HOW WE MADE IT BIG AS AN APP DEVELOPMENT COMPANY
Running a startup is Hard. And running a technology startup is doubly hard. On one hand you have to face all the startup pain of starting a business from scratch plus you need to build your technology product as well.
And without a clear way of knowing the quality of designers and developers, it really is a difficult preposition to build a software product.
I am Mohammed Lakkadshaw, Founder of Mohammed Lakkadshaw and company. A web design and development firm.
I have seen my fair share of failed startups over the years. I myself started as a web developer 7 years back. I have worked with a lot of people, from managers working on startups as side projects to fortune 500 firms. Even rich kids from private schools with app ideas.
And I have heard a lot of awful stories as well. I don’t know if this is the case only with me but most of the clients that I had worked with, were as I called them burned-out clients.
They had worked with someone else in the past and that someone else wasn’t able to complete the project. Many times we got projects that were so bad we had to abandon the code and start again.
And software business is hard too. Nowadays, every other guy with a two months course in web development says he is an expert and can build your educational web application or quiz game that is going to scale millions of users.
Then there are clients with unrealistic expectations as well. (Once we had a guy who wanted to build “Facebook but better” for $500.)
It is a very opaque market, it is difficult to distinguish who is good and who is not and what is the fair value of service being offered.
To succeed in such the market the clear way is to build trust.
So, How do we build trust: By being honest.
Honest about your abilities to execute software projects, about the value that you can offer to the client. About how we going to charge the client and why.
By being completely transparent in our workings we earn trust of our clients.
We are a specialised firm. We are into web application development. Whether it is server side or front-end, whether it is web on the desktop or on the mobile. We have created awesome application that handle millions and millions of users daily. We can handle it. We build mobile apps using applications like Ionic, Angular and React for iOS.
We are a specialised firm. We are into web application development. Whether it is server side or front-end, whether it is web on the desktop or on the mobile. We have created awesome application that handle millions and millions of users daily. We can handle it. We build mobile apps using applications like Ionic, Angular and React for iOS.
But we don’t know much about windows or MacOSX applications so we don’t build those.
Believe me, saying no to client, even when you know you can’t execute it, is a very difficult preposition.
When a client comes to us with a business idea. We study the idea and we advice our clients
We tell them about the best technology stack to use. How to build the MVP, what features to keep and what to shelve to build the most complete app in their budget.
Many times clients come to us, with a big application in mind. We tell them it would be a better bet to build a small application market test it and add features as we go along.
We have our interaction design teams and A/B test web applications figuring out the simplest ways for the customer to use the software.
And if there is something we can’t do. We go out of our way to find the vender that can that will help our client.
What we want for our client, is to succeed and we would rather earn less money and work for a startup that is going to succeed than earn more money from a startup that is going to fail.
We would rather earn less money and work for a startup that is going to succeed than earn more money from a startup that is going to fail.
I am being a bit selfish in this, because when a startup succeeds more people use the software we have made and we get to tell other people and potential clients we made this application. we get more glory.
But, when a startup fails. The code just gets thrown out in the dustbin. It is really difficult to see the work that we have done for months and months, just getting wasted and on one is ever uses it. Its like a part of our lives is going down the bin.
Our clients love us. So, much so that we have become their product department. We build their software, maintain their software. we even advice them on hiring other software development firms in areas where we dont build.
So, whoever comes our way we help them succeed. And as the time goes by, people start to trust you. They tell their family and friends how awesome you are and if anybody needed to build a web application or even needed advice to build a software application they know just the guy to contact: Mohammed.
And that trust that we have with our clients is I think the greatest wealth that we have earned.
