How I Built the Journey App for Under $10K
Part 1: Ideation
The Journey app helps you find and connect with communities that share your passions — from cooking to skydiving and everything in between.
The last thing I want to do with this blog post is to make it seem easy to build a product like Journey. It’s not. But it doesn’t have to break the bank, and you most likely don’t need to raise $100K to get it off the ground.
One more thing before we get into it. “Solo” founder makes it sound like I did everything myself, which is certainly not the case. I had a ton of help at every step along the way, from friends, family, my network, online communities, and even random people I met in cafés. It’s to your and your company’s detriment to think you have to shoulder the entire creation process yourself.
The $100K quote
It was a beautiful winter’s day in early 2019. I’d just jumped out of a cab in Industry City, Brooklyn-an ex-industrial area turned uber-trendy suburb of offices, bars, breweries, furniture makers, chocolatiers, and markets. I was there to meet with the leaders of a design and development agency that a friend had highly recommended. We sat down in a beautiful WeWork-esque boardroom and started to discuss my idea.
It was a great conversation. I was excited. They were excited. They took me through their approach to the idea validation, design, and build. We discussed the amazing team they would put together, their agile development process, and their assistance with the launch. They were great guys. But when the subject of price inevitably reared its head, the air of excitement was quickly sucked from the room. $80-$100K. Just to get to minimum viable product (MVP).
And I get it-they’re based in NYC, and this city ain’t cheap. They’ve got to turn a profit, and to be fair to them, many U.S. companies will happily pay them 5 times that to deliver a tech product. And who’s to say that wasn’t the right option for me? I may have arrived at a better product, faster, which could have led me to raise a seed, and I’d be off to the races.
But I quickly would have burned through much of what I had saved, and I would not be writing this blog post from the Williamsburg apartment my wife and I were able to put down a deposit for.
So I became obsessed with trying to do as much of the process as possible myself, keeping costs to a minimum. I was amazed by what I found I could do-anyone could do-by searching for the right tools and tinkering a bit. Here is a play-by-play of how I built Journey, and what I would do differently if I were to do it all again.
Ideation
The ideation process never ends, but it’s particularly difficult in the beginning. So many options. So many paths you can go down. Product people say, “Start with the problem.” Depending on what you’re trying to do, I think this can be too narrow. Instead, start with the change you want to create in the world, and then pick a problem that gets in the way. Make sure it’s a problem you’re passionate about solving.
What went well in the ideation of Journey:
- I knew from all I’d read that ideas are cheap, and I shouldn’t worry about someone stealing them. Momentum and execution are everything, so I spoke to as many people as I could about my idea. BUT, there’s a big caveat about this in the “If I had my time again” section below.
- I focused on my own frustration — problems that I felt personally (you can read more about this in my blog post The Story of How Journey Came to Life). This practice helps not only when designing an elegant solution to a specific problem (a product), but also when the chips are down or you’re having a bad day, and you can think back to why you’re doing this in the first place. It can be a powerful tool for motivation.
- I spoke to a lot of people, continually refining what was important to me and what problems I wanted to focus on, followed by brainstorming what a solution could look like. My first idea for Journey was an app that helped you set and track goals, and by the time I started the design process it was a social network that helps you achieve your goals by building community around them. Creating a product can be a soul-searching exercise at times.
- I dived in once I was about 70 percent clear on my vision for what I wanted the MVP to be. On a trip back to my hometown of Sydney, I started filming interviews before I’d even sketched the login screen. At some point you just have to start. You know how you can go crazy thinking about a problem for days, and then you talk to someone about it and in 5 minutes you feel completely fine? It can be like this with putting pen to paper: once you’re 50 percent clear on what you want to build, get stuck into validating the idea and you’ll figure out the rest much faster. Don’t forget that you can iterate while still in the validation stage — in fact, it’s a very good idea, and I should have done more of it.
If I had my time again:
- I didn’t do Jake Knapp’s Three-Hour Brand Sprint until after I’d done the UX. I think the sprint would have been even more valuable before doing the UX, and I probably would have read and used Knapp’s book, too.
- Many people you speak to will want to play devil’s advocate — almost all of them out of love and support — and this is useful to a point. You definitely need debate, but too much of it can be disheartening or lead you to doubt your own idea or ability — or both. Be mindful of which of your friends or family are likely to play devil’s advocate, and prepare yourself for it — or try not to discuss your idea with multiple cynics in one week! My wife and I were watching Sara Blakely (founder of Spanx) on MasterClass recently. Blakely said that she kept Spanx a secret from all of her friends and family for an entire year until she launched, purely because she was afraid they would be able to convince her not to do it! Another approach you can take is to frame each conversation with a devil’s advocate as practice for pitching an investor. Be particularly mindful of group situations such as dinners, where the conversation can turn into a roasting. Try your best not to get defensive, and prepare an elegant way out of the conversation should it start steering in that direction.
- You will have bursts of inspiration out of nowhere. Don’t waste these! They are a gold mine. When they happen stop what you’re doing and start writing, drawing, or whatever you need to do.
- Spend time in Indie Hackers. It has a lot of useful information and is a great community to tap into. Test ideas here.
- Also spend time on Twitter. Follow people that would be in your target audience and, over-time, ask them if they would use and pay for your idea. Also look for the opportunity to reply to a VCs Twitter thread with your idea and see if you can get their thoughts (though this will likely be a tough ask).
- Search Google, Product Hunt, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office to see if anyone else is working on your idea, or has in the past. If someone has worked on your idea in the past and failed, don’t be disheartened, there are many reasons a business fails. Try to figure out why it did, and even reach out to the founder to see if you can find out more. If someone is currently working on it, it may be worth partnering with them. And if this is not something you want to look at, a small change in the product, branding, or target market is all you may need to differentiate.
- Combine idea validation (next blog post in the series) with the tail end of the ideation process. Iterate on the pain points, solution, features, and messaging to identify the one that resonates most with your target audience. This is a great article on how to do this.
Lastly, set a deadline and make a choice. I was lucky — I quickly found a problem and an idea that I was passionate about. But that can be rare. Set a deadline for when you will decide on the idea you’ll pursue. And once you’ve made that decision, get behind it, get passionate about it, and don’t look back.
Ideation tools
- What: Brainstorm with friends
- Cost: Free
- What I would do differently: Also get feedback on your idea in this Indie Hackers community , this Reddit community and this Facebook group — but beware: if they are not your target audience, take their comments with a grain of salt. Even if you know they’re not your target audience, it’s worth posting, as they may have seen similar ideas or might be able to make relevant introductions.
- What: Set up a place you can quickly access (on your phone) to brain-dump whenever you think of something. I used Evernote.
- Cost: Free
- What I would do differently: I’m now using Notion and love it. I would use this over Evernote. Coda is also worth a look–I struggled to choose between the two.
- What: Search for your idea to see if anyone’s tried it in the past
- Cost: Free
- What I would do differently: Also search Product Hunt and the United States Patent and Trademarks Office
- What: Three-Hour Brand Sprint (while this is a brand sprint, it’s also relevant to product ideation)
- Cost: Free
- What I would do differently: Jake Knapp’s book, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, is probably much better than the Brand Sprint.
Originally published at https://startyourjourney.io on May 22, 2020.