FAQ

A: Determining whether your idea for a mobile app is a good idea or a bad idea can sometimes be a scary exercise to go through. When given a choice to challenge our strongest held beliefs or continue without questioning them, we have to make a real choice every day.

Consider for a minute your firmly held beliefs about politics or religion. Most of the time, you would probably prefer not to talk to people who disagree with your position. You likely choose not to interact with people strongly opposed to your position, especially when they have convictions as firm as your own.

This same defense of your position applies in many other areas of our lives. Consider your choice of computer. Do you have a Mac or a PC? Consider your option of mobile phone. Do you have an iPhone, or do you have an android phone?

The longer we hold a belief, the stronger we feel about its correctness. The longer we go without our ideas and strong convictions being challenged, the less willing to hear other people’s conflicting opinions we are.

We also start to find other people who agree with us, and we tend to spend more time with them instead of with people who might disagree. And this further reinforces our convictions.

As you can imagine, this approach toward life might allow you to be blissfully ignorant of things that might not add value. But it also means you might be missing out on something far more valuable than you can imagine. You can’t imagine it because you aren’t willing to hear it.

So, what does this have to do with your concept and idea for a mobile app? Everything!

Not only does idea validation apply to mobile apps, but it also applies to every aspect of a business, where you’re trying to earn money from other people.

To be clear, I’m not talking about validating whether or not your idea is interesting or unique or exciting. I’m also not talking about whether your idea will solve a unique problem better than other solutions. There are plenty of ideas capable of doing all these things yet making zero money because people evaluate their idea with the wrong criteria.

The criteria that we will use to validate your app idea is the following :

• The App Solves a Meaningful Problem
• A Community of People has this Problem
• This Problem is Currently not Solved or not Solved in an Efficient way
• A Mobile App is the Right Solution
• You can Build the Solution
• People Will Pay You for the Solution

The App Solves a Meaningful Problem

We often hear stories about inventors and entrepreneurs inspired by an idea that came to them in their lives. They thought of a solution to a problem that they were having and created a solution to tackle that problem.

The story of how Apple came up with the design and features for the iPhone comes to mind. Steve Jobs said the inspiration for that product came from the collective desires of the team building it. He said the group “designed a phone that they would want to use and share with their friends and family. ”

That story and other stories like it might cause us to get the wrong idea about our ideas.

Let’s look at the specific example of building a mobile phone. The problem the team at Apple was solving already met the criteria of everything else that I listed above.

The team at Apple didn’t come up with the idea randomly. The team viewed the entire project through a marketing lens. The specific design is what was influenced by the team building it, and that’s the part everyone hears about. But we don’t get to see the inner workings of the marketing side of things. We hear the version of the story that sounds like the iPhone idea emerged out of thin air.

As an entrepreneur, the part of the story left out is probably the most important part to pay attention to.

So, what significant problem do you want to solve with your app? Depending on your passion for your idea, thinking about it probably gets you pretty excited! Especially if this idea has been floating around your head for a significant amount of time.

Perhaps the problem you want to solve helps people communicate. Maybe it allows people to educate or receive an education. Perhaps your app will entertain. Maybe, your app connects the physical world through digital channels.

But, we have the good fortune of not being the first people ever to build a mobile app. And perhaps we have come up with something that does not fit into the existing categories of absence.

But, it is vitally important if you were launching your first app to make sure that you can point to a category that it would fall into.

If it doesn’t fall into any of the categories that exist today, two problems come to mind. One, you aren’t honest with yourself about the category your app falls into. Or two, you have created something so new that people either don’t want it or don’t know they want it.

I hope that the reason your app doesn’t fall into an existing category is the first reason. If you cannot place your app in an existing category, you’ve created one of the most challenging marketing situations possible.

A community of people has this problem

To know whether you will have success with your mobile app, you can quickly size the market by seeing if a community of people is gathering around the problem your app can solve.

An excellent example of this is identifying problems that everyone agrees is a problem. Or, a problem that nobody agrees on a solution for. There’s no better example to identify problems that nobody agrees on solutions for than politics.

I don’t want to bring up any political issues; I’m thinking of the technical question around people voting from their mobile phones instead of voting in person at a voting booth. The problem to be solved is getting more people to vote. Or is the problem making sure all votes are counted? Or, is the problem to be solved, making sure elections aren’t tampered with? Could we forgo agreeing on naming the problem if there is a single solution that addresses them all?

Finding the community of people who have the problem you are trying to solve will give you a leg up. This community can provide you initial ideas on what a solution might look like. They can give you feedback as you design your app to let you know if you are getting it right.

And then, when you are ready to launch, they will be the first people to vote with their wallets and pay for the solution that you have created. They also become brand ambassadors who share the solution you built with everyone they know—a genuinely viral phenomenon.

So, make a list. How many people have this problem you are solving? How many people know they have this problem? How many people have the problem but don’t realize it?

And from among the people and groups that have the problem, how many of them want it solved? How many of them would pay to have it solved? And finally, how many want the problem solved with a mobile app?

