Author: Magdalena Brych

What does it take to create a successful App? Technical skills? Well, not really. In fact, many successful founders and startup CEOs have proven otherwise. The founders and CEOs featured in this article have no technical skills and have gone out of their way to create successful and prize-winning Apps.

Creating apps without any technical knowledge is like cooking without knowing much about ingredients, it’s helpful but not necessary. Interestingly in this case, these top nine founders and CEOs with non-technical skills have turned the market to their advantage.

With modern technology, all you need is an idea – a great idea.

Arum Kang, Dawoon Kang and Soo Kang

Founders of Coffee Meets Bagel

Famously known as the 3 Kang sisters, Arum, Dawoon and Soo are originally from South Korea. Both Arum and Dawoon aspired to study in the top-ranked MBA schools in the USA, Harvard and Stanford. Dawoon first made it to Stanford and Arum soon started studying at Harvard Business School.

After graduating from business school, the 3 Kang sisters noticed the monotony in the dating apps arena and decided to break it. They thought of an app that limits the number of profiles users can interact with each day and offers unique icebreaker information for the matches.

And so, Coffee Meets Bagel was born. In April 2012, it was launched in New York City, May in Boston and October in San Francisco. Six years down the line the company has a whopping net worth of about $150 million (Estimated Value).

Walker Williams

Founder and CEO of Teespring

At an early stage in his life, Walker had a number of paths that he desired to pursue, including a cartoonist and a writer. However, at the age of 16, he settled and set a course on becoming an entrepreneur. Walker later joined the Brown University and obtained Bachelor’s degree in Arts and History, 2007-2011.

In 2011, he joined forces with Evan and together, they created a platform for custom merchandise, Teespring. Teespring enables users to create unique custom designs, set prices for their item(s) and set a sales goal.

By 2016, Teespring was valued at over 30 million and its CEO Walker was listed in the 40 Under 40 2016 for the social commerce company.

AJ Forsythe

CEO of iCracked Inc.

AJ Forsythe has an exemplary track record in the field of business and entrepreneurship. His business endeavors have ranged from running a winery, beekeeping and founding iCracked Inc.

AJ graduated from California Polytechnic State University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology/Biology in 2011. AJ founded iCracked in his dorm room in 2010. iCracked has grown since then to be the world’s largest and most efficient on demand repair service for smartphones and tablets with over 4000 Certified iTechs and in 11 countries.

AJ made it to be one of Forbes 30 under 30. At the moment, iCracked has expanded to the UK and Europe with offices in London and Berlin.

Stephanie Tilenius

Founder and CEO of Vida Health Inc.

 

Stephanie studied at Harvard University then joined Brandeis University to do a BA in Economics and finally an MA in International Finance. She worked at Paypal and EBay for 9 years before joining Google and helping build and launch several products.

Stephanie later founded Vida Health in 2012. Vida provides expert, personalized and on-demand health coaching together with programs from a network of experienced health care providers and leading medical institutions.

Approximately 133 million people in the U.S. alone live with chronic conditions and 70% of the $3T healthcare spend in the U.S ends up in preventable chronic conditions that Vida is now focusing on.

Sean Rad

Founder and Chairman of Tinder

Sean Rad was brought up in the Persian community of Beverly Hills by his parents who are Iranian immigrants. Rad attended the University of Southern California in 2004. Two years later, he dropped out to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors.

Rad launched Tinder alongside other co-founders in 2012. Tinder is a dating app and it was an overnight success. Two months down the line after its launch, Tinder reached over a million matches.
On August 6, 2018, the Match Group announced Tinder had over 3.7 million paid subscribers, which is up by 81 percent over the same quarter in 2017. The company is now valued at around $3 billion and is one of the highest-grossing apps in App Store.

