| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHctL0V73BE |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kty2xerhs748w8gh2836tfkb |
| Readwise ID | 01kty2xerhs748w8gh2836tfkb |
| Date | 2026-05-12 |
| Author | App Masters |
| Category | video |
| Cover image | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SHctL0V73BE/sddefault.jpg |
Coming up, I’m going to share with youseven deadly tips that can kill your appjourney before you even get started.Stay tuned.>> [music]>> What is up, App Nation? It is Steve P.
Young, founder of appmasters.com, theplace you go when you want action-backcontent related to helping you grow yourapp business and, more importantly, appbusiness. Yes, related to growing yourapp business in terms of downloads andsales. And today, I’ve got my friendJaime from B7 Dev, the app developmentfirm that I know and trust. I’ve beenworking with Jaime for over, what, 13years now, and he’s going to come on andreally talk about all the mistakes thathe’s seen people make early in theirapp journey. So, without further ado,Jaime, welcome to the show.
Hi Steve, thank you for having me. Okay,so basically, what we want to sharetoday is seven common mistakes that thethe entrepreneurs they do before theyActually start developing or after theystart developing. Because this, I mean,when you develop an app, you have a raceagainst the clock, okay? It’s yourbudget against the clock, right? I mean,if you have a budget earmarked for thisandover the time that you need to get moreusers and more revenues before you startmaybe getting even and then reinvestingyour revenues on the app, on the startup,if you make some classical mistakes,maybe the odds will be against you.
Okay, so, the first one that we identifyvery easily is trying to make somethingthat is super complex, super big, amulti-tool, and not the classicalapp. I mean, advice that we give to first-time uh entrepreneurs, that is tryto solve one single problemand not try for the app to solve a lotof things, to have a lot of whistles andbells.
What you need is basically somethingthatfixes a common problem. Okay? Rememberthe big companies, they started fixingone single problem, and then eventually,after you get revenue so you getfeedback, you can start adding morestuff and more stuff because adding morestuff is more time, is more developingtime. Okay? Is I mean and you arerunning against the clock on the run onthe long run. Okay? So,solve one problem and focus on that. Youneed focus on the solution and notsomething that is super fancy.
I like it. Do you have an example of aclient that might have came to you Heimand said, “Hey, I want to do theeverything of everythingbefore?”>> Yeah,uhI mean, it’s not just one example, it’suhmost of first time entrepreneurs,They feel, and it’s understandable.
They say, “Look at Facebook. Look atInstagram. They have all thesemulti-layered tiers of services and allthose features that they are superpolished and perfect.” Well, I willexplain to you something. This is the fruitof years and years of stacking upfilters. Snap, I mean, like Instagram, offeatures, social network features,and add-ons, and not just they releaseeverything at once. The first version isvery much stripped down to solving thisproblem, and then they added more stuff.They got investment. Whenyou see on the news that someone isgetting invested, you need to think thatit’s like an iceberg. Okay? You won’tsee all the years of hard work that youhave below the surface.
Yeah.
In the last time, with the artificialintelligence development, what we callagentic development, the times has beenshortened. Okay, you have more companies.
That they are getting funded earlierbecause all this hard work is done withagents. We do it also, but you need tobe at the conceptual level, just focusfocus on solving something simple and doit well. Then everything else will beflowing, butyou have a limited amount of energy.Focus it on solving this thing.> >> I love it. And Jaime, now, you know, assomebody you’ve been doing appdevelopment for years now, but yoursecond tip is, hey, stop doingdevelopment manually.
Yeah.
Up toI mean, the up to the end of 2025, themost common thing, the classical way wasto do developmentby hand. I mean, the developers or agroup of developers will type line byline, or maybe use some kind of alibrary structure to accelerate this.That was the common use. Now, with theTools with artificial intelligence thattoday help us to reduce the time todevelop because they do most of thecoding. Of course, that we know, we asdevelopers, we know how to tell themwhat needs to be done, the rightarchitecture, all the small little nutsand bolts that they need to take inaccount, okay?
But they will do the, the, the hard work.
And that will help us to save weeks, notI mean, just the classical project, sixmonths ofhand work for the first version, okay?First of all, you need to do the design,and then the design should be approved,and then you start developing. Today,we are developing projects in twomonths, okay? Designing one week, allthe rest up to the, the first version, twomonths. So, that is really different,okay? And the cost is different, too,because it’s not the same to pay severaldevelopers for six months against payingseveral. I mean,Limited number of developers withartificial intelligence for 1 or 2months. It’s totally different. The costis totally different. So, because ofthis, we understand that this is the besttime to start your startup if you have. Imean, you always had this idea that youwanted to develop. And this is the righttime because the cost is the, the cost todevelop is reallylower compared to several months ago.
