Don’t Build That Killer App JUST Yet

A framework to think through your mobile app idea

Everyone I know has a “killer app” idea.

A lot of entrepreneurs come to me with a shiny new app they’ve built that’s “cool”. From sharing cooking videos to self-diagnosing broken bones. I’ve built several apps myself — some succeeded, some failed — and I can tell you “killer” or “cool” doesn’t lead to success. But there are some common rules I’ve learned that I am going to share.

First, consumer ideas come easily. Look around and everything seems broken. It’s easy to reimagine a better way to do many things. Plus it doesn’t cost much to quickly build something and test it out. In many ways it’s unprecedented — today you could build and launch an app within a few days, and in theory get a million users without spending a dollar on marketing.

Second, it’s very tempting, especially if you can quickly build it yourself. Traditionally, entrepreneurship was all about who you know and what you know. The internet has changed that — today it’s about how fast you can iterate and how much traffic you can drive. The traditional glass walls are gone.

Third, neither of the first two means that your app will succeed. There’s a LOT of noise out there — getting noticed is hard.

Very hard.

There’s no formula for this. No one can tell you if your app will take off or not — everyone knows you have to test it out. Unlike B2B ideas where you can (and should) do customer discovery in advance, the only way to test out consumer ideas (especially mobile apps) is to build something and show it around.

A 1000 people SurveyMonkey survey won’t give you any conviction. Asking your friends won’t help either. But, if you build something and show it around, you might get a good sense of where it’s headed.

So here’s a framework I’ve developed over the years to think through app ideas — a small set of filters that ideas have to pass before you begin execution.

It’s Personal

It has to be a problem or pain point you personally have. My previous startup was about a pain point I personally had, both as a job seeker and as an employer. The one before that was about eliminating the pain of text and voice search on mobile through contextual content push.

Unless you are the core user, you’ll be doing a lot guesswork about the user persona, pain point, and right solution. And it has to be a strong enough pain point that you’d be fine if you were the only user.

A simple exercise: Look at all the ways you can achieve what you’re thinking about, and honestly ask yourself “does the world need really need this app?”

It has an Audience

Forget about a million users — find 100 people that would give your app a shot on day one when you launch. These are your very first, golden users that will help you validate the core idea, tune the experience, and fix issues before you open it up for more. Without that initial validation and seed users who love your app, you’re driving blind.

A simple exercise: Build a clickable prototype, put up a landing page, and drive traffic to it. Ask the people that signed up and clicked through the experience — what they like about it and why it’s better than what they’re used to.

It’s Simple but “Complete”

If it takes you more than 30 seconds to explain your idea, you lost me. Consumer attention spans are very very small. So it has to be idiot simple. And that’s not just with messaging, but with your initial user experience and the core product.

At the same time your app has to provide some “complete” service — push a button and order a taxi and pay for it without worrying about it. Take a picture and click one button to share across your favorite networks. Something the user finds valuable because it makes something hard easier. Or cheaper. Or more fun. Ideally all the above.

A simple test: Show it to a few people at Starbucks and don’t say a word. If they don’t get it, you need to go back to the drawing board.

It’s Novel

There’s no room for “me too” apps these days. Unless the app makes something 10x better or has a wow factor that’s hard to resist, chances of getting attention are very low. It’s not just about fancy UI — think about the end to end user experience and how your app makes it fundamentally better. Look at similar apps and be honest about asking yourself why the world needs another one.

A simple test: If your Starbucks test users don’t get a “wow” feeling, it’s probably not novel.

It’s Small

This might sound counter intuitive, but it’s not. If a market or behavior is popular, that means lots of people are already playing in that space. Just because Uber is successful doesn’t mean every “Uber for X” will be. The best ideas are the ones that look small or unattractive today but can become very big — often called “shadow markets”. These are the ideas that most people reject, a few get, and a lot more can adopt. Look for the intersection of “old ways” of doing things and “new ways” of doing things and play there.

A simple test: Create a simple pitch deck with your market analysis and show it around within your entrepreneur or investor circles. If people dismiss it as a “small idea”, it’s probably a good idea.

Finally, a lot has been said about this already, but I’ll repeat: Don’t waste your time seeking funding. There’s this myth that you can get an app built for $20k and go raise $500k. That just doesn’t work, and even if it does, that’s the wrong way to do it. That distraction will derail you from your core focus on the product.

If you build something that gets traction, you will get a lot of help, and it’ll come very quickly.

So don’t build that killer app yet — vet out your idea thoroughly, and if it passes your filters, just focus on the product and get traction.

Traction trumps everything.

If you’re building something that passes these filters, feel free to email me at sanjeev1969@gmail.com — happy to give you my feedback

Sanjeev serves as the President of Healthcare and Chief Marketing Officer at LeanTaaS, a Silicon Valley company that uses advanced data science to optimize healthcare operations. Sanjeev was Google’s first Head of Product Marketing. Since then, he has led three successful startups — CEO at Aloqa (acquired by Motorola), VP Products & Marketing at TellMe Networks (acquired by Microsoft) and Founder & CEO at Collegefeed (acquired by AfterCollege). Sanjeev graduated Phi Beta Kappa with an EECS degree from MIT and along the way spent time at McKinsey & Co. and Cisco Systems. He pretends to play squash when not chasing down his daughters for exercise.