

App vs. Business - kingsidharth
http://www.64notes.com/app-vs-business/

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AznHisoka
In a sense I feel building a business is building a moat around your
app/technology. Google started with a search engine but gradually expanded to
email, spreadsheets, blogging, advertising, etc. Once you got something that
is solving a problem, make sure you build defensible products around it to
ensure you remain the one solving that problem, and make it harder for others
to enter that same area. Otherwise you're in trouble. Because building a rails
app is something any geek can do. Building a defensible business is something
not any regular Joe can, on the other hand.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Apples vs. oranges. "regular Joe" != "geek" Sure, any geek can build that app,
but most geeks won't build _any_ kind of business. The number of people who
are capable and motivated to both build a good app and also build a strong
business around it is very small. Small enough that you shouldn't worry about
them prematurely.

I don't really have a good feeling about this "defensible" business that
people keep talking about. Competition is something that should be expected,
not a reason to panic. In fact, I'd say the best way to start a business is to
look at existing ones and compete with them along an axis where they are weak.

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theoj
This got me thinking about the $200,000 "shitty" Android app the government
supposedly commissioned. With some slight rephrasing:

>> Next time you see a business build a "cheap & shitty app" and making loads
of money - try to see what business is backing it up, and what problem it is
solving instead of how bad or good it is technically.

Original article: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3266455>

A lot of folks were hung up on the fact that they can build it in 6 hours. But
can they also test it in 6 hours? Write the requirements for it in 6 hours?
Navigate the bureaucracy to get the project approved in 6 hours? That's why
gun.io doesn't have government business -- they can't do the business side.

~~~
brildum
That IS the problem. They can't do the business side, but they SHOULD be able
to do the business side. Government contracts favor large mega-corps rather
than small, efficient businesses because of the enormous amount of regulations
involved.

~~~
tatsuke95
For better or worse, it's easier for a big bureaucracy (the government) to
deal with other big bureaucracies (corporations), rather than micromanaging
who is building what app for which department. It's not the _most_ efficient,
but it might be more efficient than immediate alternatives.

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evolution
building app has started to become commodity, most of these are built over the
weekend and left after that. What we need to understand is that user
acquisition and retention are the most critical factors of the startups in
this era. I don't want to go into negative but every hacker knows that we
should build something that solves pain for the users and try to monetize
that. And every weekend project submitted here seems to be solving some kind
of problem at least for that particular niche market. But to grow such apps
into business one needs to work on user acquisition, retention, building
credibility and customer loyalty which can not be commoditized. These are
completely different aspects of business than writing code and should be taken
as serious and aggressive as writing code.

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briandoll
Absolutely. I wrote about this last year (Engineers- build businesses not
apps: [http://emphaticsolutions.com/2010/12/10/build-businesses-
not...](http://emphaticsolutions.com/2010/12/10/build-businesses-not-
apps.html)) and yet I don't think we can say this enough.

This is one of the primary values found in the essence of the lean startup
movement. Customer development can not be overlooked. Business models can not
be overlooked. Building apps is easy, building sustainable businesses is hard.

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thatmiddleway
<http://cl.ly/3b1J1H3b412p2S0S3421>

I don't see what's cluttered about evernote. Full screen mode drops the
advertisements too.