I mean, do you have a favorite tool thatyou’ve been using?>> Yeah, we personally use several. Weuse a set of tools. But mostly in myrole of planning and etc.Architecturing, we use Claude. Okay,Claude code. And then some of ourdevelopers, they understand that forexample, uh,OpenAI Codex is best for. It works lower,but it’s more detailed with the codecode per se. But for planning,you cannot beatClaude. Okay, some developers that weWork with they, they understand that maybe Gemini from Googleis a good option. But in myunderstanding, nothing beats it. I mean,today, right? Because you know everyweek this is different. But today,even the latest news about thisMytho’slibrary from Claude that they refused torelease because it’s kind of too much,clever and too much dangerous for cybersecurity.
Yeah, I know. I just, I was just hearingabout this, too. All right, let’s moveon to the third point, and it is about hosting,okay? Now, I know I’m not a technicalguy.
I’m not technical, but youfor sure you understand about numbers.
Yeah, sure.>> Classical project, if you want to gowith the cloud,the cloud, not cloudy. I mean, theThe the artificial intelligence, thecloud, Google Cloud, Amazon, etc. It’s aexcellent option after you already havea positive cash flow.
A lot of customers that we are movingback from the cloud todedicated hosts. For example, aclassical cost for some smallapp could be running between 7,600, 700150 per month. So,it’s a lot of money that you don’t have,and you need to keep it forthe long run. Okay, so>> Mhm.
it’s more convenient at this stage notto go for the cloud. In the past, youwere afraid of what happens if you havea sudden growth, and then you will needa kind of the cloud to scale reallyfast. You can do it in today with this,And then we areoffering a lot of our customers to comeback to dedicated servers as it was inthe past because of course that todayyou need to be very aware of that.
Is that something that you guys host onyour end or like do you guys have sometools that you guys use?>> No, we use no, no, we use we usededicated companies mostly in the US.
You have a Namecheap, really goodoptions, GoDaddy,I don’t know.You name it. I mean, known providers forthis kind of options, and they have allkinds of. I mean, you cantweak your platform, andI mean,time versus time with the cloud is avery good option. We prefer to recommendthat.
I like that, Jaime. And what are thetypes, like what are some apps for the anewbie out there? What are some appsthat actually need server-sideOr something, a server in the cloud?
I mean, again, the cloud is about thesame as a dedicated server. The onlything that the cloud has is like youhave, like,since it’s kind of elastic, you know,elastic cloud, the name of, of acloud provider, like Amazon, is that you can replicateyour server and multiply it bywithout having to purchase separatelyanother dedicated server and anotherdedicated server. You have a specialconfiguration for scaling this, likethis. I mean, in a click. Butagain, this is in the case that you havea very high level of scale. Uh, and then,if you need time to make the idea mature,and you getusers, etc., that could be overkillfor your finances.
I like it. And then, last one, I reallylike this next tip, Jaime, and that isnot checking for any discounts.>> Correct. I mean, today they have a warbetween them. Let’s suppose that yet youWant to go with the cloud, okay? Amazonis offering you programs. I mean, if youregister to, sorry, Azure from Microsoft,if you register with your email, you get5,000.
This is for free, right? Credits.And then, if you talk with them, like wetalk with some customers, they can scaleup if you have a startup that you canexplain and you can justify and you canshow up to 1,000, 100,000, and up, okay?Of free credits. So, you need to checkthat. Cloudflare is offering for astartup programs. Uh, you have aStripe. Stripe is giving you up to$20,000 for a startup credits, okay?All kinds of stuff that you can checkother than the classicFirebase for free usage up to if youhave a high volume.I don’t know.You need to check with your developer.
Your trusted developer. You need tocheck for all these kind of promotionsbefore starting to spend money oninfrastructure.>> I love it, I’m. We actually we partnerup with a company called Join Secret andfor all our community members throughappfounders.co, they have access to over500 SaaS products likethousands, tens of thousands in savingsand these are just some of the things wehave in ElevenLabs, Google Drive,Lovable, you know, Zoom, Typeform. Likethey’re they’ve got a lot of things thatpeople use a lot of.And you can check out, you know, like wehave our partnership so we’ve alreadypaid for you guys, but you can alsocheck out Join Secret if you want tojust pay and not join our community, butas part of our community we give accessto all the deals that we see as well.And so you get. Look at this, 12 monthsof ElevenLabs, and that’s what I mean.So that’s why I love that tip, I’m, cuzI think it’s little known for mostpeople.
