When I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey back in 2010, the web landscape resembled a barren desert compared to what's available now.

Nowadays, it's possible to launch both native and web applications in a matter of weeks, whereas it used to take many months.

The risks associated with launching a new app and scaling startups were significantly higher back then compared to now. Investors had to bear much risk investing in startups because just launching a proof of concept of an app required waiting for months (if not years).

Back then, you also needed a larger founding team. You required at least 2 to 5 developers to get things off the ground.

Fast forward to 2024, we're operating in a completely different landscape.

There’s an abundance of market research tools at your disposal that help filter noise from signal and study trends. Tools like google Trends and Semrush allow you to have a real-time understanding of trending topics and keywords in any market.

There are tools that allow you to reach your target markets directly via emails, surveys etc.. Tools like Lemlist and Clay and social networks like X and Linkedin and Linkedin Sales Navigator allow you to interact with your target audience faster at scale like never before.

Tools like Figma allow you to collaborate with your team and design the screens required for your website, landing pages and app and get everyone’s buy-in faster.

Tools like webflow and framer allows you to transform your figma screens into website pages with an ease of some clicks.

Not to mention a sheer abundance of website builders like wix and squarespace that comes in with many ready-to-use templates to launch your website pages.

The same trends persist in app development. Platforms like Flutter enable you to launch simple native applications. We haven’t yet explored more complex use cases but for simple applications, such as a scheduling app, it works very well.

Besides there are an abundance of open source libraries for your front end and back end development. On top of it, there are tools like GitHub Copilot - your AI pair programmer - that enables you to write codes, to run tests and it does most of the heavy lifting.

Given the current situation, our proposal to kick off applications within 4 weeks shouldn't seem far-fetched to you. What I've shown is that today we have tools we could only dream of 20 years ago.

Some might say that startups don't launch quickly because they struggle to plan and define their product strategy, not because they lack tools and resources.

This article focuses on our thesis that we can launch applications in 4 weeks. Our approach is based on four main pillars:

1. Single product capability or vertical SaaS
2. Design Sprint and time-bounded efforts
3. Low-code app building framework
4. Continuous iteration

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Single Product Capability

Most B2B founders suck at translating their grand vision into a simple app that could generate a 7-figure ARR. They often go wide, incorporating many half-baked features.

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Many, and I mean many, successful businesses have been built on delivering ONE product capability like no others. Here's a non-exhaustive list:

Superhuman - Fastest email client

Calendly - Easy scheduling

Doodle - Simple polling

Miro - Digital workspace

Trello - Organize works in simple boards

Docusign - Email signature

UserTesting - User research in one hour

They all began by focusing on doing one thing exceptionally well.

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Single product capability apps are also called vertical SaaS in the software world. Vertical SaaS apps fare better across almost all metrics that are important to scaling a startup. The below chart is very telling 

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Only 22% of sales & marketing money is spent by vertical SaaS, while others use 41%. And their GTM (Go To Market) Spend Ratio is $1.76 for every $1 of Net New ARR, compared to $2.40 for others.

Vertical software used to be overlooked, labeled too narrow. But with solid products and happy customers, it's a goldmine. Plus, the customers themselves become the marketing and sales team, making it super efficient.

The advantage of single product capability apps is focus. You’re not between different niches (or ICPs - Ideal Customer Profiles) and serve one. Moz is a great example of vertical SaaS that has been around for over 20 years and serves one ICP i.e. SEO experts. Focusing on one niche will create a moat for your startup. Your customers will benefit from the quality and specialization of your offerings, making it difficult for them to choose other providers.

Still to this date, I use Calendly although Hubspot and Google offer scheduling functionalities (I use hubspot to manage our deal flow and Google for mainly email client and documentation). Calendly offers features that enable me schedule calls 1-1 and 1-many with ease. It offers analytics and paid calls. 

One thing that early stage SaaS founders don’t realize is that you solidify your moat by accumulating and shipping functionalities that help you ICP to do things faster and more effectively. 

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Understanding what your moat is can be the Achilles' heel of many startup founding teams. Your moat reflects how well you truly understand your market, customers, and your own capabilities to deliver outstanding solutions.

Most startups we've worked with didn't have a clear differentiation strategy, meaning they were going to the market at the risk of commoditization.