The Problem is Currently Not Solved or Solved in an Efficient Way

Let’s talk about a specific solution to a problem that I can’t articulate very well.

The solution is the walkie-talkie app on my Apple Watch.

If you use this app regularly, you’ll understand where I’m coming from. I love this app and wish more people would use it.

I know the walkie-talkie app is designed for short snippets of almost real-time communication. And I know how I like to use it best. It’s one of the most effective ways for me to communicate with my wife around the house. I don’t live in a very big home, but when I’m in the basement, and my wife is upstairs, I can hold my finger down on my Apple Watch and ask her a quick question.

What are the alternative solutions to the problem that I just described?

I could have sent a text message. I could’ve sent a voice message. I could’ve given her a phone call. I could have yelled across the house. I could have walked upstairs to her location. I could’ve asked one of my children to deliver the message to my wife for me.

As an extensive user of the walkie-talkie app, I can confidently say that using it is dramatically better than any of the alternatives I described.

A Mobile App is the Best Place to Solve the Identified Problem

This concept seems easy enough to understand, but as soon as you start scrolling through all of the different apps that have ever been created, including the ones that are making lots of money but don’t make any sense, you’ll start to question.

You will recall early on in the iPhone lifetime the commercials that had the theme “there’s an app for that. ”These advertisements focused on some pretty practical solutions. Travel apps were highlighted, games were highlighted, communication apps were highlighted, and content consumption apps were highlighted.

At the end of these advertisements, Apple would boast over 1 million apps on the App Store.

What was never said in these advertisements was how many apps on the App Store were utterly useless. If the useless apps were put into a category, I assume they would fall under the general “entertainment” category. Not because of their entertainment value or engaging content. But because of their ability to hold your attention. Or give you a quick laugh.

Too many of the early apps in the App Store were farting apps. Thousands upon thousands of apps were dedicated to enabling users to press a button to generate human flatulence sounds.

These apps represent a perfect example of a solution that people didn’t know they had a problem it solved. More importantly, to you, is whether or not these trendy apps can generate any income. At the time, the answer was an astounding yes. These farting apps made a lot of money. And people were using them a lot!

These apps were free to download and run an unbelievable amount of ads. Many of which were difficult to dismiss, forcing you to tap on something not intended. You’d often be stuck watching a 30 – 60-second ad before you could freely express yourself again – via flatulence sounds, of course!

If your goal is to release an app like this, I wish you the best of luck. However, we will not be covering apps like this in this series. Beyond explaining that they exist, they employ marketing and advertising tactics that prey upon unhealthy mobile device use. Not a praiseworthy Niche to be involved with. No matter how lucrative.

You can build the solution

In a later part of this series, I will be talking at length about gathering together the people and resources, and tools necessary to build your idea into a mobile app. Right now, I want to cover your ability to turn your idea into a product.

It’s one thing to be an idea-factory. It’s an entirely different thing to be an idea-builder.

One of my most favorite quotes attributed to Albert Einstein says, “there comes the point in a person’s life when acquiring more knowledge is detrimental – When it comes at the expense of creating things with the knowledge that you have.”

The beautiful irony in what he said is that there are things you learn in the course of doing that you cannot learn from merely studying.

In other places, I talk at length about business ideas and whether you are the right person to bring that idea into the world. Specifically, I dive into the capabilities and access that you have that will set you up for success.

I gave the example of identifying problems at the DMV. Everyone knows that the DMV has serious efficiency problems. And many people have probably come up with solutions to fix that. But, just because you have a good idea and there is a massive community that agrees the idea could solve the problem, you are not the right person to solve that problem.

You are not the right person to solve this problem because you don’t have the access or position to solve it, and you likely aren’t interested in working for the government to get the access and position you need.

However, this series is not about deploying a new business. I assume you are here because you want to deploy a mobile app. While there may be gaps in your capabilities today, I will provide you with everything you need to succeed in launching a mobile app by the end of this series.

People will pay you for the solution

The final consideration and probably the one you were most interested to learn about; will pay you for the solution you have created.

This is similar in nature to the question we answered above regarding the community’s size with the problem you are solving. But, with the additional twist of these people also having money to spend on the solution.

There are two parts to determining if people will pay you for the solution you are offering. One, the problem your customers are facing is painful enough that they will pay you to make the pain go away. And, two, your solution does solve the problem.

To get the answer to the first part, all you need to do is see what people are doing today to reduce or remove the problem in their life.

This is called market proof. And in this particular situation, you can be grateful that someone had an idea before you. They essentially proved a market for you. Proving a market is extremely expensive and time-intensive. Like I mentioned above, if your app does not fall into an existing category, you have created a challenging marketing problem for yourself.

Second, your product does solve the target problem. This is a very black and white concept for physical products; less black and white for information products. Depending on your app’s stated purpose, you may or may not be able to determine if it serves its stated purpose. There are always those corner cases where someone will use your product for unintended uses and end up being your biggest fans.