You have a business idea that you want to take to market. But the core of the idea is technology – say, an application – and you’re not a technical person. You can’t develop the app, and you don’t even speak the same language as the developers you’ve spoken to!

How do non-technical entrepreneurs build and maintain a top-class application, from idea to execution?

Get the market research right

Before getting started on the application development, make sure that the idea is viable. Does your solution have an audience waiting for it? Are you sure that the business model works?

This is a step that every entrepreneur needs to work on regardless of whether or not they have a technical background, but it’s perhaps most important for non-technical business owners. Keep in mind that you need to guide your tech partner every step of the way, which means that you need to be fully convinced of the business model before getting started.

Build an MVP as a proof of concept

Work with your tech partner to create a minimum viable product with basic features. Use this MVP for viability testing among your prospective users. 

Perfect is the enemy of done – rather than work to create an absolutely perfect solution in the first attempt, get moving with an MVP using which you can test and prove your business model.

When you’re working with a professional tech agency, they will leverage microservices architecture. This means that you will go through multiple rounds of iterative development, to develop and launch each module separately. It’s therefore possible to layer features within the same application architecture, even at a later stage.

Engage with a third-party testing team

You can take your application to a third-party dedicated testing agency for assessment. Through third-party testing, you get another technical perspective on the product – where it’s lacking, what it needs, and what can be improved. This way, you can be confident of the technical quality of your product.

Engagement with third-party testers also gives you access to a vast group of beta testers. Beta testing your MVP is important to ensure that your business model works as expected.

Allocating budgets for marketing visibility

Far too many entrepreneurs get caught up in the exciting cycle of building an extraordinary piece of technology, and lose sight of the fact that they are building a business and not just a product. While a focus on tech is important, the marketability of the technology solution is even more critical to the success of the business.

If you are not able to implement marketing activities to generate market visibility to help your product reach your subscriber base, your business model is likely to fail! A good rule of thumb is to ensure that your go-to-market budget exceeds your tech budget by around 6x. 

So while you are planning budgets for your business, make sure that testing market acceptance is front and center in your priority list – it is even more important than building the full-blown application itself.

That’s why it’s important to allocate a marketing budget around an MVP, allowing the entrepreneur to test the product before investing heavily in perfecting the technology. The technology roadmap should always be driven by the market.

If you are a non-technical entrepreneur who’s interested in creating a technology-based business, we hope this helps give you some broad direction on the way forward. Do also get in touch with our experts here at CloudNow today to see if we can help you get your tech solution off the ground.