Jamie Wong

Founder and CEO of Vayable

Jamie’s background is in disruptive media, advocacy and communication. She attended the Universitat de Barcelona to study Art, History, Politics and later did her BA in History at Wesleyan University and finally went to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Jamie Wong co-founded Vayable in 2010. Her vision for a more open world that enables collaborative experiences and exchanges through travel is the driving force behind Vayable. While using the platform, you can discover, buy and sell unique travel experiences.
Vayable is currently in over 240 cities and has featured in the New York Times, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.

Tracy Young

Founder and CEO of PlanGrid

Tracy attended California state University and majored in Civil Engineering. In 2008, she graduated and became a Construction Project Engineer.

She helped build two hospitals. In the process, she realized that many things went wrong not because they were poor builders but because there was no technology that could enabled them to do better. This inspired the creation of PlanGrid in 2012.

PlanGrid is a field collaboration software for construction. It has grown to be the lead construction productivity software completing over 1 million projects around the world.

Evan Sharp

Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Pinterest

Sharp studied Architecture at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Prior to that, he received a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Chicago. Evan  found inspiration from pinning interesting maps, science facts, architecture, vacation plans, and fonts for his design projects.

Sharp met Ben Silbermann, Pinterest CEO and fellow co-founder, through a mutual friend while in Columbia University’s architecture program. Pinterest was launched in 2010. An online platform for saving, searching, bookmarking creative ideas uploaded by the people from around the world.

As of 17th October 2018, Pinterest has over 250 million monthly active users with a total number of over 175 billion Pinterest Pins.

Conclusion

In the century when technology evolves every day being a tech-savvy is not crucial to make the next big app in the market. The nine founders and C.E.Os are a case in point that tech-skills are not necessary in order to thrive in tech-world!

See also:

• MVP development for startups and mature enterprises
• The five mistakes startups make when developing first App
• From idea to working prototype: Startup App development guide initial stage

 
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Minimum Viable Product: What should be the next step after creating MVP?

Minimum Viable Product, abbreviated as MVP, is commonly used in the start-up terminology, unfortunately, not always wisely. When we want to create a new successful service (whether technological or not), we want and need to be innovative! Indeed, to innovate is to imagine and to create something brand new. So, you embark on a risky adventure, with very little information regarding the actual demand for your product or service.

What about MVP?

Innovation is often very expensive. What is more, most of the time, it is impossible to predict any possible return on the investment due to the lack of information which makes any investment somewhat irrational. MVP answers the question: “How can I gather the most information about market expectations in reference to what I want to propose? How can I reduce the initial investment costs as much as possible and lower the risk as much as possible?” In the past, the old way was to release first version of the product several months after the investment and to offer an almost finished and final product. This can be avoided by applying and following the concept of Minimum Viable Product so that a product that answers customer’s main problem of accessory functions can be proposed. MVP is a method that helps to create a final product with a biggest number of  functions expected by a target audience and also to offer the fastest product to the market. We described the MVP development idea in details in this article.

We already have MVP – what’s next?

Now that the meaning of MVP has been explained, you will understand why companies work on MMP. MMP stands from Minimum Marketable Product and it is the minimum number of products that can be produced and delivered so that they can be presentable and usable. So, once we have our Minimum Viable Product, we could take the next step and try to introduce our product to the market. But to do that we need to know something about MMP.

MMP – what is it?

Minimum Marketable Product is a term which refers to a product that has the lowest number of relevant features but is already suitable for sale and marketing. Such an approach allows for a faster implementation of products into the production environment which also means profits are generated quicker and earlier. MMP allows you to focus on a limited number of functions instead of creating a hidden product for a longer period of time. In addition not only do we minimise the risk but also gain on time and costs. Building the perfect application that we are simply going to release into the world is never the best solution!

Going from MPV to MMP – when and why should you shift from MPV to MMP?

One of the best and well-known examples of MMP is the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. On the one hand, Apple’s teams put a lot of effort and work to build a hand, the phone lacked a significant number of basic functions, e.g. copy and paste or sending messages to multiple users at the same time! After the initial success, Apple began to work on expanding and improving the system.

