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330. What To Do When Someone Pitches You An App Idea · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Once your friends know you're a developer, they're probably going to pitch you their app ideas, or their game ideas, or their cool website ideas.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Most of these ideas are going to be terrible.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: A few will be decent, and once in a while you'll come across some truly great ideas.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you evaluate these ideas and how do you respond to these pitches?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you let people down gently when you don't want to take on their idea?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is what we're going to discuss in today's episode of Dev Questions.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Software development is more than just writing code.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the rest of it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, let's talk about evaluating app pitches from others.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And let's start with the basics.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Most pitches are terrible.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: That isn't the fault of your friends.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't know what they don't know.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a great place to start.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than just shooting down their idea and telling them no or that it's a horrible idea, provide a little education with your response.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that way you can help them understand why they should be saying no too.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: For example, not long ago I had a friend reach out to pitch me a game idea.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: He had a multi-page design document for the game that he expected to take about a year for one developer to build.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: After looking over the document, I explained how complicated the game actually was.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I talked through what each part would take in a bit of detail.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Not a lot, but just enough to understand, oh, that's that's a lot of work.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: In the end, it was clear the project required multiple developers, a designer, and then other people as well, such as voiceover and the rest.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of saying no, I explained why the conclusion was no, why it just wouldn't work that way.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not long ago, someone else pitched me an app idea.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Their idea was simple enough, but their proposal was that I would do all the work and they would get half the profits.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: The app was a mobile app going into a crowded market space.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: I explained how difficult it would be to stand out from the crowd and how the odds were stacked against the success of the app.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: I pointed to other apps that I had been commissioned to build that were technical successes and overall failures because of the lack of traction in the market.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: I then discussed the inequity of me doing all the development work and them just providing the idea.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Ideas are a lot cheaper than actual work.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I outlined all the work that I would need them to do and how I would still require a bigger share than just half.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's only after they could provide a clear plan on how they intended to market the app.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: By explaining the reality of the situation and then by showing them how much work that they would have to do, it made it easier on them to say no from their end because, and I was already saying no from my end.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: But but by that point they understood, yeah, I'm saying no too, right?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we're kind of mutually saying, yeah, this isn't a good idea, just because it it's it's a lot of work.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And often people think that once they have the idea, they're done.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And yet they can kind of reap the rewards of telling somebody else to do this and out pops an idea and it somehow makes them money.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um they just don't know what they don't know.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so helping to educate them helps to kind of ease that no from being a harsh no to a, oh, that makes sense.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it also helps kind of round or like head off any future pitches they might have where they go, oh wait, yeah, it's gonna take more than that, or I don't really want to spend as much time working on this idea.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to pass it off to somebody else, and that's not gonna work.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: So those are just a couple of the dozens of examples I have personally of handling pitches from my friends and my colleagues.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk through some of the important things that I use to evaluate any new pitch.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because this is gonna happen a lot.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, is it even feasible?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like sometimes you get app ideas where you're like, yeah, that's not really possible.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's just not, you know, the technology is not there, or the limitations of technology require that I can't do that.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for example, um, for a long time, I wanted to create an alarm clock for my iPhone because I think the the iPhone alarm clock is dumb.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's just so many things that I wish I would I would like differently.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: But for a very long time, Apple wouldn't allow you to actually build an alarm clock because it had to run in the background and all this other stuff.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they just didn't allow those features.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for a long time, it just wasn't feasible.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if someone came to me, I've had this happen, they say, well, I want to build a different alarm clock for the iPhone.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, can't do it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not feasible.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, now it is, and it's still my radar of things that at some point I like to do.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, if it's not feasible, then you're done.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just say, you know what, here's why it just won't work.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh number two, do I have time for this?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is a harder question for developers who often have um, you know, bigger eyes than their stomach kind of thing.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember when I was growing up, that was always a phrase I heard a lot.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, if you if you took a lot of food on your plate and then just couldn't finish it, you were too full, you people would tell you, well, you had your eyes were bigger than your stomach.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: The same is true for developers.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: We often think, oh, that's a weekend project, which my wife knows at this point to laugh at that.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Any kind of you know, project that I say it's a weekend project, yeah, it's gonna take months to do.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's you you always forget about the complexity.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: You always kind of gloss over that.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: So part of this is just evaluating honestly what it's actually going to take.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: But then also, do you actually have the side, you know, side time to do this?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: What are you giving up to say yes to this?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because your time is always full.