Don't go looking for a developer. The first thing to do is work out who has the problem, how often it happens to them, and what they do about it now. That takes about two weeks, costs nothing, and needs no technical skill at all.

The gap between an idea and a product is almost never technical. I worked at an agency, and what founders brought us was an idea with no research behind it. My reaction was always the same: you are about to spend a lot of money, and you have no idea whether anyone will use this.

First, find out what people already say

Go where the people with the problem already talk: Reddit, Facebook groups, forums, app store reviews, YouTube comments. Read what they say in their own words, what they have tried, what they put up with.

Two days of this can tell you that you were right, or that you were wrong, and either way you have not spent weeks on it. This is the cheapest chance you will get to find out that the idea needs to change.

Then talk to five people

Five people who are the same kind of person is usually enough to start hearing the same things repeated. Three is enough to keep going.

Three rules make these conversations work:

1. Recruit with the problem, not the idea. "I'm researching how hard it is for parents to get a daycare spot." Nothing about your app. 2. Ask for the story. "Tell me about..." and "walk me through..." People will not say "I need a scheduling tool". They will say it's such a pain when the schedule changes and I have to redo everything. That is the problem, and you only hear it in the story. 3. Ask about the last time, not what they usually do. Ask someone how they eat and you get the aspirational version. Ask what their last meal was, and the one before that, and you get the truth.

What you are trying to learn

Three things, and none of them are about your app:

• What specific problem is this? Not "productivity" or "communication", but something specific enough that you can describe the person and the moment it hurts.
• Who exactly has it? Not everyone, not small businesses. A group with something real in common.
• What do they do about it today? Everyone with a problem is already solving it somehow: a spreadsheet, a group chat, a paper notebook, a friend. Those workarounds are what you are really competing with, not other apps.

Then, and only then, the how

Once you know the problem is real and you know what the smallest useful version looks like, the build question becomes answerable. That is also the moment where you can talk to a developer, an agency or a no-code tool without being at their mercy, because you can say what you need.

Two things worth knowing before you get there, so they don't surprise you:

• Building something with no-code is a real option, and plenty of people launch that way. But people also get excited about how much they can build, get close to launch, and discover they cannot launch with it, and then it is a rebuild from scratch.
• If you take a Bubble or FlutterFlow app to an agency and say you want them to build your real product on top of it, they will tell you it is a good start and they have to start over.

Neither is a reason to avoid those tools. They are reasons to know what you are choosing.

Do I need to learn to code?

No. Without understanding the research and how to talk to your users, you can follow any system to make something, but there is no way to know the product is any good. The skill that decides whether your app works is not coding.

Keep reading

App Idea vs. App Strategy: What's the Difference and Why It Matters

How Do I Validate an App Idea Without Building It?

Hiring a Developer vs. Learning to Code vs. No-Code

Learn this with me

From Passion to Product is my free six-week live course for exactly this moment: you have an idea, you do not write code, and you want to know what to do in what order. Nobody needs a tech background to start it, and there is no coding in it.

You work on your own idea the whole way through, and you finish with a strategy package you could put in front of whoever builds it.

I also run the same six weeks in person with nonprofits and community organisations on the BC coast, for up to 30 people at a time, so that getting into this does not mean leaving town for it.

Join the waitlist, start today with the workbook, or read about the community cohorts.