How to Create a Mobile App-based Startup?

• Mobile
• April 22, 2024

by Samar Patel

Launching a successful mobile app startup is a real deal as many struggle to find their way through. While some startups rise to the ranks of Unicorns, others struggle to gain traction or fizzle out prematurely. As you aim to carve your niche in the competitive marketplace, it’s essential to navigate potential obstacles with precision and strategy. Leveraging our expertise and insights, we’ve curated this comprehensive guide to empower aspiring entrepreneurs like you to navigate the path to successfully launch your mobile app startup with confidence.

Got an amazing mobile app startup idea and certain that it could change the market dynamics and serve it uniquely? That’s great! Consider yourself ascended from your first step of entrepreneurship! But not sure how to take steps further to execute your idea into a successful product, which business would be relying on?

One study claims that less than 1% of startups achieve unicorn status valued at $1B+. In this, some of the leading tech companies of the decade include Uber, Airbnb, and Slack.

Moreover, startups that have harnessed the power of AI technologies in their digital products have received $25 billion in funding, which is 18% of global funding. The most contributed startup is OpenAI led by Microsoft backed with a $10 billion investment.

These statistics show the need for better digital products that startups should focus on building, utilizing cutting-edge technologies to succeed.

Hence, considering the odds and favors to achieve the goals, we’ve created this guide that’ll guide you through successfully launching your mobile app startup.

Discovery of a Startup Mobile App Idea

Discovery of the product lays the groundwork for its success as your entire business will be relying on it. It asks for various factors to consider to put the well-focused problem statement to work. At this phase, your mobile app idea is yet the broad term, which you’ll need to narrow down to serve a better purpose.

Below are the sub-parts of this process, which you must not miss to consider as they help you understand why your startup needs that mobile app and figure out the business foundation.

Spot a Problem or Opportunity

You’ve stumbled upon a promising mobile app development for startup idea, but it’s crucial to assess its potential for success in the business landscape. Before diving in, it’s essential to thoroughly understand the market and identify viable business opportunities for the long term.

While you may have numerous challenges and opportunities at hand, pinpointing the right one can be overwhelming without a structured approach. To streamline the process, start by brainstorming and listing all the mobile app development ideas and top mobile app trends that come to mind. This exercise will provide clarity and insights to prioritize the most promising concept.

If you still find yourself struggling, seeking the expertise of professionals who offer Product Discovery Workshops can be invaluable. These workshops pair industry-specific Business Analysts with your project, enabling them to closely collaborate with you to identify areas for improvement and develop tailored solutions that align with market dynamics.

When defining your mission’s problem statement, it’s imperative to have a comprehensive understanding of both the pain point and its corresponding solution. This ensures that you’re equipped with a clear vision to address market needs effectively.

Conduct In-depth Market Research and Validate the Mobile App Idea

Indeed, your idea is wonderful, but it still doesn’t give validation that your mobile app startup is gonna rock the market until you know the market dynamics. If you think of doing this after the product has been made, then on the downside you may have to deal with particular consequences. Of course, you’d be interested in avoiding it by prioritizing the market research about your idea at first.

This market research helps you identify problems your potential customers are facing, the types of solutions available in the market, where those are lagging, and potential opportunities waiting for you. This also aims to conduct customer surveys to find out their interests and state financial flows and define levels to take risks.

This research requires specific skill sets, and not having the right one on board can be a huge gap that entrepreneurs must fill. One survey states that 23% of organizations don’t have a foolproof market research strategy in place.

But you can have one by hiring market research and product development consultation providing firms like MindInventory. We have a team of business analysts who first know and understand your business vision and then help you with identifying market gaps and user needs.

With in-depth market research and competitor analysis, they’ll help you refine the app idea based on insights gained for your mobile app startup to get the limelight.

Now, through market research, you’ve gathered insights on possibilities you can focus on to create a sustainable business. This step focuses on finding one ideal solution and defining how it can resolve the problem you’re planning to solve and add value to your business plan. This also helps you know things to invest in your mobile app idea. During this, you’ll also emphasize the uniqueness and value propositions of your mobile app idea towards business.

Business analysts and designers will also help you wireframe your mobile app idea based on market research and trends to get an idea of how your product will look like.

Building a Winning Mobile App Strategy

Now you have almost everything on your hands, areas to focus on, the solution you’re providing, and the blueprints of your mobile app idea. But that’s not sufficient to move forward with your project. You need a clear business requirement plan, future sustainability plan, monetization opportunities, and a total roadmap, and tips for your mobile app startup to be ready for launch.

