Most app ideas do not fail. They stall, which looks the same after two years. The cause is almost never the quality of the idea. It is that nobody ever told the person what to do next, in what order, and whether the thing they just did was the right thing.

When I put that on my own landing page, people wrote to me about it. Someone said: I love that you said you need a path not info, because that is what I need. They recognised themselves on the page.

My own idea sat for years

I was going to build the nanny app for a long time before I did anything about it. I did not know all the things, I did not know how to do it, so I waited, and waited, and waited, and then I was busy.

That is the shape of it. Not a decision to give up. A series of weeks where the next step was unclear, so something clearer got done instead.

Why information does not fix this

There is no shortage of advice about building apps. That is part of the problem: you can read for months and stay exactly where you are, because reading does not tell you what your next action is, and it certainly does not tell you whether the last one was worth doing.

What people need is a sequence. Do this, then this, then this, and here is how you know when this one is done.

The other place it stalls: the first unenthusiastic reaction

You tell someone about the idea and they are lukewarm, and you have no way to tell whether that means the idea is wrong, that person is not your user, or you explained it badly. With no framework for sorting those apart, most people quietly stop.

All three are common, and only one of them is about the idea.

What breaks the stall

One conversation with one person who has the problem. Not more planning, not more reading, not a logo.

It works because it converts the question from "is my idea any good", which you cannot answer, into "what did this person do the last time this happened", which you can. Everything you believe right now is an assumption, and assumptions are things you go and check rather than things you sit with.

Start there, and the sequence after it is short enough to hold in your head:

1. Write down the problem you think exists, and who you think has it. Guesses are fine, that is what they are for. 2. Spend two days reading what people say about that problem online. 3. Talk to three to five people who have it, about their experience, not about your idea. 4. Look at what they already use instead. 5. Then decide whether to keep going.

Finding out it is a bad idea is also finishing

One of my students had their idea disproven during the research week. I was glad it happened in class, because they saved months of time and stress and money, and it took a few days of research.

An idea that ends in week three is not a failure. An idea that sits in a notebook for four years is the thing to avoid.

Be realistic about pace

If you are doing this around a job and a life, you are not going to move at the speed of someone doing it full time, and you should not measure yourself against that. The people who get somewhere are the ones who know what question they are answering this week.

Keep reading

I Have an App Idea But I Don't Know How to Code. What Do I Do First?

How Do I Validate an App Idea Without Building It?

Is My App Idea Good Enough? Here's How to Actually Find Out

Learn this with me

From Passion to Product is my free six-week live course, and it is a path taken in order rather than a pile of information, with a live class each week to keep you moving. Weeks one to four are all research and testing, which is where the failures in this article get caught.

I also teach the same six weeks in person with nonprofits and community organisations on the BC coast, for up to 30 people at a time, and I will go after the grant for it with you.

Join the waitlist, get the App Strategy Workbook, or read about the community cohorts.