How much does it cost to make an iPhone or Android App is a question that we get asked quite frequently. Our team has built mobile apps for startups, Fortune 500’s and everything in between, mobile apps that have been featured in app stores and sat in the recommended section for a few weeks. Let’s dive into mobile app development cost:

So when someone asks us how much will it cost to build an app. The only honest answer we can give is “it depends”. Pricing an app is next to impossible without a full scope breakdown, but a good guideline to go by is that an app will cost as much as a car. Whether you opt in to buy a Kia or a Ferrari is entirely up to you.

Good rule of thumbs is: a mobile app will cost as much as a car. 

But let’s take the car analogy a little bit further. You can pay for a Kia, it’ll work, but may break down on you more often than a BMW, it won’t have the same driving experience as a Porsche and it won’t be as sleek looking as a Maserati. Will it do it’s job. Probably. Will it do it well. Depends what you want it to do.

If you just want an app that pulls info out of a database and displays it on a phone a Kia will probably be sufficient. But as soon as you start adding in more complex functions expect the cost to go up. Things like database design, geolocation, machine learning, pattern recognition, and social networking functionality will push the cost up. While it may not cost you as much as Ferrari, expect to buy a mid range BMW.

For an app that you would consider market ready, you’re looking at 200k +/- 20k, and some will even go into the seven figure range depending on scope and what your mobile app needs, there’s also a big difference whether you’re building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), a scalable iteration, or an enterprise app which can often run in the 500k and up range.Whenever we tell people this they usually get sticker shock, but look at it this way:

Let’s break down app design and development costs

To develop your own application in-house you will need two developers at (120k/year) working full time, you will need a designer who knows and understands user experience design, information architecture, and visual design (that’s another 120k/year) and someone to manage the process.

This could be you, but the question is, how familiar are you with digital products, and how well can you do code review and validate good user experience design? (So for the sake of argument, let’s add another 120k/year.)This is excluding a digital strategist and creative director – two very important roles for successful apps.

Keeping all this in mind, your human resource costs are now $480/k annually. A more feature rich app will take approximately 3-6 months to create, meaning you’re looking to spend $120k-240k on talent alone to build it and then have to consider the cost of maintenance and future updates, whereas with an agency, you get a full, tested, team.

A few additional rules of thumb to go by.

Unless you’re a developer don’t offshore.

With offshoring, you’re going to run into problems unless you know how to vet an offshore team. This means looking at their code and likewise design. Design in particular is very much cultural and what works here the states may not work in Spain, Russia, or India and vice versa. Prices can run anywhere from $5k in developing markets to $50k in Central Europe and up.

Freelancers are a good option if you can verify their quality. 

When you’re making an app you’ve got to understand that it takes a team. You’ll need a IA / UX designer, you’ll need a visual designer (sometimes these come as one person), you’ll need an iOS developer and a back end person (sometimes iOS and backend will be one person as well), but at the end of the day working with these freelancers, while possible, will be hard. As for your cost? A “good” freelancer in NYC will cost $150/hr(ish), get into the $50-75/hr range and you’ll be seriously compromising on code or design quality. App wise you’re looking for $15k to $100k and up. 

App development companies are good and bad. 

There are many companies that make apps, and we’re one of them. On the cheaper side, some can charge as little as 30k for one, and others will charge 300k for the same. At the end of the day there are many factors that come into play. But as a rule of thumb, it’s going to cost you the same as a decent automobile, the benefit of going with a company that makes apps is they have oversight, and methods in place which freelancers and a lot of overseas shops lack. The drawbacks, some may not have designa and just build anything and everything, others may offshore their development to sub par emerging markets dev shops to drive margins.

Stay away from these, ask about the company’s processes, where they do their development., ask to see samples of design work and why certain decisions were made, and remember, quality is expensive.  Shoot for 185k and up for a basic-ish app, about $200-250k for a solid MVP, and 300k+ for anything more robust / enterprise grade. Before you buy, test your idea. In any case, one thing we often get here is people who just have an idea for an app. While that’s great and entrepreneurship is wonderful, if you’re at a very early stage, we always recommend to test and validate your ideas before buying any service.Hope that helps, and please feel free to get in touch, we’d love to talk.

It’s no secret that we like our video games. In fact, here at SWARM we even have our own Minecraft Server. Precisely because we like video games we’ve seen that there’s a constant and ongoing problem with them. Unless you have a group of buddies to game with, multiplayer video games simply won’t be as much fun. So let’s dive into SWARM Experiments:

If you want to jump into the experiment head over to PartyUpPlayer.com, otherwise read on.

Sure there are mechanisms in place, but they fall short. Random pairing, Multiplayer Only Content and LFG Mechanisms in their current solutions are patches to a larger problem. Being social in most games is an outright poor experience. In order to make this experience better, we have to think more intimately about the emotional reward systems of players in video games an apply mechanisms that will help foster those same rewards in more efficient and meaningful ways. While we’ve mapped a good bit of this out, the real insight will come from the App use and the MVP. We simply can’t wait to get PUP out into the wild. But before we can do that, let’s look at a few of most common grouping systems in video games.

Random Lobby Pairing is Broken

Random Lobby Pairing is when you indicate to the game that you’re looking for a squad. The algorithm on the backend then pairs you for quick PVP (player versus player) matches. Rapid, random pairing can often lead to folks jumping in and out of game sessions. It can also leave you in game with someone who you simply won’t like playing with. For example, the individual in the adjacent image. And while this image only shows one XBOX player, the problem persists across every gaming network. They span from PC, to XBOX, XBOX ONE, PS3, PS4, and STEAM. We feel that Random Lobby pairing is an imperfect solution to an ever growing problem. More often than not, this will adversely impact gamer user experience.

