Video version of this article: https://youtu.be/7xWl97seDIc?si=FkAh0ml6TCNcw5Om
All developers at some point in their lives have had this thought:
“I am gonna make an app and it is gonna be a success. I had an idea that no one else has had. I wonder how this amazing app does not exist already. It must be that I am the first to have it and have the determination to bring it to life. This is gonna be a great success!”
Sorry to break it to you, but you are probably gonna miserably fail with that. Unfortunately, you are probably not a genius. Sorry.
But let me explain to you why I think so.
You probably do not understand what the competition offers
All the apps and services that you use have a lot of issues for sure, but we sometimes tend to forget the things they do extremely well.
Maybe there is a very popular app with a clearly outdated interface that, on the other hand, offers great customer service and has great logistics! Or maybe there is an app that is slow and buggy but offers a product that you can only obtain there, and people are willing to deal with the shenanigans just because they really like the product.
Or maybe it is just that the app is old and it is used by a lot of people, so people do not want to switch because they prefer to deal with an imperfect app they trust than risk it with something they do not know about. Sometimes people are just not very brave.
There are even cases where the only thing the app offers compared to the competition is a big community of people using it. So consumers deal with the not-so-good parts of the app simply because they want to be part of a community. You do not want to be the guy with the most private, secure, and efficient messaging app that has no one to speak to because no one uses that app besides you.
So when comparing your idea to the existing ones, do not focus only on the things you can do better than the competition. But try to be realistic and think of the things the competition does better than you.
Things are more difficult than what you think
Products are not as easy to build as a lot of people want you to believe. It is very probable that you are underestimating the problems you will face down the road and overestimating your capabilities.
Building a product is not just the code. It is the infrastructure, it is the marketing, it is the design, it is the product part (establishing prices, conditions), it is the legal problems, it is the psychological aspect (I am sure you are very motivated now, but what about in a couple of months?).
As you can see, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, and if we acknowledge Murphy’s Law—“if something can go wrong, it will go wrong”—we will rapidly realize that a lot of things will go completely south during the app-building process.
So, please, before quitting your job to become the next Mark Zuckerberg, take into account the real effort you will have to deal with and all the problems that are surely gonna pop up.
Consumers do not know what they want
It is a fact of life. People (including me) love to talk about how things are bad and how things could be better if someone did what we just want. But in reality, when people face the consequences of what they want, you see that they clearly did not know what they wanted.
This especially happens with things related to privacy. Everyone will tell you how much they value privacy, but when we have to face reality and pick between privacy and comfort, we forget our higher values.
Black swans are more common than what you would think
Okay, let us consider that you are amazing, that you have been able to cover a necessity with a great app, and that you have been able to deal with all the problems involved with its creation and maintenance.
You are still not safe—you can encounter a black swan at any moment. What is a black swan, you may be asking yourself? According to Wikipedia:
“The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight .”
In other words, the terrifying unexpected.
You may be developing the greatest app possible, but maybe one day you wake up and realize that some family member is ill and needs money for treatment, or maybe your house gets burned down, or maybe the relationship with your beautiful partner does not work out and now you have to deal with lawyers and a lot of mental stress.
But black swans are not only personal things. Maybe the app you are developing is great, but one day you wake up and realize that someone has just released a very similar app that does something very similar to yours. Or maybe you hire some employees and one day they all leave at once because they were contacted by a recruiter, and now suddenly you do not have a team anymore!
Or maybe a new technological breakthrough pops up that renders your product obsolete. Now what?!
Conclusion
I am by no means telling you not to follow your dreams—in fact, I would like to make another video complementing this one telling you to precisely do that.
What I want to avoid is you getting yourself ruined or in a great mess just because you did not think realistically.
So, in conclusion, follow your dreams, but please, do not ignore reality.
Thank you so much for watching this video! I really hope you like it.
And now it is time to say goodbye.
I send you a very big kiss, a very big hug, I remind you to never forget to be a good person, and I wish you happy coding.
Chao Chao!
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