Overview:
Ameera came to us with a passion – to make a dating app that feels more personal and trustworthy than many of the alternatives. She had a great vision to inject a dose of old-school romance into the world of online dating.
As a first-time entrepreneur without any technical background, Ameera was eager to find a technology partner that she could trust to guide her through the process and execute her vision. We talked a number of times before working together, to help her better understand the app development process, and to make sure we really understood both what she wanted in an app, and where she envisioned her business going in the future. After getting to know each other and speaking several times, we decided to work together and were delighted to earn her trust.
Our take:
We really wanted to work with Ameera from the very start. We were impressed with her overarching philosophy, loved her passion for the idea, and knew we could provide her with what she needed most – rock solid development, creative ideas, and advice. She is just the kind of person we love helping – a first-time entrepreneur, and an individual working extremely hard to make her idea happen without venture capital. We wanted to help, and were delighted that she chose to work with us.
How we helped:
We worked with Ameera from ideation to app store placement. She had an awesome and clear vision, and had definitely done her research, but as this was her first time working on an app, she needed help translating her vision into an actionable tech plan.
We started by understanding her guiding vision, and primary goals – both from the technology and for her business itself. We went to the drawing board and thought deeply about what user features would be needed to achieve the outcomes she had in mind. We suggested starting small, as we always do, and put together a list of features, known as requirements, for the initial build that we recommended. This requirement list was informed by our understanding of her wishes, paired with our take on which features would be absolutely vital to start with, to streamline the development process (suggesting waiting for future versions to implement others).
We walked her through the requirements, incorporated all of her feedback, and settled on our approach. One recommendation that we mutually decided to follow, was that we would use some third-party tools that we could integrate with the app instead of having to build our own version of a functionality that is already widely available. This helped us streamline the media integrations in the app, meaning that services would be fast, smooth, and reliable. Doing this resulted in several benefits. It drastically reduced the development and testing effort. It made the long-term management of the app much easier and less expensive. And, perhaps most importantly, it saved Ameera thousands of dollars – without compromising on quality or future scalability.
From here we made an extremely detailed development work plan and sent her a calendar with key dates throughout the timeline, so she knew exactly what to expect and understood the development process. We gave her a list of all the things we’d need from her throughout the process (e.g. providing a logo, writing descriptions for the app store, getting terms and conditions up online to assist with app store approval), so that she could plan accordingly. We also sent her a detailed description of the many non-development components required of any app, such as setting up hosting, getting an EIN number for the Apple validation process, setting up a website, and creating app store accounts – all of which we managed.
We then set out to build the app – keeping Ameera closely updated every two weeks, and answering any questions or concerns throughout the process. We included her every step of the way – from making sure she liked the visual designs to helping test the app. We were delighted for the project to run smoothly, stay on timeline, and result in approval on both the Google Play and Apple app stores!
Where things stand:
We were really happy to finish on time, on budget, and to produce something that Ameera really loved. We’ve kept in close touch with her and continue to provide technical support as she starts doing some private beta trial runs with initial users in her geography. We’re excited to stand by her as she continues her journey and to help in any way that we can!
Key Points:
- Helped guide the process from start to finish
- Translated a business vision into actionable tech
- Suggested streamlining that led to thousands in savings
- Produced on time, and on budget.
