkist
Location: Berlin, Germany
Funding: Series C, $34.8 Million
Investors Include: Insight Partners, Greycroft
SparkNotes are a distant memory with the power of the Blinkist app. This app contains key insights from more than 2,500 nonfiction books into 15-minute reads or audio tracks — all accessed from your mobile device.
https://www.blinkist.com/
(source: https://startupsavant.com/startups-to-watch#app)
Imagine that I was approached by a customer who would like to create a service that helps to quickly find out the contents of a book?
Service idea: Key thoughts in 15 minutes.
What would I say to him?
The idea is interesting, it may well turn out.
The first thing to check is: are people willing to pay for such a service performed by the customer?
Those. Are people ready to pay for key ideas collected by the customer?
Then you should think about how you can deliver content to all platforms with minimal effort.
Obviously a website. those. most potential users can access the service through the web interface from any device.
At the stage when it is not known whether users are ready to pay for this content, I would not even recommend developing anything serious.
How can you make such functionality in the simplest way?
Create a WordPress blog and connect the subscription module.
This is the very first approximation that will allow you to understand whether people are ready to pay for this product.
Theoretically, the WordPress ecosystem is so developed that even with minimal skills it will be possible to make a similar product.
After the theory has been tested and we have confirmed that users are willing to pay for the product, we can already plan the development.
If our team were asked for development, I would suggest a symphony web application with a mysql database in a docker environment.
The functionality of the admin panel, user’s personal account, library.
In fact, the functionality would largely repeat the functionality of the blog, but at the same time it would allow you to subtly receive metrics for analyzing user behavior, customize each step and stage of user interaction with the service.
As you know, on the way to the first thousand users, the startup is working on the retention indicator. And here metrics and the ability to conduct various experiments on the product play an important role. Symphony’s solution allows you to do this.
The first approximation on the symphony I appreciated offhand:
47 designer hours
108 hours full stack web developer
18 hours of devops
25 hours project manager
47h * $75 = $3,525
108h * $90 = $9,720
18h * $100 = $1,800
25h * $80 = $2,000
Total $17,045
and in time 2–3 months
What will happen at the end of the first stage of development:
- building architecture taking into account API for mobile applications and other external connections
- the ability to fine-tune the monitoring of any user metrics
- the ability to customize any stage of the user flow
- ease of support and development
- performance
Those. as a first approximation, I would recommend that the customer independently start a blog on WordPress with subscription access.
And start development only after there is an understanding that the product is in demand.
The first approximation of a full-fledged service, according to my estimate, will cost $17,045 and take from 2 to 3 months.
And after the launch and analysis of the metrics, it will be possible to think over the further vector of product development.
Write to me with any questions you have)
