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You might have a crazy mobile app idea and need to raise money to create it. Developing a Minimum Viable Product (or MVP) application is your way of protecting your investors when you’re on a tight budget. An MVP will let you present your application to VCs and investors while keeping development costs to a minimum. You can expect your MVP to be only a few thousand dollars. The best part is that you only need two things to make it happen: a designer and a developer.
Related: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your First Mobile App
Hire a designer
First, you need to hire a designer. Affordable and skilled designers can be found on sites like Dribbble and Freelancer. When you find your designer, you should make sure they fully understand your application before they can start creating wireframes. Wireframes don’t need to be that complicated. Keep it simple and include only the essential parts of the application. Once you get your wireframe, you can make adjustments to let your designer know what style you want your app to look like. Mention your desired color scheme, and maybe even some of your favorite apps, so your designer can get some inspiration. Depending on the level of designer you hire, the price per page design ranges from $20 to $200. A great designer will charge you $2,000 for 10 pages, and a new designer will charge you $200. Remember, design is what sells your app, so you shouldn’t be trying to save money here.
Many of you will be able to stop here and present your app design to potential investors and VCs. This should be good enough in most cases, but you have the chance to deal with people who want to see a working application before they sign a check – that’s where developers come in. They will be able to bring these designs to life.
Related: 3 Ways to Build Mobile Apps Without Technical Skills
Hire a developer
Now you’ve come to the hardest part, hiring a developer. Today, you can find developers all over the Internet. If you want to keep prices affordable, I recommend searching for developers on LinkedIn, or you can hire them on freelance sites like Toptal or Freelancer.
Before hiring a developer, you need to look at their recent work, where they come from, understand what languages they speak, how much they charge per hour, and how much time they can devote to your project.If you need to save money, consider hiring developers outside the US You can find talented and affordable developers in Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh, Nepal and many other countries outside the US
The great thing about creating an MVP is that you don’t need the best developers in the world to make it happen. Your MVP doesn’t need a complex backend to support millions of users; it’s just a demo application that will serve the handful of people you’ll be pitching. Think about friends, family and potential investors.
When talking to developers, make sure they know you only need a demo or MVP app. They need to know that you’re not looking for a fully built project that can support a large number of users. If they don’t understand this, you’re spending a lot of money on the cloud when you don’t need to do anything serious behind the scenes. Once you figure this out, you can get into their past work. See if they have made a similar app in the past and ask to see the app so you can see the quality they are able to offer you.
Related: Here’s exactly what you need to do to launch a mobile app
cost
Once you find someone you like, expect to spend anywhere from $10 to $100 an hour, sometimes more, depending on their skill level and location. No app is the same, and they all cost differently to develop, so I can’t give an estimate on what you think.However, I can tell you how much my MVP app is worth link me used to be. I designed the original app myself in Photoshop, so I didn’t spend any money on the design. Development is simple. We only need to show three things: a QR code scanner, a QR code generator, and a user profile. After scanning the QR code, your profile will appear and you will be able to see the user’s name, number, email and all social media links. All of this ended up costing about $5,000. If your MVP is very complex, you should consider removing parts of the application to reduce costs. You can even request a price menu for each part of the app to see which features or functions cost you the most.
I’m almost sure you’ve heard this, but you’re always going to miss 100% of the photos you don’t take. So, get to work and do your best. You just need to find two pieces of the puzzle: the designer and the developer. to achieve it.
