How I created a Microsoft App with $3,000 budget

Here is a story of how I developed an app with only $3,000, lost a client and sold it to a company.

The design comes to life

Day 1-50

Every night after work, I would get home and start working on the (Functional Design Document). Which essentially explains how every part of the product, button, form etc would behave and what is the logic that should exist behind the scenes.

The recruit

Once my product design document was ready, it was time to contact a friend of mine that knew some developers overseas in Pakistan. He set up a meeting and I got introduced to three developers. Since I only had $3,000 for the project, the guys were okay with it and the money was sent. I explained to them what the purpose of the product is and how we are to establish a weekly cadence to report on progress each week. The team agreed and I sent off the design, secretly hoping they wouldn’t steal it themselves.

Weekly product status calls

Because of the time difference, I would take my calls around 10:00 PM every other day and we would review the progress that the team made as well as answer any questions that they had on how the software was supposed to work the logic and the expected result we did this for about six weeks, running tests, reporting results and adjusting. The product always had bugs and broke every time here and there.

Field Marketing

Because I was already in the industry, I was familiar with the trade shows and expos that partners attended to find potential customers. Getting in front of as many right people as you can and having engaging conversations is one of the best ways to get a lead, this is what field marketing is about, but I did not have the money for a booth. So armed with a stack of brochures and business cards I went to every attendee I could talk to and started to ask what they were doing here and scoping out if there was any potential to pitch my solution. By the time I was done I handed out everything in my hands, packed up and went home, hoping that someone would call me.

SEO, PPC & AdWords

I knew that to compete in the market I had to create a compelling website that was beautiful and SEO friendly. I posted blogs every week, creating educational content that talked about the pain points of human resources and because the product was solving human resources issues, anybody that was using Microsoft ERP at that time could be a potential customer. Once my blog was published online, it was also published simultaneously on LinkedIn. LinkedIn really helped because the article was being seen with the community that you can tag into. I've also implemented Google Analytics and monitor trends to see which pages the visitors were seeing. An automated chat bot on the home page was great because it would let customers connect with me directly through my phone. When it came to PPC, I've researched AdWords that were long tail keywords that were geared mainly towards knowledge articles. Getting traffic based on value that you can provide is essential because competing on the main keywords can be very expensive and this is where I adjusted my strategy and saw over 50 unique visitors a day. Keep in mind this is a very niche product for only a small market of users.

My first customer

One day I get an e-mail from a potential customer saying that they're interested in my product and would like to see a demo. I was so excited. Prior to the meeting, I got my software ready and the sudden, nothing worked. I was in shock! I have a meeting with a potential customer that could be a make it or break it situation and the software is not working what should I do? I contacted my developers and luckily, they quickly fixed whatever was wrong and I was able to proceed with the meeting. The demo went smooth, and the customer agreed to purchase the license from me. I was finally able to charge $50.00 a month per user in my license agreement.

The whole thing crashes

On week one upon delivering the software, everything started to break. The customer was upset and I tried to remedy the code, but one fix after another and the customer decided to pull the plug. The team was not performing to expectations and began to not show up to my meetings, I guess my money only ran so far and this is when I decided to call it quits.

Sold to a partner for $3,000

After about a year of not working on this project, a partner in the channel who was aware of the work I was doing reached out and asked “Are you still doing anything with your product?”, I said “No”. They came back and said, “Want to sell it to me? How much did you put in”, I said “ just give me $3,000”. They said Ok, and sure enough I got my initial investment back and a story to tell.

Learning lessons

I learned a lot of lessons along the way:

• $3000 can't really get you that far in standing up a software product with a team of developers

• I thought I could pull the weight all by myself, do marketing, sales and product development that I would be successful

• I wish I would have sought council from someone who has been there, done that, it would have been great to bounce off ideas, challenges, licencing costs, risks but I didnt have that luxury at that time but had I known now I would have took a different approach.

For anyone who is interested in taking this journey themselves, I hope my story can shed some light into the challenges of taking on a software development product to market!