So, we could ask – how can we build MMP? First, limit the product to a specific market segment (do not try to please everyone at the same time!). Next, select only those functionalities that are necessary and essential for a given target group (it is necessary to identify those features that will lead to success in the market.). Remember, use MVP to determine the right functionalities of your product.

How to bridge the gap between MVP and MMP?

Every decision you make depends on result MVP validation. If it goes well, you could start thinking about MMP and launching the product to the market. If not, you may have a problem, because you will not know what and where it went wrong – was it the product or the idea itself. Theoretically, losing is easier, because of the certainty that your idea and/or the product (or at least something) is not good and does not work well. If the validation of MVP is successful, you win, but it doesn’t mean that you will profit again. So, in order to have greater range of possibilities, you could validate (or invalidate) your MVP in one way – by shifting to an MMP. This method will also reveal to you all the features your product must have. If you want to win, you will find the MVP market helpful in defining your target audience. First, you must collect constructive feedback, so try to find someone who will benefit most from your idea. Second, the greatest problem of start-up owners is their inactivity. Once they confirm their idea as useful and beneficial, they give it up. You have to start looking for more data and for more feedback. The next step after MVP and role of MMP in this process depends on the experience of the customer with your product. It could show you what to do next.

Can you skip MVP?

To put it simply, we can conclude that one MMP is made up of one MVP. So, normally, you couldn’t skip the MVP. The difference is that we treat MVP in terms of experiments. We collect user feedback and improve the products based on it. Sometimes your MVP is made up of a simple prototype, thanks to which you can test the reasonableness of the idea. This approach increases the success of the final application or system. Remember to always have a clear vision of the product you manufacture. When thinking about MVP, keep in mind also MMP, otherwise, it may turn out that your product contains several dozen functions that are valuable separately, but put together do not make much sense.

See also: 5 mistakes Startups make when developing first App

Launching MMP

If you are sure that your MVP is valid, you could begin working on the full and final product. So, if MMP is just a set of features based on which the decision of the product launch will be made, you have to question yourself constantly about them, their functionality and necessity. If you collect all the feedback about MVP, you can start. Firstly, you must prioritize your backlogs. Try to obtain the true data and facts about your product and consider why it could either work well or fail. When creating MMP you have to follow the customers’ advice and do what they want. Your backlog, which you must create, should enlist all the features which are important to launch your product on market. The clients’ responses could help you to improve your product and find all the features necessary to launch MMP. If you do it well, you will win and achieve success. While launching MMP, the feedback and the analysis of MVP proved to be very important.

If you want to win and launch your product to the market, like Dropbox or any other start-up, you must create the best Minimum Viable Product and analyse all the feedback to constantly improve your product. It is important to bridge the gap and to observe the market. If you can predict the expectations, you can react and introduce changes to give the people what they want. In the end, this is your goal.

Developing an app can be a time-consuming, expensive endeavor. As such, it’s important to work with a methodology that will deliver on ROI and business objectives. Many companies however choose the wrong approach. You have numerous startups which have failed because they took an idea, developed it for months, or even years, and never market tested it until launch. The results from taking this approach can range from disappointing to disastrous. To address this, companies have started working with MVPs, or Minimum Viable Products.

How to Develop an MVP

The methodology starts with identifying a problem and then building a bare bones product known as the MVP, in order to test assumptions and customer reactions to it.With each iteration of the MVP, the company gathers actionable data and metrics in order to determine various cause and effect relationships. 

If everything goes as expected, the MVP is developed further by adding new features and functionalities. However, if at a certain point, it becomes clear that the product idea is not viable, the company can pivot at a relatively low cost, and revert to a previous functional step of the development process. For example, if it becomes clear that the current development path will lead to a product that will not be financially viable for the current marketplace, the company can rollback changes easily, or even scrap the project in its entirety. However, the latter option is fairly rare when working with an MVP.

