4 great lessons in how to build a successful app
The New Investors video series brought to you by Yahoo Finance reveals the secrets of the most successful entrepreneurs and business people in Australia today. This is the fifth episode of the season.
The co-founder of Glamazon, Lauren Silvers, built up an app used by 20,000 everyday folks and celebrities to book stylists to come to their home.
Glamazon has a loyal following, having served celebrities like Kate Hudson and Victoria Beckham, who have an even bigger appreciation of getting treatment without stepping their foot out of their hotel room.
While she learnt how to do that the hard way, without any computing knowledge, she can now offer advice to the next person with the great app idea.
"Just do the bare minimum. Like, get your MVP out there - your minimum viable product - that's going to allow you to make a transaction," she told Yahoo Finance's New Investors show.
"Don't go and get the full bells and whistles and get something like designed to be this huge glamorous global looking business. It's just got to make a transaction."
Getting a simple product out will allow the app idea to reach the market so the entrepreneur - and potential investors - can see the demand.
If there is high demand, many founders will get overexcited and will want to immediately raise investment capital, but Silvers advises to hold off as long as you can perform the tasks yourself.
"Raising capital is fantastic, but only because we did it at the right time," she said.
"I think a lot of startups go to raise capital to build their business when you can actually do so many manual things... Build revenue, get real customers, and then really raise capital to accelerate that growth."
Having a solid sales base will allow the startup to seek a bigger capital raising without diluting the ownership as dramatically as when investors come in at the embryonic stage.
"Make sales first, 100%. We raised one point $2 million from investors, most recently at a $4 million valuation. And that was a really big milestone for us that allowed us to hire more, a bigger team to execute the strategy that we believe is going to take us global. And that's led us to the next phase of our business."
Once a proper team is built with the new capital, the startup will have the four pillars for success, according to Silvers.
"Advisors, mentors, team, founder vision - it's a combination."
Having all four pillars allows a business to execute a radical shift in its model with confidence. As Silvers spoke to Yahoo Finance, Glamazon had just launched its new charging model - going from taking a 20 percent commission to a flat monthly subscription from the beauty professionals.
The move would pump up revenue ten-fold for the app and offer the freelancers predictability and stability in their fees.
The New Investors video series brought to you by Yahoo Finance reveals the secrets of the most successful entrepreneurs and business people in Australia today. This is the fifth episode of the season.
