Courtesy of Pexels.com Building an app as a non-technical person is quite hard, right? The first thing you’ve probably done as a non-technical founder for your was… look for a or a . ‘revolutionary’ idea to ‘disrupt’ the market CTO technical founder Am I correct? This is the wrong way to start…. The reason why, is that in most cases you haven’t even started to work on the general concept of the application and you are on the board with you. being ‘blocked’ by not having a CTO Did you know that you could build an app without having a clue about coding or design? Below I’ve listed solutions for you to start building your first application as a non-technical person. On top of that, you will find a list of tools you could use and a few great case studies from other non-technical founders with detailed instructions on how they did it. Let me tell you first… What options do you have to build your first app as non-technical person? #Learn how to code by yourself To or a first version of an app to validate a need for it and to get a proper funding for development, you could do the same as the did. build a Minimum Viable Product guys from Instagram Learning how to code by yourself (Time>Money), finding a freelancer to build an app for you (Money>Time), hiring a software development company (Money>Time) or hacking your app… Where can you learn how to develop an app? I’ve personally started with a step-by-step tutorial of building a static website with Bootstrap with this free youtube video course Courtesy of Giphy Images #Start with designing a prototype of an app Use , , and AdobeXD to design an interface of your app. Design — Sketch Balsamiq — Use , and to design and animate the workflows between your beautifully designed applications. Animate AdobeXD UXPin — Use , , or to look for inspiration of great products, or even use some open-source freebies of app interfaces ( ) and tweak them a bit. Get inspired SketchAppResources UI Patterns ProductHunt Freebiesbug Read my latest post on to get from 0 to hero just in a few days. how to prototype an app as non-designer With such a prototype you can go and sell your product/vision to: A) Potential Customers B) Potential Co-Founders C) Potential Investors #Use an app builder There are plenty of web platforms enabling you to build an app by drag & drop elements. You don’t need to code anything. The quality of the app in most of the cases is crappy and they are slow, but for your it’s enough to validate a product. first MVP You could use or or (Google Sheet driven apps) https://buildfire.com/ https://bubble.is/ https://www.appsheet.com in a blog post from Product Hunt . More inspirations here Be aware that those solutions are great to validate the idea, but you want be able to scale the app, add custom features, and improve the UI/UX of it. The solution is pretty OK to start, but don’t expect any superb outcome. Courtesy of https://buildfire.com/ #Finding a Freelancer to build your app If you need something simple (up to ), without any automated tests, scalable backend, handle a huge amount of data, and you don’t burn to much cash for it, just… 1 month of work for 1 developer Hire a freelancer. However if you’re hiring one: or with great reviews — He / She will not disappear when difficulties appear Get somebody recommended below $30 (depends on the county — check the ) will make it difficult to get a good coded application without any Be aware that with rates freelancers rates technical debt Try to find a developer, who will be focused only on 1–2 projects maximum (learn how to write ) Define your clear goals and tasks user stories with a freelancer and remember to include that you will own the code/you have the full rights to it (in some cases after the job is finished, you could be asked to pay the license fee for the software you paid for…). Read more on how to Sign a contract protect your Intellectual Property while outsourcing #Finding a Software Development Company to build your app First things first: In 70% of the cases you don’t need an MVP done by a Software Development Company . It will be too expensive and too robust. However, if you know that you: A) Your (already) profitable and established business will rely on it (!) B) Need for your business a highly scalable, robust application C) You’ve extended experience in the area of the market/business to conquer it D) Have experience in working with software developers or software development companies, then… Courtesy of Brainhub.eu + Pexels.com There are a few things to consider while talking with an outsourcing company to build your app as a non-technical person, like: (it’s about quality not quantity) Always reject the cheapest companies Look for your ideas/features (look for a software development partner) those who will say ‘No’ or challenge Look for a — You should understand each other and talk similar language culture fit, ‘partner chemistry’ You can find a more detailed answers about choosing a software development company here. #When NOT to hire a Software Development Company Working with