How I failed my first startup

With three friends, we try to create our first startup 5 years ago, we failed it, and we learn a lot from this!

I will tell you the story from scratch!

The idea

The main idea was to develop a mobile app that will help users to make great recipes (depending on the price set up by the user) and generate a shopping list!

The target was the student, people that did have not a lot of money, big families etc...

First step

We were all students in the same school, we had no a lot of free time, but we need to use our free time to learn mobile development!

We first learn Java, we made the first * sketch*, call designer, a friend helps us to make a video for the recipe!

We made a lot of surveys on Facebook in order to check if our app can help people!

All things were very nice, but some mistakes begin to happen...

Identify the target

Our minds were too attached to the idea, we were in our bubble, we don't check competition, we don't make a correct and viable business plan, no marketing, we were not ready for the business...

When we check the competition, a lot of competitors was here with the same idea globally, with solid marketing!

Our main mistake -> Be focus and be only on our idea all day, but we don't check the other app, we don't check the real solution for our client.

We made an app, and we need to convince the client and sell it our solution with a bad business plan -> bad marketing!

Other important errors

Our skill in mobile development was not enough, we had bad architecture, we were too junior!
We don't use git, so we develop our feature on our side, and merge it, very bad to practice this! 😂
Not using good management practice like Scrum
No Mentor (very important)

Conclusion

We were young, we had a beautiful idea, and we try to make an app without business experience.

We learn a lot, very lot, for example, the marketing of a product is essential, it's more important than the product itself.

I'm a developer, not a marketing man, but when you create a product, the client doesn't care about our techno, your methods, the most important is the solution that your product can solve. And the marketing will convince your client to use your solution!

Advice that I can give you:

-> Be aware of the concurrence

-> Find clients and identify their problems and how your product can solve them, BEFORE creating our product

-> Have a mentor and a good management method like scrum

-> Use git!

-> Marketing > product

-> Have a correct and business plan viability

I hope you like this reading!

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