When your app is commodified, it literally means you're one of many open tabs on a prospect's device. They choose by comparing your offers to others. They have to because your app looks the same as others in the market.

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To your surprise, what your prospects are subconsciously trying to discover is that there’s a provider who speaks their language, understands their challenges, demonstrates in-depth expertise like no other, and offers solutions that feel like magic and solve their problems at a level that can’t be compared to any other competitors.

Unless you don’t achieve this, you’ll be commodified. You have to compete on providing the cheapest offer and hurting your margins. That’s a recipe for gradual drift into irrelevance! And you want to avoid this!

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How can you avoid this?

Design Sprint and time bounded efforts

In the first week of our 4-week app launch process, we conduct a design sprint and stress test your assumptions. We begin by defining your ICPs and their pain points.

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Then define your target market and all the competitors. 

We prioritize addressing the most pressing pain points of your ICP and align them with your competitors' offerings, while also identifying market gaps.

For instance, in a recent collaboration, we began working with a sales enablement platform. The founding team aimed to establish a presence in this highly competitive space. We divided the market into two primary categories: sales enablement platforms focusing on Conquer And Expand (CAE) strategies (i.e. cold outbound), and those emphasizing nurturing.

By categorizing competitors, we clarified our focus. We swiftly recognized the intense competition within the CAE space, making entry challenging. Conversely, we found fewer outstanding offerings in the nurturing segment. Leveraging the capabilities of the founding team, we directed our attention to this segment.

Subsequently, we conducted a deeper analysis of existing offerings, refining our focus until we identified an opportunity to assist LinkedIn influencers with a minimum of 5000 contacts in nurturing and re-engaging their networks.

The objective for the first two days of the workshop is to achieve a product strategy (differentiation point) that allows for the development of a hard product (moat) for a niche (ICP) around some of their urgent pain points. The urgency is at the core of our thesis. Without urgency, there’s no cash flow. Without cash flow, there’s no business.

We are not interested in developing products that your ICP may or may not want. We look at urgency, immediacy, and severity. Everything else is secondary for us.

In the next days of the design sprint week, we develop clickable prototypes and conduct a round of testing with prospects to gauge reactions and feedback. Based on the feedback, we iterate on prototypes and finalize them.

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Low-code Development

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Our low-code platform enables us to develop what we’ve defined, designed, and tested during the first week within 3 weeks, if not sooner.

We have introduced major innovations when building the platform. To be specific:

On the application layer: A no-code AI-powered builder that turns Figma screens into React-based interfaces.

On the business layer: A comprehensive ready-to-use library of necessary business logics such as 2FA and login over years.

And also, our customized solutions to manage hosting, which cost you a lot cheaper in the long run.

This part of the process will be managed by Omid - our CTO from start to finish, and our UX design team will support him with necessary interface components.

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Continuous iteration 

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Typically, startups require anywhere from 6 to 15 months to launch their products. These durations truly astonish me. They stand as a primary factor behind the failure of 9 out of 10 startups. The longer the wait, the quicker your funds diminish, leaving you scrambling in the market, driven mostly by panic. This leads to squandering your remaining resources on initiatives that fail to generate meaningful traction.

Your best bet to succeed is to go to market as early as possible. Having an app that delivers on a promise and can solve pain points of an ICP allows you to interact with them. Through these interactions, you learn invaluable insights that enable you to iterate and mature your app offerings.

These learnings at the early stages of your growth are crucial. Studies show that startups that reach their product-market fit have undergone multiple iterations (or pivots) before achieving it.

What you often assume could resonate well in your target market is not always accurate or aligned with market needs. When you have an app that your target market could purchase by paying, then the signals you're receiving are the most accurate form of feedback.

That's one of my criticisms towards experts in favor of lo-fi MVP building. Although those experiments generate valuable insights, they're not as accurate as having a functioning app with a pricing model and payment engine.

That's why we've been working hard in the past two years to introduce our app-building offer. Learn more about it. We've been laying the building blocks of a low-code app (web and native) platform that enables us to launch applications in 4 weeks. In 4 weeks, you go to market and start selling, and getting feedback from your target market. That puts you at least 5 months ahead of your competitors.

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