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you know it or not, every 24 hours of a day, you use all 24.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just sometimes you use them for watching Netflix or sleeping or wandering out in the in the wilderness just to kind of have fun.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to give up something in those 24 hours to be able to do this project.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to give that up?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have time for this?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And by saying yes to this, you're probably saying no to almost everything else when it comes to other pitch ideas or other ideas you have of your own.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So are you willing to say no to a whole bunch of things in order to say yes to this?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have time for it?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, is the monetary split fair?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is not the time to have a detailed negotiation on percentage points and all the rest.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: But just take a rough sketch, look at it, and go, that doesn't make sense.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like my example of I have the app idea, therefore I get 50% of the profits.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, that's not fair.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if I'm gonna do all the work, then I'm gonna get most, if not all, the profit.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because I can't expect to just say that you know an idea is worth that much.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So instead, we're gonna have to talk about how you're gonna contribute a lot more in order to meet some reasonable percentage for you too.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So is a monetary split fair?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about the process, talk about how much work you put in versus them and what's what's really fair.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and just see if there's even a common ground here.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because if they say, you know what, no, I'm not gonna give you more than 50%, then it's probably not worth it if you're doing all the work.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's the other thing when it comes to splitting money, this is where you're talking about potential partnerships.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Try, if at all possible, to avoid partnerships.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Just don't do it, if at all possible.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So many companies struggle and fail because of partnerships.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Where there's two people, it's like a marriage.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're marrying your business partner in a in a you know, business way, where you're tied to them and how they work.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point, you know, at first it's sunshine and roses, later on, you're like, you know, you're breathing too loud, right?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: So at some point, you're going to get frustrated where something's gonna come up and you don't like their decision, or you don't like how they're doing things, or they don't you don't think they're putting enough effort in, and all of a sudden you're frustrated at each other and the business can fail just because of that, or the partnership can fail because of that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I would encourage you to not go into a partnership when doing this.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: It should be something where, like, if a person comes to me and pitches and they say, I want to build this, and I, if I were to say, yes, I think that's a good idea, then what I would do is talk through the fact that we're gonna do it under my business.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you will have, you'll be the client, essentially.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: But instead of paying me to do this, we'll do this in percentages.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I would pitch it so that um we're this is not a partnership.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is a uh a business and client relationship, because those are much more easily separated.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of leads into number four, which is who makes the final decisions.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: You need to understand and be very clear about who makes the final decision.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because if they come to you an idea and their idea is two sentences long, which is very common, there's a lot of work that has to be done to flesh out that idea.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point, the two of you are going to disagree about where which direction to go with one of those fleshed out points.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Who makes a final call?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be an equal partnership.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, partnerships are problems, and you've got to have a clear pecking order where you say, this person's in charge.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: This person makes the final call.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And usually it's the person who has the most to gain or lose based upon making that call.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that's important to know up front.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Number five, is there a market for this product?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: It does not matter how great the product is.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: It does not matter how cool the idea is.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: It does not matter if it solves all kinds of problems, if it's not a market for it, or if you can't get it to that market, if you can't prove that you can get it to that market, it's just not gonna be valuable.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you ever want to kind of prove this, go to the app store, go to the Android App Store or the iOS App Store and look through not the home page, not the top 50 page of games or apps.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Do a search and search for basically any topic.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then just scroll through all of the options because you will find that there are lots of solutions.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Search a simple one, to-do list.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Figure out how many apps do to-do lists.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And there's gonna be some big market players in there too, where they have word of mouth, they have major advertising budgets and all the rest, and can kind of force their way to the front of the line in front of little old you who has basically no marketing budget.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So is there really an app, a market for this product?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And can you make a dent in that market?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Can you get in front of people and say, yes, this is more valuable, and have them say, Yes, I want this product over all the hundreds or thousands of other products on the market.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: There are thousands of apps that have one or fewer users.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: There are thousands of apps that have never been downloaded by an actual user other than the actual owner.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Not every app succeeds just because it got to the app store.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have a plan for marketing it.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a market for it, or if you can't figure out how to break in, you probably won't succeed with that app.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Number six, and this kind of goes along with this.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: What would be the outcome if the app failed?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you put in this work, you decide, yes, we're gonna do this, you build this app, whatever it is, a web app, or if it's a desktop app, or if it's a mobile app, or whatever it is, game.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: You build this thing and you spend, you know, you estimate how much time you're gonna spend.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say you're just gonna spend six months on this.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: You spend six months on it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Your partner in the meantime has built up a marketing campaign and worked on that and hired contractors to design flyers or whatever they're gonna do.