What is the best way to build a successful app company?

In the early days of my entrepreneurial journey, I was asking myself the same question. After years of experience as a co-founder, developer, product owner, and consultant I will be honest with you. There is no such thing as “the best way” to build a successful app company. I know it may be a bit disappointing but luckily there is a set of indicators that will bring you closer to success.

I have the most of experience with B2C apps as co-founder of SaveMyTime (http://savemytime.co) and consultant in plenty of mobile projects targeting the B2C segment. In this answer do not expect clear and simple solutions. I will ask you a lot of questions which you will need to answer by yourself or with your business partners.

The most important thing at the very beginning is the idea. Why do you actually want to build a mobile app? The reason why you want to build the app is even more important than how the app will like in the end. This initial thought needs to drive you during the whole process of building your business. The feeling needs to be very strong because it will guide you till the end of the project. If you are not sure (and I mean really really really sure) about the future success of your idea, it may be better to choose something else.

When you feel that the idea is solid and you want to pursue it, think about the business model. You will need to earn money somehow and it’s better to have a plan for this. There is an endless list of possibilities as to how will you grow your business financially, but to give some examples:

• free app with basic functionality and paid subscriptions for extra features like SaveMyTime
• fully paid app like Shine
• free app with in-app purchases very popular in games like Candy Crush Saga
• free app that is complementary to a bigger offline or online business like Uber Eats
• free app with in-app ads like Facebook
• free app fully funded by investors who see potential ROI. Even though the app is free at the beginning, there needs to be a business model for future income — Brainly is a good example.

When you know why you want to build the company and how you will earn the money, it’s a good moment to think about the Unique Value Proposition and key features of your app. Ask yourself some questions:

• who is my target audience?
• why would end users like to use the app?
• which features would be most important for them?
• how much are they willing to pay for the app?
• how will you attract your users?

A very good tool that will help you is the business model canvas. It’s very often used during Product Design Sprints.

At, this stage it’s really important to divide the list of features in two parts:

• The most important ones that are the core of the apps USP
• Complementary features that make the app more user-friendly, more beautiful or just better

From the very beginning focus on the most important ones and validate them. The B2C market is very hard and you can’t be sure what features will be most interesting tor the users. Here is where lean management and testing every single idea come in. Do not be afraid to confront the app idea with as many people as you can. They will give you a lot of valuable feedback and you should do it at every stage of your work. Do not make any decisions based only on your assumptions. Always confront them with the end users and draw conclusions. It will allow you to learn if your potential customers will use the app before spending any money on coding.

This is also a very good moment to ask yourself one question: Do you really need an app for this? Sometimes it’s much cheaper to create a responsive website that can run on mobile to achieve very similar results.

At this stage I recommend two books:

• “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries
• “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days” by Jake Knapp

So you have the foundations for your app business. Now comes the hard part — implementation. Software development is not a piece of cake and will require a lot of effort. On the bright side, watching how your idea becomes real is the best feeling ever! There are a few things to keep in mind when you get to this stage:

• choose the right technology — there is a lot of solutions for mobile development and choosing the right one will be very important for your business. Should you implement your app only for Android or iOS? If you need both, which one should come first? Should you use cross-platform tools like React Native or go fully native?
• find the right people to do the job — these are the people who will get paid a lot of money to implement your app. You need to choose developers and managers who will feel the project and dedicate their time to it. Choose them wisely.
• build the process of development — agile development is a circular process that consists of design, software creation, quality assurance, and user testing. The process needs to be bulletproof and well thought-out to gather feedback from users as often as possible and build quality software.

If carefully follow our guidelines, you should end up with a functional and beautifully crafted mobile app. It’s not an easy process and you will find a lot of places where you can fail. You will become frustrated and tired but in the moments of despair remind yourself about the Why of your business and what drives you the most to do it. It’s also very helpful to find partners who will help you during the process. It could be you mates that share the belief in the idea, mentors, angel investors or consultancy companies that have a lot of experience.

I wish you luck in your entrepreneurial journey. It’s a beautiful one with ups and downs, but for sure full of great experiences.

Originally published at http://quora.com.