Yeah, I mean, you need to check beforeyou start the hiring services becauseit’s a lot of money. If you, Imean, you make the estimation on theyear or several months, it’s a lot ofmoney.Okay.
And I like the next tip because I think,you know, you kind of talked about itwith number one because you had too manysolutions, you’re trying to solve toomany problems, might help, might hurtwith, you know, distribution. I know wegot number seven, so I’m going to do alittle tease right there. But let’s talkabout the next one, and the UI/UX notbeing optimized for, and I’m what Ialways say is, you know, we’re going tohelp you increase downloads and sales,because that’s really the two numbers thatwe really care about. And so, number fiveis really not optimizing forconversions.
Yeah, this is something that we used towork or we work a lot there with commoncustomers. When you come with yourrecommendations, that is uhif you design your UInot having in mind optimizations,conversions, and revenues, uhyou are wasting time on and money ondesign, because you will have eventuallyto redo it. Okay? So, basically havethis in mind because this isimportant to work with someone with theright experience. Uhwe work on that. Steve, of course, thatthey is a specialist on that. They willI mean, Steve usually checks the designand in 5 minutes, even less, they willtell you, “You need to fix this and thisand this.” And then everything willchange. Okay? So, it’s very important tohave this in mind when you start theprocess. Okay? You eventually you willhave to make more users, moreor users that pay. Okay? Revenues,conversion, etc.
I love it. I’m what I always say is,you know, one of our clients came up tous and said, “Hey, you know, Steve,should I give awayeverything for free and or should Iremove the paywall during theonboarding?” I’m like, "No, don’t dothat becausewe don’t have enough downloads. Like,it’s a download problem right now. It’snot a sales problem. We just don’t haveenough downloads. We’re gaining like fivea day. Like, if we were getting 50 to100 a day, nobody was buying,like, “Okay, maybe there’s somethingwrong here.” But that’s to your point ofwe solve one problem, show a paywall,
and you can do a hard paywall wherethere’s no ads, and let’s see if peopleare willing to buy. And you know,sometimes I’ll even start off apps thatway where we will just build one littlefeature, go after that keyword cuz we’resolving that one problem. As long asthat keyword has search volume, we’reGoing to put a really aggressivepaywall, and that’s how we’re able tojust see if there you know, people arewilling to pay for it. And then we’lltry to build a top of it once we’llbuild more features, we’ll build morethings once we’re getting some tractionand some revenues. And so, I love it.
Like I don’t think the best practice isto put the paywall during onboarding.Don’t take it down just because you’refeeling like, “Oh, people don’t notseeing the value.” Like, “No, no, no.We’re just not getting enoughdownloads.”>> Okay.
Anything you want to add on that, Jaime?>> Sorry?>> Anything you want to add on that one?>> No, no. I mean, I leave it that to you.You are the expert on these. Just totell new entrepreneurs,always always always have everything inaccount before you start the idea. Todaywith the with this thing that we areTalking about authentic development,developing is easier, wayeasier. The complicated part is what theartificial intelligence is not givingyou, that is all the right experiencefor what you need to do. Okay? You needreal people to advise you on what todo.
Getting this kind of design is reallyreally, trust me, really important.Otherwise, you will be treading waterfor a lot of time until you realize whatthe problem is.
Well, going off that andJaime said it best, development’s easynow. And so, really now the next pointisnumber six, which is like UI/UX is yourmain differentiator.
I mean, if your app looks cheap,if you are not showcasingyourself, your quality of work is likeyou’re wasting your money on design.Today, you have really, I mean, again,you have really great tools to do it, toPrepare it.
Uh, you can work with a lot ofaccelerators for this kind of design,working with professional designers, butalways earmark money for design. Okay?Again, I know that maybe someone that isnot too much technical or too muchskilled on designwill have questions, and I don’t knowif this is good enough, etc. Okay?