Software Development Company isn’t cheap. I’m running together with my co-founder a — Brainhub, therefore I would like to share with you my thoughts on when you shouldn’t hire a software development company. JavaScript Development Company Building a web or mobile app together with software development shop is like hiring a navy seals to get your job done. They are experienced, well-trained and ready to ‘execute’ your idea. However, you s . houldn’t hire Navy SEALs (software house) to solve problems like getting a cat from a tree, but more to rescue a president from kidnappers Courtesy of Brainhub.eu To be more specific, there are a few reasons, why you would like to have an app built by : Navy Seals of Software Development There is that you could take from a shelf or use a creator to build it = You simply need to build one nothing like this on the market You’ve an — You know what do you need and how to work with software developers. extended experience either on the business side or technical side of building applications You want to and have already a validated MVP or customers that are paying for your bootstrapped MVP scale your business or any project that will take 1 month of 1 developer to do it — it’s simply to small project for a software development company (rescuing-a-cat) It’s not a landing page or simple static website #Be creative with a tools/open-source apps/SaaS apps available online Now, the fun part: :). BUILDING AN APP Let me share a few inspiring case studies and how-to guides that you could just copy for yourself, as mentioned before. Using existing solutions instead building one from scratch There are so many existing solutions on which you can verify your business idea that it is sometimes hard to find a reason why to build an app from scratch. Let me show you a few online solutions that you could use to launch a business today: Use a great system from ; it’s like Shopify for subscription boxes. Here you can find great guides on Subscription Box Service — Cratejoy how to run a subscription box service — Do you want to create another AirBNB? It’s out there. So, you can start your two-sided marketplace today Two-Sided Marketplace Sharetribe — Create an app based on a database that’s a spreadsheet — use for it. Easy peasy even for an 8th grader Database-driven application Airtable — Always wanted to build the next Hackernews, Producthunt, or maybe Reddit? Just use a free and open-source ( ). The second version of Community application Telescope NOVA built with JS ❤ Product Hunt was built with Telescope in 8 days — is a simple app, which connects random people, who experienced Cyberbullying. The app is based on Typeform, Google Sheets, Zapier, and Gmail. It’s a fully automated system done without any coding. Read App to match people Stopcyberbullying instructions on how to do similar app — is a fully automated website which makes money selling bootstrap themes (affiliate) and posting websites automatically to their landing page for money. Build on Tumblr ($0 cost for hosting + enables to modify the html+CSS). Read more about List of products/items submitted by community Builtwithbootstrap how the founder did it here — You can build a local search directory like Yelp in a few hours. Thanks to WordPress and a cool plugin called , you can do it easily. Here you have Search directory ListingPro instructions on how to do it step-by-step — You can start with selling an ebook/mp3/video/excel files to verify your idea. You can use to launch a single digital product website with great admin/analytics dashboard and implemented payment system Digital Product Gumroad — is a web app that helps people become art collectors. It’s making $30k per month and was built by a founder without any coding skills. Read a case study on how a solo founder did it Web application Kollecto here I haven’t listed here all the huge startups/apps, which are your first inspirations for the next Uber for bicycles or Tinder for pets etc. There is a really easy pattern to find a clone app or SaaS service to help you start a business, where you pay a monthly fee and a small 1–3% fee on each transaction. Do you know how to do it? Ready? Google it using this pattern: TYPE A NAME OF AN APP ‘build a(n) like app’ ex. “build an UBER like app” # Tools to use to build an app as a non-technical person I’ve listed all the tools that I would recommend to a non-technical person to build a very first application. Usually, you can find great case studies written by founders, who used their tools in non-conventional ways on the company’s blog (ex. ). Zapier apps: Zapier or IFTT Automation/Connecting : Typeform or Forms/Surveys WuFoo : 🙂 Everything-is-possible-app Google Sheets : Web application/Website WordPress Time to act! Now is the time to build your MVP, your first application that you’ve dreamed of. Just pick your way to do it from the detailed list above and go for it. I hope that I convinced you that you can build an app as a non-technical person. Courtesy of Giphy Originally published at brainhub.eu on June 12, 2017.