Define Your Target Audience and User Personas

As your business is going to rely on the mobile app you’re creating, it’s a must to define who your target audience will be as they play a key role in the success of your mobile app development for startup project. In this, your in-depth market research can help a lot.

With such information, you can consider psychographic factors, including interests, preferences, values, and pain points related to your app’s niche.

Once you have gathered data, use it to create user personas that depict different segments of your target audience. Each persona should be distinct and include details such as name, age, occupation, goals, challenges, and preferred communication channels. This helps humanize your audience and provides valuable insights into their needs and motivations.

Let’s understand creating user personas by taking a look at one example of UberEats:

This UberEats user persona of their potential customer helps them understand their target audience, their needs, and values more clearly. Using this, you can set up your business goals, as explained below.

Setting SMART Goals and Objectives

First popularized by author and management consultant Peter Drucker in 1980, SMART stands as an abbreviation for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound goals. Setting SMART goals and objectives for your mobile app startup lays the foundation for running your business.

• SPECIFIC stands for defining specific objectives that clearly outline what you want to achieve with your mobile app startup. For example, instead of stating a goal as “increase user engagement,” specify it as “increase daily active users by 20% within six months.”
• MEASURABLE asks for setting up measurable criteria and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and evaluate the success of your goals. This could include metrics such as app downloads, user retention rates, revenue generated, or customer satisfaction scores.
• ACHIEVABLE helps to ensure that your goals are realistic and attainable, given your resources, capabilities, and market conditions. In this, majorly you should consider factors such as budget constraints, timeframes, and technological limitations when setting goals.
• RELEVANT goals ask for being clear and validated with goals with the overall vision and mission of your mobile app startup. Each value set by you should contribute directly to your startup’s growth, profitability, or customer value proposition.
• TIME-BOUND keeps you in the time frame to achieve your goals. This helps create a sense of urgency and accountability within your team. Break down long-term goals into smaller, manageable milestones with clear timelines for completion. This can include creating a timeline for app design, development, testing, and launching in the marketplace.

It is specifically popular for being applied for inbound marketing, targeting customers, and creating brand awareness.

Professor Dr. Gail Mattews in one study shared results that 76% of people listing down SMART goals find success, while only 43% of people without that find success. You can say that this metric helps businesses to be SMART without limiting the growth of their mobile app startup.

Monetization Strategies for Mobile Apps

Target audience is set, and goals are set, but what does your mobile app startup need to survive in this competitive digital landscape? A cash flow, income – in business terms – Monetization opportunity. Depending on your business type and mobile app category, you can set up app monetization strategies.

1. The first could be from selling your premium subscriptions, if you’re offering, and of course, you should – be it an on-demand service platform, enterprise software product-based startup, or something else.
2. If not offering premium account services but allowing users to order something or process something, you should always charge platform fees to process user requests.
3. You may want to go for a sponsorship-based partnership or affiliate marketing approach by showcasing in-app third-party promotional ads to your mobile apps to create revenue opportunities.
4. If you’re extremely confident about your app idea which is one of a kind and has a huge demand from users’ end, you can set up a pay-per-download cost.
5. You can also license your app’s technology, infrastructure, or services to other businesses or organizations under a white-label agreement. This allows them to rebrand and customize the app to suit their needs while you earn revenue through licensing fees or royalties.
6. At last, you can club any of the monetization strategies mentioned above to adopt a hybrid monetization approach.

In our one blog, we also explained in detail about worthy app monetization strategies, which you may find insightful.

Creating a Development Roadmap and Timeline

Launching a mobile app startup requires careful planning and execution. One of the crucial steps in this process is creating a development roadmap and timeline that outlines the milestones and tasks required to bring your app to market.

You have already done your market research, target audience priorities, and blueprints on how your mobile app would look like. Goals are set, and monetization processes are also done and ready to go live. But to make that happen, you have to build your app and launch it in the app store.

But to put everything together in place, as per the decided timeline in the SMART metrics, you must break down the development process into distinct phases and define the key milestones for each stage.

After defining each stage, estimate the time and resources needed to complete each milestone and task within the development roadmap. During this, you should know the technology stack to use for the development, team size, skillsets of each talent, budget constraints, and external dependencies when making these projections.

