How to Validate Your App Idea and Get to Market Faster and Cheaper – In Just 7 Minutes with Patrick Bentley

Resources/Links:

• Checkout Patrick’s Idea Validation Workbook: Learn 4 Steps You Can Take Today to get Closer to Revenue from Your App:https://launchtrail.tech/

Summary

Patrick Bentley is a software developer and Founder of the Launchtrail system. He works with non-technical businesses to use tech to accelerate their business growth.

In this episode, Patrick shares how he helps non-technical entrepreneurs validate their app ideas and get to market fast and get closer to making money.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:00 – Patrick’s ideal client: “My ideal client is largely going to be any entrepreneurs who are non-technical, who have app ideas. So that can be a solopreneur. It can also be an organization that’s already in business and just looking to automate their processes or maybe create a new product.”
• 01:42 – Problem Patrick helps solve: “So, the problem that we solve is that we actually help with everything before the application.”
• 02:33 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Patrick: “So, the symptoms that people usually have are that they have no idea how to actually go about the app development, or they’ve already maybe tried to get their app developed and it hasn’t turned out the way that they’ve expected it to. Or they just have no idea how to actually launch or solve any of the technical problems that come along with launching an application.”
• 03:29 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Patrick’s solution: “The common mistakes are usually having an app idea and then they say, “Okay, well, I’m going to go out and I’m going to shop for a software development firm,” but they really don’t have any idea how to deliver that product.”
• 04:34 – Patrick’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): “Just to start validating their ideas early as possible.”
• 06:04 – Patrick’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Checkout 4 Steps to Mapping your Business Structure:http://bit.ly/4StepsBusinessStructure
• 06:26 – Q: How to build a ‘no-code’ viable app? A: No code solutions is that there’s still a lot of programmatic thinking that goes into figuring out how the applications that work. So even if you’re using no-code and you’re using drag and drop, if you’re not thinking about the data model, and what types of data need to be collected and how that data needs to be manipulated, and then even how you need to host it, those are still very technical leaning questions that need to be answered. And so even though there are drag and drop solutions, there’s still a lot of thinking and forethought that needs to happen before you start building.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Start validating your app idea as early as possible.” -@PI_Bentley Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: 0:09

Hello everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by Patrick Bentley. Patrick, good day, sir, welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Patrick Bentley 0:18
I’m actually hanging out in Bahrain in the Middle East.

Tom Poland: 0:21
Bahrain, in the Middle East. All the way from Bahrain to Little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia. Folks, Patrick, for those of you who don’t know, is a software developer. He’s the founder of the Launchtrail system. And he works with non-technical business owners to use tech to accelerate their business growth.

Tom Poland: 0:38
And our title today is a very interesting one, “How to Validate Your App Idea and Get to Market Faster,” with less money spent along the way. And Patrick is going to show us how to do that, tell us how to do that in less than seven minutes, or just under seven minutes. So, let’s rock and roll. Patrick, your seven minutes starts now. Question number one is, who is your ideal client?

Patrick Bentley 1:00
My ideal client is largely going to be any entrepreneurs who are non-technical, who have app ideas. So that can be a solopreneur. It can also be an organization who’s already in business and just looking to automate their processes or maybe create a new product.

Patrick Bentley 1:17
It can also be product managers who maybe want to test out some new features on an already existing product or test out a new product. And maybe they don’t have the internal resources to divert them. So, anybody in the organization who is looking to do something with technology.

Tom Poland: 1:34
They got an idea for an app, and they, well, let’s tell them what they get. What’s the problem you solve? That’s question number two, six minutes left.

Patrick Bentley 1:42
Yeah, yeah. So, the problem that we solve is that we actually help with everything before the application. So, we help people to validate their ideas, to figure out who their customers are, to figure out what their minimum viable product should be, and then to actually figure out what the technical requirements are for that. And then we prototype that idea for them and we do that all within 30 days.

Tom Poland: 2:03
Wow, that’s amazing. So rather than throw a whole bucket load of money into developing a product and launch it and go, “Oh, man, we suck,” you validate it within 30 days.

Tom Poland: 2:14
So, question number three, and we got five and a half minutes left, people who don’t have your service are going to experience some symptoms. What are the typical symptoms that people who don’t go through Launchtrail, what do they experience? In other words, if someone’s listening to this, how would they know that they’re actually a good prospect for working with you?

