So you’ve decided to build an app. You’ve identified the problem you want to solve, and the pool of people who will be your customers.
Now comes the question of which platform to build it on. Should you build a responsive web app? An android app? An iPhone app? A Windows app (I hope not…)? Or maybe you should build for multiple platforms to start?
Building for multiple platforms at once probably isn’t a great idea unless you have a large engineering team and some serious funding. Recently I read that you should have a team of at least 5 engineers per platform. I can’t seem to find where I read that, but it seems right given my experiences. Five engineers in nyc is a $50k/month overhead – which isn’t something a lean organization can support.
So, let’s return to the original question: which platform to build for first?
Before you can answer the question of which platform to build for first you need to define who is it for. It should be pretty obvious which platform you need to build for if you really understand your target user. And if you don’t understand your target user you probably need to take a deep breath and reconsider what you’re doing building anything in the first place.
A few examples:
- If you’re building a tool intended for students to use in the classroom a web app is the way to go. It doesn’t require the teacher to convince her school to allow an iPad app, and many schools use chrome books.
- If you’re building a tool for yuppies in Brooklyn to find barbers to trim their beards then you’ll probably want to build an iOS app. This demographic is probably iPhone heavy, and knowing their location will be key.
- If you’re building a tool for African farmers to optimize their harvest then you’ll probably want to build an SMS based system that can leverage cell networks and keep data usage low.
Once you understand your user the platform answer should be clear.
For further reading check out this post.