Turning Ideas Into Reality – Bringing a Mobile Application to Market
Steve Buzinski | Twitter | LinkedIn
Launching a Mobile Application
On the April 3rd Ward Tech Talent sponsored and hosted an event at the Spoke Club for the Mobile Learning Lab with Aidan Nulman. We had over 80 people join to hear Aidan speak to us about How to Bring a Mobile Application to Market. He shared his story of how he brought both Winston and Fleetbit to life – from idea to reality. He was a fantastic speaker and said a number of things that hit home for me and WTT – I wanted to summarize and share some of the best moments of the presentation for us at WTT.
Fail and Fail Fast
When Aidan and his group were in the ideation phase of their venture, he mentioned that they had some awful ideas. Bluntly I think this was one of the most valuable things we could have heard at The @MobileLL – entrepreneurship is about taking calculated risks and knowing when to move on from an idea or when stick with one and swing for the fences.
Moreover, they looked for an idea and a market where they could affect the lives of many and where they could reasonably scale the profitability of the business. They found out where the problem was in the industry and they adjusted/pivoted their idea.
But most importantly with their first ideas – they learned quickly why they weren’t winners and instead of saying “we give up,” they found something much better.
And in truth…you only need one – no one remembers Babe Ruth’s strikeouts.
Real Users are Real Proof
In Fleetbit’s first iteration of their mobile application, Aidan mentioned that they were told by many potential users that it was an application they would love to use…consistently; thats in-fact one of the reasons they built it. However, in practice once the mobile application was developed and instituted with their pilot clients, the users weren’t in fact using it as much (if at all) as much as they said they would.
This is where real entrepreneurs come into their own. Instead of chalking it up as a “fail” they looked at their usage data and shifted their offering.
At this point it would have been too simple to say, “well we built it and people just aren’t using it” – this is the place that I argue most entrepreneurs would have given up on the venture. Instead, they pivoted and shifted into a white-label offering to get more users their first experience.
The true lesson in that point is that you can plan all you want, read surveys, statistics and a mountain of information…but until you get something into a user’s hands, you never know for sure.
If you’re better…
This was my favorite point in the conversation and probably the core tenant of tech entrepreneurship that I wish I could preach all day.
Entrepreneurship isn’t about having a lightning-bolt idea that will revolutionize the world. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But you do have to look at the competition and see where they lack. Instead of saying, oh well, “Facebook/Google will do that eventually”, or the “competitors can just do that because they already have money and people,” its about finding your competitors flaws or a problem in the industry to fix…and fixing it, fast.
Amazon would never have started without that mentality because Barnes and Noble was already there. Facebook wouldn’t have started because there was MySpace (what’s MySpace again?). But instead these entrepreneurs (including Aidan and his partners) see a flaw, they capitalize on it and they execute on a dime.
Worry about your competitors finding your advantage before you go to market – but don’t bow down to them if you’ve got something they don’t . To quote Aidan in his presentation “If you’re better than them…%#@$ em’”.
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In total, Aidan and his team at Fleetbit have been a really agile entrepreneurial group – and frankly, they’ve gone through all of the ups and downs of starting and building a company. Still in the early days of their twenties, they’re all a shining examples of what starting a mobile application is like. Thanks a lot to Aidan for coming out and we’re looking forward to staying up to date with all of Fleetbit’s continued successes.
Make sure you follow the MLL on Twitter and on Facebook to hear more about upcoming events and speakers. You can also join the Meetup group Come on out to the next Mobile Learning Lab event for another great speaker.
