How My Mobile App Became Another Startup Casualty
A tough learning experience that I would do again
On paper, it seemed like a perfect team combination; an ambitious businessman, a talented designer, and an experienced software engineer (this is me). What could go wrong? Pretty much everything.
The Meetup
I was approached with the idea in January 2017 by two friends, only one (the designer) of which I had known for over 15 years. They wanted to start something different that could make an impact on peoples’ lives. The concept was a mobile app that would support buying and selling used or new items. I know, not a novel concept but before you shrug this off as a wannabe Craigslist or Letgo/OfferUp, our primary focus was customer safety; a serious problem for private transactions between strangers.
Without going into proprietary details or the name of the app for that matter due to potential repercussions, we were barely able to touch the surface of the safety aspects before running into a vast difference in priorities. The businessman and I were worlds apart when it came to requirements and what was to be included in the MVP (minimum viable product). This was a foreign concept to him since he came from a non-technical background. It became a point of contention trying to explain how we couldn’t…
