5 ms·

You could have revenue in a matter of seconds by offering to sell $100 gift certificates to Amazon for $50 (why hello, many daily deals sites) but that would pr

by patio11 15y ago

You could have revenue in a matter of seconds by offering to sell $100 gift certificates to Amazon for $50 (why hello, many daily deals sites) but that would probably not be a sound business decision. Can I strongly, strongly, strongly suggest that you rethink the pricing and value proposition here? You're chasing away good clients because anyone who has ever done mobile or programming thinks that custom development offered for $99 implies not-great-things about your programming savvy or likelihood of following through on this deal. The "wantrapreneurs" (hate that word) you appear to be targeting will disproportionately have wildly inaccurate expectations of what you're selling for $99, because you appear to be promising them the fantasy of having their business come from idea to actual fruition at the cost of $99. I am having difficulty finding strong enough language to communicate the unwiseness of this business model vis-a-vis accurate worries like "If you’re not careful, you may end up spending an exorbitant amount of hours on a project, driving your hourly rate into the basement." All the words I'm reaching for seem hostile and yet they do not nearly capture the scope of how bad of a decision this is.

dot 15y ago
I really want to agree with you, but I think he found a profitable little niche. The type of apps (actually concepts) he's building for $99 will end up being very cookie cutter and should take a good developer less than an hour (and sometimes 15 minutes). I think this could scale well too if you find decent, dependable developers that want to make a quick buck here and there...
- inmygarage 15y ago
  This could end up as great lead generation for a mobile development shop. Once the customer sees what $99 buys, it's likely that he or she will want changes and probably some design work. If you can pull together a group of designers and developers and provide the hosting and make the ever-so-painful submission process painless, you are basically creating an app-as-a-service business where the $99 prototype is the loss leader that gets you your customer base.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    It's probably the opposite of good lead gen. It's attracting a disproportionate share of pathological customers, for one thing, but also: for many, perhaps even most, of the potential follow-on customers, their first experience with the business is going to be of disappointment over what $99 actually got them.
    - DanBC 15y ago
      Is it doing the developer community a favour by teaching people that for $99 you're going to get an absolute minimum product? I'd be fascinated to see what kind of programming you'd get from places like Mechanical Turk. Has anyone done a $2 FizzBuzz request, and then compared all the resulting code?
  - chc 15y ago
    The cheapskate entrepreneurs might indeed want more services, but will they want it for an hourly rate that's 150% of what he paid for the whole initial app? Probably not. That's Patrick's point: This is basically an adverse selection machine. It's disproportionately attractive to people who don't want to pay you money while also putting up a big red flag to people who would like to give you money. There might be a good business model here, but I'm pretty sure it isn't going to involve these $99 app buyers suddenly turning into worthwhile consulting leads. My guess: In the best case scenario, this process can be entirely automated and take up no time for anyone.
    - inmygarage 15y ago
      The assumption that people who pay $99 for a prototype are "cheapskates" who don't understand mobile development completely ignores the fact that the market for mobile development is growing like crazy in so many different directions and is at such an incredible premium right now that the bottom end of the market has been pretty much ignored (if you are a great iphone developer right now why would you even bother?) But it is going to get huge. Think about web developers in 1997. They could charge a premium because there were few of them and few out of the box options (ie ugly template websites where you pay $50 for a full ecommerce site, 99designs, etc.). Starting out doing consulting means you get to know a part of the market that most people are too snobby to touch (the whole "talking to your customers" thing) - though they are just as legitimate a customer segment as the people who will pay the egregious rates for custom.
- gavingmiller 15y ago
  Sure, let's agree that an amazing developer can build an amazing prototype for $99 and scale it. The problem comes here: "guide you on submitting it to the app store." Good luck getting that to be scalable, easy, or worth your time/effort. I've run clients through this process. I've gone through it myself many times. It is tedious, complicated, and full of technical jargon. If someone could simplify the process so that a client can set that up in under 1 hour - I will subscribe to that service. On second thought, maybe I should pay him the $99 to run my clients through the sign up process...

by patio11 15y ago

dot 15y ago

I really want to agree with you, but I think he found a profitable little niche. The type of apps (actually concepts) he's building for $99 will end up being very cookie cutter and should take a good developer less than an hour (and sometimes 15 minutes). I think this could scale well too if you find decent, dependable developers that want to make a quick buck here and there...

inmygarage 15y ago
This could end up as great lead generation for a mobile development shop. Once the customer sees what $99 buys, it's likely that he or she will want changes and probably some design work. If you can pull together a group of designers and developers and provide the hosting and make the ever-so-painful submission process painless, you are basically creating an app-as-a-service business where the $99 prototype is the loss leader that gets you your customer base.
- tptacek 15y ago
  It's probably the opposite of good lead gen. It's attracting a disproportionate share of pathological customers, for one thing, but also: for many, perhaps even most, of the potential follow-on customers, their first experience with the business is going to be of disappointment over what $99 actually got them.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    Is it doing the developer community a favour by teaching people that for $99 you're going to get an absolute minimum product? I'd be fascinated to see what kind of programming you'd get from places like Mechanical Turk. Has anyone done a $2 FizzBuzz request, and then compared all the resulting code?
- chc 15y ago
  The cheapskate entrepreneurs might indeed want more services, but will they want it for an hourly rate that's 150% of what he paid for the whole initial app? Probably not. That's Patrick's point: This is basically an adverse selection machine. It's disproportionately attractive to people who don't want to pay you money while also putting up a big red flag to people who would like to give you money. There might be a good business model here, but I'm pretty sure it isn't going to involve these $99 app buyers suddenly turning into worthwhile consulting leads. My guess: In the best case scenario, this process can be entirely automated and take up no time for anyone.
  - inmygarage 15y ago
    The assumption that people who pay $99 for a prototype are "cheapskates" who don't understand mobile development completely ignores the fact that the market for mobile development is growing like crazy in so many different directions and is at such an incredible premium right now that the bottom end of the market has been pretty much ignored (if you are a great iphone developer right now why would you even bother?) But it is going to get huge. Think about web developers in 1997. They could charge a premium because there were few of them and few out of the box options (ie ugly template websites where you pay $50 for a full ecommerce site, 99designs, etc.). Starting out doing consulting means you get to know a part of the market that most people are too snobby to touch (the whole "talking to your customers" thing) - though they are just as legitimate a customer segment as the people who will pay the egregious rates for custom.
gavingmiller 15y ago
Sure, let's agree that an amazing developer can build an amazing prototype for $99 and scale it. The problem comes here: "guide you on submitting it to the app store." Good luck getting that to be scalable, easy, or worth your time/effort. I've run clients through this process. I've gone through it myself many times. It is tedious, complicated, and full of technical jargon. If someone could simplify the process so that a client can set that up in under 1 hour - I will subscribe to that service. On second thought, maybe I should pay him the $99 to run my clients through the sign up process...