Patrick Bentley 2:33
Oh, yeah. So, the symptoms that people usually have are that they have no idea how to actually go about the app development, or they’ve already maybe tried to get their app developed and it hasn’t turned out the way that they’ve expected it to. Or they just have no idea how to actually launch or solve any of the technical problems that come along with launching an application.

Patrick Bentley 2:54
So typically, what we’re going to run across is people who are spending, you know, a bunch of money on developing an application and then they get there and they realized that they don’t know who’s going to use the app. Or the people who they think are going to use the app, don’t use it.

Tom Poland: 3:11
So that probably leads us nicely into question number four, and four and a half minutes left, the common mistakes that people make before they discover Launchtrail.tech. When you get a new client on board, and they tell you their story of what led them to your door, so to speak, what are some of the things that they’re telling you that they’ve tried that just didn’t work?

Patrick Bentley 3:29
The common mistakes are usually having an app idea and then they say, “Okay, well, I’m going to go out and I’m going to shop for a software development firm,” but they really don’t have any idea how to deliver that product. So typically, the symptoms are going to be they’ve already spent a bunch of money on it. Or they’re getting feedback from their customers that what they’ve already built isn’t quite what they wanted. Usually just a lot of confusion around the best way to approach it or if they’ve already started. They put a lot of resources, whether that’s time or money into it that doesn’t really work for them.

Tom Poland: 4:05
Yeah. So, there’s that kind of frustrated and disappointed. So, question number five then, three and a half minutes left, what’s one valuable action that someone who’s got an app idea that can take? It’s not going to solve the whole issue, but what’s one thing that an audience member could do that’s going to help them a bit with the issue?

Patrick Bentley 4:24
So, I think one of the best things that someone can do that’s really free, is just to start validating their ideas early as possible. And so, when I say validate the idea, step number one to that is sitting down and actually figuring out what is the problem that they solve, and to write that out succinctly into maybe one or two sentences.

Patrick Bentley 4:45
And then to figure out who’s going to be their end user and to actually sit down and systematically think about that or intentionally think about who this person is, where they are, you know, what’s the actual problem they have. And then go out and maybe make a list of, you know, 10, 20, 100 people if you can, and start reaching out to those people and actually pitching them the idea. “Hey, I’ve got this thing,” or, “I have this idea for an application, I think this is a problem that can be solved. Is this a problem that you’re having? Does this idea sounded like something that would be useful to you?” And most importantly, “Would you pay for that?”

Tom Poland: 5:23
Right. And you’re testing goes, does a lot more than that, I know, but this is one such thing as somebody who want to do something, that they could start with that at least. So, let’s talk about questions six, which is, two minutes left, we want to direct people to something where they can get more information about how to validate apps before they sink a whole lot of money and time and effort into it. So, is there a resource you could point people to that’s going to help them with that?

Patrick Bentley 5:49
Yeah. So, absolutely. I think the resource that most people can go to, to help them validate their idea, they can just go to our landing page launchtrail.tech, and there you can sign up for an idea validation workbook that we’ve made available for free. And it’s very quick, very straight forward. But what it will do is it’ll start you down the path of actually validating that idea, reaching out to people, and then to help you to understand the philosophy around why that’s important for your application.

Tom Poland: 6:17
Great. So that’s launchtrail.tech. One minute left, question number seven, what’s the one question I should have asked you, but didn’t?

Patrick Bentley6:26
So, I think the one question that I’ve been hearing a lot and want to get some clarification out there is the idea of no code VS code for their minimum viable product. So, there are a lot of no code solutions that exist and we’re agnostic so, you know, whatever solution is the most feasible or it makes the most sense for a customer we’re going to use. But the thing about no code solutions is that there’s still a lot of programmatic thinking that goes into figuring out how the applications that work.

Patrick Bentley 6:58
So even if you’re using no code and you’re using drag and drop, if you’re not thinking about the data model, and what types of data needs to be collected and how that data needs to be manipulated, and then even how you need to host it, those are still very technical leaning questions that need to be answered. And so even though there are drag and drop solutions, there’s still a lot of thinking and forethought that needs to happen before you start building.

Tom Poland: 7:25
Patrick Bentley, thanks so much for your time.

Patrick Bentley 7:28
All right, thanks.

Tom Poland: 7:30
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.