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you've gone through the process, and at the end of it, you have five users.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: What happens then?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Is that going to be devastating to you?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because if the answer is yes, you're gambling.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're not actually doing good development.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is a this is too much of a gamble.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to know can I make it if this does not succeed?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Don't look at you know the top app in the category and go, oh, you know, this app just sold for a million dollars, or this app just has 500,000 users.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the apps that have five users.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Could you survive if that's the case?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Are you putting too much money and too much effort into this?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you saying, you know what, I can take a chance.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I can I can put a little bit of money in this and it won't hurt me.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: I can put some time in this and it won't hurt me.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if I get nothing else out of it, I have a good portfolio project, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: If that's the case, cool, go for it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Number seven, do I have the experience necessary to build this type of app?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot of work to build new things.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And often you'll find that there's a lot more to different areas that you haven't done than you thought initially.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, example of this simple example might be maybe you've never dealt with authentication before.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: That can be a big hurdle because not just slap a username and password in front of that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do password resets and how do you do locked-out users and how do you do uh lost passwords and so many other things?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do two-factor authentication?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's tools out there for that.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a simple example of if you haven't done it before, that's gonna be a bigger hurdle.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Learning how to do it first and then implementing it in your app.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you have the experience necessary to build this type of app?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes that just means it's a bigger unknown, which expands your timeline and your expenses.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Number eight, is this app reliant on things outside of your control?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is one people don't often think about.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a big one right now is AI.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just say you decide I'm gonna create an AI chatbot, which don't do that.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's just a wrapper for chat GPT.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: But let's say you create this wrapper for chat GPT that's somehow different or better.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: You put a prompt in there that makes the AI talk like a pirate.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, whatever.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're reliant now on ChatGPT, which means that if they decide to change their API, you're in trouble.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or if they decide to raise their rates, which they have done, you're in trouble.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So is your app reliant on things outside of your control?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: One that I would love to do is, you know, I play fancy football.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: I just did my draft recently.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can kind of tell you when my this video has been recorded, but um, I love fancy football and I love the idea of getting that data and doing different things with that data.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not a fancy football app, but something different.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The thing is, that data, I'd be completely reliant on a different company providing it to me.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: What if they decide to go out of business?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Does my app go away?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: That could be a real risk.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And is it a risk I'm willing to take?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: So is your app reliant on things that are outside your control?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Number nine, do we know enough about this field?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: One of the benefits here is if your friend is pitching you an idea, sometimes, not always, but sometimes they know a lot about the field and know where a gap is.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they can pitch the idea for how to fill that gap.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe they don't know quite enough about the field.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And again, Dunning Kruger raises its ugly head and they might think they know, or you might think you know enough about the field when you don't have any experience at all in the field.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a big risk for your app because you're gonna build something that isn't gonna actually work well.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: So make sure you know enough about the field to actually understand what the users really want.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Number 10, can I get a proof of concept to market fast enough?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the app is gonna take a year to build, but can you get a proof of concept out to the market in three months?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: A beta version or something that you can put in front of users and make sure you validate the idea?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Can you build a sample app that doesn't actually work, but can you kind of walk people through so that you can understand if it's even valuable, if it's going to be valuable enough, and if people are saying, yes, take my money, or if they're like, yeah, it's cool.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I might, I might use that if it's free.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's a big difference.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the sooner you know that, the better.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's perfectly fine to have a clear no-app ideas policy for people where you auto-reject every idea they have.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Some people do that because you know what?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's just you get inundated sometimes with the amount of things that people want to do.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: But people with experience in industry know where the gaps are and what might fill them.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while, you're gonna come across a really good idea that could have a big impact.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just make sure that your friend has contacts in the industry for marketing the app and the idea is sound and that you're prepared to take on this app.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Go through a list of 10 questions to ensure that you're giving this decision the proper evaluation before committing to it being a possibility.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now just remember that once you say yes, you have an even bigger list of tasks to undertake.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: This list is not about what to do once you say yes, because that list includes creating a business, drawing up contracts, getting legal counsel, and a lot more.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Saying yes is a lot of work, but it can be rewarding.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just make sure you pick the right opportunity before saying yes.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I am Tim Corey.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to I am TimCorey.com and enroll in a course.