Each milestone should prioritize features and functionalities. For example,

• First, developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with core features and functionalities while minimizing time-to-market and development costs.
• Observe its performance and plan the next development phase accordingly. It could include full-fledged startup mobile app development with more extraordinary features, such as AI/ML enablement, etc.

Develop a detailed timeline that outlines the sequence of tasks, deadlines, and dependencies for each phase of the development process. Use project management tools or Gantt charts to visualize the timeline and track progress against milestones.

Anticipate potential risks, delays, and challenges that may arise during the development process and develop contingency plans to mitigate these risks. Allocate buffer time into the timeline to account for unexpected setbacks and allow for flexibility in resource allocation.

Do Budget Planning to Run A Successful Mobile App Startup

Every entrepreneur wants to run a successful mobile app product-based startup, but apart from a good product, it also asks for smart budget allocation. But not everyone can succeed – the majority of startups end up making budgeting mistakes for mobile app development.

If you check the market statistics, 47% of startups fail due to lack of financing, and investors pose significant challenges. You definitely don’t want your mobile app startup to fail due to financial issues.

Hence, to make your budget planning smartly for your mobile app startup, you should consider the following metrics:

Mobile App Development Budget

Developing a mobile app is a kind of project that may cause you to lose your pockets significantly. Of course, you should do as you want the best talents to work on and equip your app with world-class features, and backed by cutting-edge technologies.

So, you should allocate the budget for the mobile app development budget considering factors like:

• Mobile platform (native Android and iOS or cross-platform using technologies like Flutter and React Native)
• Technology infrastructure
• Legal and regulatory compliance
• Customer support and maintenance
• Mobile app scaling strategies
• Contingency fund to cover unexpected expenses or project delays that may arise during the development and launch phases

Lifetime Value Analysis

You are planning to create a great product-based startup, but have you calculated the profit you can book on every single purchase of your digital services or from a single user? Well, this metric will help you set up the financial viability of your mobile app and ensure that it’s worthy of business investment.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Let’s say, for example, you’ve launched your mobile app. It’s also attracting users and an increase in app downloads. But you also want to know how much each install would cost you, not directly from the play/app store’s end, but definitely from the server side, compute capacity, and many other backend integration aspects.

Not exact, but having a somewhat around calculation of your budget allocation can help you expect to spend on your app users.

Runway and Burn Rate

You do want to market your mobile app startup to spread awareness about it. For which, you will also invest in paid marketing campaigns, which are considered under burn rate. This cost will also go from your budget to run your mobile app startup, and with each spend, you want to keep tabs on your runway (which decides the financial flow to run a company). It’s always a best practice to have a rough estimation of your mobile app burn rate and runaway.

Startup Mobile App Design and Development Outsourcing

After all the business planning and contingency planning, it’s time to finally put your dream mobile app into development – on which your business is going to rely. So, to build that, you also need to choose the mobile app development partner correctly.

Along with your partner, you also need to filter the right engagement model that can meet your budget. It can be fixed cost – if your requirements are a clear or dedicated talent-hiring model – if you feel like experimenting with your product and want to manage the development team on your own.

Of course, you don’t want to hire an in-house technical team to work from your office and be a permanent part of your business. If you want to do effective budget utilization, at that time, you may want to outsource your project to a mobile app development company. Still, having a clear understanding of in-house Vs. outsourcing can be beneficial.

In the major case, startups choose to outsource mobile app development projects to focus more on business strategies and lay a strong foundation for their startup success. This is also claimed by 65% of participants who contributed to Deloitte’s outsourcing service-related survey.

After you choose your engagement model, it’s time to go further with complete mobile development process:

Mobile App Design

If outsourcing or offshoring is your ideal engagement strategy, then you should consider to hire UI/UX designers who are extremely creative and come from a company like MindInventory, known as one of the top design agencies in India.

We have a team of experienced UI/UX designers with an average of 7+ years of experience who are even praised by our top clients like Tinder, Passio.AI, Simon Sinek, and many others.

They will guide you through app UX research, wireframing and prototyping, and final mobile app design with impressive interactions, making your product intuitive and alluring to users.

Mobile App Development

Wouldn’t it be great if you had to contact only one company executive for all your design and development-related needs? It is! It’s always best to get talented professionals in design and development from one team.

When you hire mobile app developers from the same team you’ve hired UI/UX designers from, you get less tension in managing different contacts and get resolution for your queries and experiments from one meeting only.

Also, having mobile app developers and designers from the same team is always on the positive side as they can work in harmony and offer you an exceptional mobile app for your startup.

