Post 6: The Mobile App team

This is my 6th post about the ongoing process toward building, launching and monetizing a mobile app in today’s market.  This post is about how we’re building the team, and specifically what skills we’re putting together to flesh it out.

I guess it’s worth stating up front that a team seems necessary.  There are a couple stories out there of the lone coder building an app, putting it on the shelf in the App Store, and maybe even discerning a marketing strategy that results in significant short term cash.  But by in large, the personality types and skills necessary to do all that is required to really pursue this stuff is not often found in the same person.  Hence a team is required.  At the most basic level, someone needs to write software and someone needs to sell software.  This is probably true not just in the mobile app business right now, in fact, when the broader economy is like it is right now, I always feel safer in a pure Sales role than in roles that do not interact directly with customers or carry some level of Quota.  I think that’s because when times are tough, it’s critical to know how I am adding quantifiable value.  But I digress.

This is a post about the mobile app team, and what skills we think need to be on that team.

So, here’s what we think:

1. Sales guy- in our case, the Sales will be done mostly through Internet Marketing strategies, so it’s kind of a Marketer’s role, but we’ll know whether our Marketing is successful by virtue of hard numbers that translate to cash.  The Sales guy also gets to vet various prospective revenue models since the Sales guy is usually the one with more experience around which sales strategies work, and how well, and most importantly, how much effort is required for any given Sales Strategy.  The value of any Sales strategy is in part a function of the level of effort required to execute that strategy.  Herculean efforts are not often scalable or repeatable, and Sales strategies ought to be scalable and repeatable.

2. Mobile App developer- This is obviously the most important role.  Without a product getting built, there’s nothing to sell.

3. Graphic Designer- This is critical for us since we’re building a Consumer App here, and consumers like excellent graphic design a lot!  Of course it’s more than just colors and lines though.  User Interface and Experience are critical aspects of whatever design we end up employing.

4. Server side developer- This role depends on the app you’re building.  Most Apps seem to be software that sits on the device and doesn’t need to talk to a server for anything in particular.  Our app actually has a social networking aspect to it, and that social networking function will be managed ultimately by our Server.  So, we’re really building a Mobile Social Networking App that may require a couple engineers instead of just the one building the Mobile App.

Now, in our case, Tim, who’s building the mobile app is totally capable of doing anything needed on the server side as well.  But, we want another friend to be involved because, well, I just think it would be fun to work together!

And that’s probably the most crucial aspect to putting the team together.  Skills need to be represented, but most importantly it needs to be fun to work together.  There’s really no assurance of financial success in this business as far as I can tell, so if it’s not fun, then there’s really very little point to doing it.