Consult with people. You can, you can— Imean, contact us, you can contact someof the designers. I mean, always check thatthe designer has a background in mobiledesign, UI/UX experience. Okay, thisis really important. So, you can checkwith us or with any knowndesigner, andtrust me, it will change. I mean,it’s yourbusiness card. It is the way thatyou show the world, the way that you areworking. If the app is serious enough,if the appat least looks like somethingprofessional.
Agreed. Now that anybody can reallybuild their own SaaS product and ifyou’re going to sell that SaaS product,your main differentiator is going to bethat UI/UX design because ultimately,underneath the hood, everything lookspretty much the same. All right, and thelast one, and one of my favorite topics,is not having enough for marketing.
Yeah, not earmarking the budget formarketing. This is, I mean, again, wealways say it to potential customers orcustomers that they already work with,us. We can do the best technical job,the best design, the best development,the best of everything. Everything willbe work as a clock, but if you don’tmake the people know that you have thisreally nice app, really well designed,well done, well developed, in thisproblem that you are solving, you willhave a very expensive piece of softwarefor yourself. So, what you need to do iscontact someone like Steve, contact someknown marketer. My personal take isAlways a Steve, okay. So,go to people that know the trade,okay. This is not as easy as itseems, the marketing thing, okay.
Requires a lot of experienceand then earmark part of your budget.Today, again, you want to spend thatmuch money on development, so save yourmoney or part of your money formarketing. Make the people know youridea, your app, okay? This isthe total difference is day and nightbetween success and not, okay? We sawalso products that they are not so muchgood,but they have a good marketing. So, agood marketing is like 90% of success.
Absolutely. Hey, that’s why I always sayhere on top of the show, we’re here tohelp you increase your downloads andsales. And downloads is first becauseonce you have that, I’m like everythingelse is solvable and we really don’teven invest in building out an app evenmore if we can’t get distribution forIt. And so, for us, we always start withASO, which is organic downloads andranking for certain keywords or AppleAds, becauseit’s one of the best ROI channels andone of the easiest ones to set up andstart going. And so, I always recommendthat. If you understand social media,we’ve heard from other people in thespace that have found success goingviral on social media, but you need alot of views to get the downloads. Youhear those that say, "I got 7 million
views and, you know, a milliondownloads." You hardly hear from thoseand I’ve seen them, they’ll email me,“I’m, I got 2 million views. I got like20 downloads.” And I have heard thosestories, too. And so, you know, like ifyou don’t know anything about marketing,start with the ASO and ASA. If you knowa little about social media and socialmedia marketing, you can start off withwhat you know best as well, but I, we’veall seen apps that have that areAwesome. Like, we really believe in theidea. We work with a lot of clients,too, and we want all our clients tosucceed. And so we’re like, “I love thisapp. I want this to grow, too.” Andtrying to find that channel to make itgrow is one of the hardest parts.
Yeah, correct. I mean, again,if no one knows about your idea,zero chance of success. They won’t. Theywon’t. I mean, it’s basically because it’slike, you know, you go to dance, if youdon’t go to the, you know,to dance in front of everyone, forgetabout dancing with anyone. Okay, sothat’s the thing.
It. I like it. I’m a great analogy. Well,Jaime, anything else you want to coverthat you might have missed?
No, basically weare offering to anyone that they want tovalidate the idea or to know basicallyhow much could cost to develop it withthose new tools and new opportunities tocontact us. And my email is Jaime, c.
h a i mat b7dev. The letter b as in banana, thenumber seven, dev as in development.com.>> Yeah.>> Okay, or Steve can print the email herebelow, or you can go to b7dev.com andyou have a contact form.>> Yeah, all it is is right there. AndJaime and I have literally been workingtogether since 2013 when I first startedthis entire journey. And socollectively, Jaime, we’ve probably seenthousands upon thousands, maybe tens ofthousands of apps at this point beinglaunched. And Jaime wants to give youthese. He’s telling you the tools that heuses personally to help you grow so youdon’t make that mistake and you’reactually spending your time, moreimportantly, money and time on thingsthat are most important. And he solvedit. He said it best. One mainproblem.
Don’t spend a lot on all your technologyand then make sure your UI/UX standsOut. And lastly, make sure you have adistribution channel. So once again, itis the letter B, the number seven,b7dev.com, b7dev.com. All that info islinked up into your favorite podcastapp, or if you like looking at videos,the YouTube description as well. Jaime,thank you so much for coming on anddoing this.
No, thank you, Steve, as usual.>> Thank you guys for watching, and I’ll seeyou on the next video.