Mobile Apps and Entrepreneurship – A View from The Trenches

Written by Paúl Pauca, Ph.D, Faculty Director

Back in 2010, three students and I decided to publish an app in Apple’s Appstore that turned the recently released iPad into an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device for people with speech and communication disabilities. The app was called Verbal Victor and was developed around the needs of my then 5-year old son, in consultation with his teacher and speech pathologist.

Since we knew that a full-blown AAC device cost approximately $7K, my son’s low-tech AAC device was around $380, and the most complete AAC iPad app was around $250, we decided to price ours at $6.99. We purposefully wanted to make it accessible to anyone, anywhere. Hoping to get around 100 downloads to be called successful, we put Verbal Victor in the Appstore and went on our merry way.

What happened next blew us away. We had several thousand purchases within the first three months including some from many countries around the world. It was an exhilarating feeling to know that there were people out there using what we created and so we were encouraged to update Verbal Victor several times over the next few years. We released Verbal Victor 2 under “Apps for the Greater Good, LLC”, and we worked hard to meet our customer’s needs by listening to their questions and suggestions. To date, Verbal Victor has been download over 15,000 times from nearly every country in the world.

By many accounts our little venture was successful. We had more downloads than we ever imagined and users began asking for additional versions. However, by other standards we were likely failing from the start. Let me elaborate.

• When Verbal Victor was released, we avoided creating our own company for specific reasons and let someone else use their company to release Verbal Victor. We were eager to see the app be used and so never paid much attention to the financial agreements and obligations. By the time we realized this, we were essentially working for free and it was too late. Lesson 1: Form a nonprofit, LLC, or corporation and have a vision for where your organization is headed. Know where you are, where you want to go and how you will get there.
• Once we created “Apps for the Greater Good, LLC” to sell Verbal Victor and to develop more apps, we again failed to look beyond our own circle of tech-oriented individuals. We all knew how to code and how to add value in terms of new ideas and new technology. In addition, we also shared a heart and vision for helping people with disabilities by providing low-cost solutions. But this was not enough. Over time, the motivation for continuing to work on new code and new updates of Verbal Victor We had no plan or the right team to make our venture scalable. Lesson 2: Work on developing a team of people who complement each other and who are willing to engage in healthy discussions and constructive criticism. 
• While we listened and communicated with customers, we missed the chance to really learn about our users, to test ideas, and to discover additional needs. We started with good assumptions but never really tested them properly in our effort to converge into a sustainable business model.Lesson 3: Dedicate more time to gathering evidence to test your assumptions about your product, your user’s preferences, etc. and let this evidence guide your decision process. Lean startup or evidence-based entrepreneurship is the leading methodology for going beyond the small-business mindset towards sustainability and scale. Learn it and use it!

In conclusion, are there things that I would do differently if I had a chance to redo my experience with Verbal Victor? Absolutely (see above)! Do I regret having experienced this failure? Absolutely not! I would do it again in a heartbeat.