The process of developing an MVP starts with a planning phase. During this phase, you will want to map out the long-term goals of the product, identify the reasoning behind its development, and the criteria which will indicate whether the product is successful or not.You then need to take a look at your users. This is where you create user personas, identify use cases, and map out the journey each user needs to undertake in order to achieve their end goal with the product. 

Once the conceptual framework is in place, it’s time to start thinking about features. In an MVP, features are ranked according to importance, and the most important features relate to your user map and your end business goals. For example, if you own a chain of coffee shops, and you would like to build an app that reduces the number of time people wait in line for their coffee, you might be looking to implement features that allow customers to pre-order coffee online before they reach the coffee shop.

In this case, you will need several essential features: clients have to be able to pay through the app, they will have to be registered in a database, and they will need to receive a proof-of-payment on their phone, in order to redeem their order when they reach the coffee-shop. At this point, we’ve identified three essential features for your app. In order to build an MVP, we will have to break these features down even further, and perhaps only market test one or two of them, so that we can reduce costs and development time. 

Let’s say we’ve decided to test the concept: are clients really interested in pre-ordering coffee? The MVP will perhaps allow customers to simply pre-order coffee without paying for it, and the app will log their order into a database. The experiment can be run for a couple of days with a handful of loyal customers, in order to test results. If everything looks good, the mobile payment feature can be added and tested next.

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Features to avoid in an MVP

That said, there are features which are almost universally poorly suited for an MVP. Features that are completely aesthetic in nature, for example, do not have to be added to the MVP, because they provide very little quantifiable value. These features should be added only after the core functionality has been tested. Other features such as social media integration also fall into this category. 

You then have copycat features. Adding features that are similar to more established apps will extend your timeline and budget, but they will not provide new insights into the usefulness of your product. Copycat features have already been tested by the larger, more successful app, and as such, they can be added at a later stage of the product development.

Finally, you have features which are requested by early users. This may seem a little counter intuitive because one of the main purposes of the MVP is to test the users’ response to a product. However, features requested by early users might not actually be a good fit for your business goals. For example, some users may request social media integration at a very early stage of the product, which would take time and resources to implement, without providing any quantifiable value to the MVP. These requested features should be noted down and kept in mind for later versions of the product.

The Most Common MVP Development Pitfall

The main purpose of the MVP is to provide validated learning. Validated learning is the iterative process which measures the effectiveness of a product in reaching the set business goals. As such, it’s important to keep in mind that any feature added to the MVP has to have a measurable impact across relevant metrics. Some companies will make the mistake of not taking this into account, and they will go on to view the MVP as the most stripped down version of a product, removing essential features in the process. 

To avoid this mistake, always keep the business goal in mind, as this will help you reach a balance between cost-effectiveness, and validated learning. However, balance is the key word here. Some companies will go overboard with the initial features of the MVP, to the tune of the MVP occupying 97% of their backlog which contradicts the whole idea of an MVP. The MVP should have several key features that will be tested, with the rest of the functionality being implemented once the market responds positively to the concept behind your product.

The Benefits of Developing an MVP

So what are the benefits of developing an MVP? The first benefit would be a rapid development process. It usually takes one or two months to have a market ready MVP. You will also need a much smaller budget to develop an MVP since most features will not make it into the product. 

Since the MVP is a lightweight version of a larger final product, the risk for investors is much smaller. With a reduced development timeframe and budget, investors are much more willing to test an idea and see if it is well received by the market. And, once the concept has proven itself within the market, stakeholders and investors will be much more willing to buy in.

Finally, the MVP development process itself builds an audience. At first, the MVP may be used to test market reactions, and see if a product is welcome by users. But once the MVP starts to gain traction, some users will become early adopters, and develop loyalty towards the product. This means that by the time you get to market, not only will your basic assumptions about the user base be validated, you will have a core set of users ready to support the product.

See also:

• Minimum Viable Product: from MVP to MMP
• 5 Mistakes Startups Make When Developing First App
• How to Build a Successful MVP