A team/tech lead of the mobile team can help you with technology stack selection that suits the best to handle your digital processes.

Following the final technology stack, seeing its future reliance, they help you develop a robust mobile app for your startup to excel with thorough quality assurance and mobile app testing.

Create A Foolproof Startup Mobile App Marketing and Launch Plan

Launching your mobile app startup successfully requires more than just building a great app. It also requires a strategic marketing and launch plan to generate buzz, attract users, and drive downloads while considering your budget allocated for the marketing. Both launch and marketing go hand in hand.

• It starts with defining what sets your app apart from competitors and articulating its unique value proposition. Highlight the key benefits and features that appeal to your target audience and address their pain points or needs.
• Create a strong brand identity that resonates with your target audience and reflects your app’s personality, values, and vision. Develop a compelling brand story, logo, visual assets, and messaging that differentiate your app and build brand awareness.
• Prepare your app for the launch and should also include a hype-creating marketing campaign to get early birds by offering alluring joining plans (it could be a limited-time free access). Use various channels such as social media, email marketing, press releases, influencers, and teaser content to build hype and attract early adopters.
• Plan a coordinated launch strategy that includes a launch date, promotional activities, and outreach efforts to generate maximum impact. Consider hosting a launch event, offering exclusive incentives or discounts, and collaborating with partners or influencers to amplify your reach.
• Create an App Store Optimization (ASO) friendly About App introduction content with people also search keywords and great copywriting approaches.
• Track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as app downloads, user engagement, retention rates, and revenue to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and launch efforts.

Do keep in mind that sometimes, brands do end up creating marketing strategies that may hurt their brand reputation. So, you should avoid getting into such marketing traps. For such, what you can do is hire a digital marketing service provider with experienced professionals to do this work and help you grow.

Scaling Your Mobile App for Growth

This is the step you should follow after you’ve launched your mobile app startup and running marketing campaigns in full fledged or receiving feedback from your users. This is where you learn about how your mobile app is actually performing in the real world than expected. You’ll also figure out areas where it can be improved.

Analyzing User Data And Metrics To Optimize Performance

Your app has started to get users, they are using your app, and it’s started to gather data about their behavior, and from where they are leaving/exiting the app. You continuously have to monitor your app metrics and associated marketing campaigns to gather performance metrics and market trends to stay relevant.

You also have to stay agile and flexible to adapt to changing circumstances and optimize your approach for long-term success – this should also be a part of your SMART Goals.

Building a Scalable Infrastructure

It’s always best to make your app based on microservices architecture, to flexibly utilize cloud services from different platforms. Integrating and setting up cloud management capabilities, like EC2, VMs, etc., with your mobile application to offer scalable connectivity to offer robust user experience even in times of rush.

In today’s era, cloud computing enablement has become more than just a need. It’s better that you also take cloud computing services with mobile app development to meet the versatile needs of users.

Have a Customer Retention Strategy in Place

Many businesses create apps, and they also get users, but after they visit you for the first time, then what are the chances that they will revisit it? On average, users can have 80 apps installed on their smartphone, out of which, they hardly use 9 regularly, making it count 30 apps/month. As such, the chances of getting revisits can be lower.

Luckily, there’s a solution to keep your users informed about the existence of your app on their smartphones by using recall app ads, personalized push notifications, and cross-platform ads after they visit other platforms offering similar services like yours.

To make your mobile app startup achieve great heights, you continuously have to give your efforts and keep on experimenting to stay relevant in the market competition. 

Apart from that, you can also go for strategic partnerships and collaborations for your mobile app startup to leverage complementary resources, expertise, and networks to accelerate your growth and achieve your business objectives. Collaborative efforts with like-minded organizations can amplify your app’s impact, expand your reach, and drive sustainable success in the competitive app market.

Where Does MindInventory Come In?

Launching a mobile app startup is an exciting journey filled with opportunities and challenges. It requires dedication, perseverance, and a willingness to adapt to changing circumstances. Of course, having the right tech team by your side has its perks.

At MindInventory, we’re committed to supporting aspiring entrepreneurs like you on your journey to success. With our expertise in digital transformation and mobile app development, we’re here to provide the guidance, resources, and solutions you need to bring your app startup vision to life from concept to successful product.
So, are you ready to seize the opportunity? Share your mobile app startup idea with us and partner up with the team who has worked with startups backed by leading accelerators and VCs such as Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Playground Global, and some are also participants in Google’s AI Startup Program.

FAQs for Mobile App Startups