Things to remember when building a new software product

First of all, this article is intended for those who are not really developers, but want to start off a new software product.

Let’s assume you have a super awesome idea, that you are willing to invest and build. Which hopefully will make you millions one day. So how would you start building it, with a minimum cost. Our focus is only the product building part, not marketing or selling.

• Where would you start?
• How much will you spend on it?
• What technologies to use?

What I’m about to explain applies to solutions that’s not gonna scale to millions of user within 1 or 2 months. Well being optimistic is good, but do you wanna spend tens of thousands of valuable funds targeting a usage you are gonna get in months. When you can spend those money on other important stuff, until that level of scalability is required.

Rule 1: Build a solution that’s sufficient for now, but scalable to a certain extent. Do not over target scalability. Because scalability is not free. It will cost you a-lot more to build and maintain. Start simple which can cater your target for initial x months. But do discuss with your developer and have provision. You can always spend more and re-engineer it to cater millions when you are earning/ getting enough funds.

Rule 2: Keep things simple. Don’t over complicate with different or complex technologies. For users your solution just need to work. They don’t worry about whether it’s java or php or javascript. Pick technology stack that works, easy to implement and maintain. Don’t forget in early days you will be making lots of changes based on feedback, so be ready to adopt fast.

Rule 3: Keep maintenance free & cheap as possible. Solution is not everything. You need your funds to do marketing, sales and brand awareness. So make sure to utilize what’s free out there as much as possible (without losing above 1 & 2). Ex:

• AWS Free tier (EC2, RDS etc)
• Azure Bizpark
• Google Free usage (firebase hosting/ database)

All above are fairly enough to keep a decent solution running with almost no cost, until you scale to serve more users. Since all above are cloud, you can always scale as you need.

Over the years I have helped build solutions which ran 3–12months maintenance cost free, until they were getting enough usage to start paying actually. Can you imagine the relief it gives for a startup with limited funds.

So this is what I have learned and what I give out as my first advice when anybody talks to me about starting/ developing a product.

Good Luck to all entrepreneurs!!!