Playing Multiplayer Alone isn’t Multiplayer

A lot of games these days will require players to group in order to pass certain levels and areas in the game. As a practice this is is becoming more prolific.But, if you’ve got no one to game with, it means you’re either not getting through that part of the game, or will have to struggle to pass it alone. In either case the user experience for the gamer is decreased if not ruined, all because of a mechanic that when executed well improves the user experience.

LFG (Looking For Group) applets take too long

When it comes to MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online Rope Playing Games) like World of Warcraft, other mechanisms to help group players exist, and aside from global chat channels these will typically be Looking For Group Applets.An LFG applet is when a player inputs her information into an in game pop-up box, then waits for people to find her and group.The problem here is that many of these live on multiple servers, those servers have multiple game instances, and players in these servers and instances will have varying schedules.

While this isn’t all, it’s most.And when a game session can take three hours or more sometimes, LFG fails. Imagine you’re 2.5 hours into a mission or quest, need 30 minutest to finish and a key party member leaves. The solution here is simply better planning which in game systems do not allow for.Then there’s the second problem with in game LFG systems, which is that they’re inefficient. Even when a player has positioned herself as “looking for group”, it can often take hours to simply find a handful of folks to play with.

Why not make something better?

As gamers, solving this has been on our agenda for some time and we’ve finally gotten around to it. We’ve built out the initial architecture and are now going through the entire customer experience process for the app.With that, were also looking to garner a bit more interest from gamers, and get a few more folks onto the beta list before we start opening up the beta to the public later this year.

As of the writing of this post we’ve got approximately 825 people signed up, but will need considerably more to start rolling things out.If all pans out we should see those come in pretty soon; and depending on the reaction from the community we may try and raise some cash for it through crowdfunding.With that, here’s a preview of the mobile web app, and we’d love to get your thoughts on the product as a whole.For those of you who game, we’d love to have you beta test PUP.

Check out some more of our experiments here.

It’s a no brainer, an engaged twitter audience who loves what you do can drive traffic to your site, recommend your content and become a source of customers for your business. Here’s how to build that Twitter audience in a few simple steps.

ONE: Prepare yourself for engagement.

What does this mean? Well, you need to present value to your audience, and in this case it will come in the form of your Twitter description. The reason we mention this here is because so many people flat out get it wrong. Let’s look at a few examples.

“We are expert creatives that make apps for mobile, web, wearable, and second screen devices. Follow us for great content.”

This is our message. It is simple, direct and to the point, it’s a houses a clear value proposition with what we do, and bases on our statement the user can assume the type of content we’ll be pushing on Twitter.Ogivy’s on the other hand is

Official twitter feed of Ogilvy & Mather.

If you don’t know who Ogilvy is, you might assume it’s a band, a duo of Brooklyn makers, or a swanky SoHo clothing shop. This description doesn’t do a good job of comunicating with the audience who they are what they do and what value you’ll get. FYI Ogilvy & Mather is an Advertising, Marketing and PR firm with 450 offices across the globe.Finally let’s look at one from CBSSports.

Connecting you to the sports content you crave.

It’s clear, direct and to the point and tells me exactly what I  want and need to know.

TWO:  Get your influencers to work for you.

You should always follow industry influencers and finding the right people to follow is difficult. You can typically start your follow list by looking through other folks influencer lists, but what after that? Add them one by one manually? This is time consuming and difficult, and in today’s world we should be able to automate these activities, luckily Flounder let’s you do just that.Flounder …

• … monitors the @replies to and from each of your team-mates’ personal accounts,
• and once you or your team-mates have had a conversation with someone, say three tweets either way, your company account follows that person.

While founder is built for small teams and startups, you can instead add those same influencers to flounder as your “team-mates”, and voila. Every person that they have a twitter exchange with, your company account will follow.And now you’re not only growing your own list of people who matter, but people who will likely share relevant content to you that you can start engaging with.

THREE: Build and engaged twitter following without being dodgy. Sign up for targetpattern or deploy a follow-bot

Targetgrow is a great little web app that scours the Twitterverse for specific keyword related tweets and keyword arrays, then lets you favorite them.As it turns out, favorite’ing any number of tweets will convert into approximately 10-20% that number of followers. Target pattern also queues up automated tweets over time, which means that twitter wont have an incentive to flag your account for a “brute force” favorite activity.Targetpattern also lets you press the “f” key on your keyboard for quick favorite’ing, though I wouldn’t recommend this as you’re duping real people into thinking you care about their content. In my book this can be considered a dark marketing tactic (more on those in a later blog post).Another way to do what Targetpattern does is to deploy a twitter-bot such as the Twitter Follow Bot, but overall it’s riskier as you’ll be more susceptible to being flagged.

FOUR: Set up an automated DM’er the right way

Unless you enjoy getting 30,000 daily Twitter emails, chances are that if your account has followed someone via flounder.io, and they then follow you back you will likely not get a message. This is a missed opportunity as there is an inherent interest in one another’s accounts. Solution: Set up an AutoDM bot.Now, I know some people are against this, and again it can be considered a dark marketing tactic, but if executed well it will help with inbound. For example the auto DM we send to certain folks is …

“Hey {firstname} thanks for the follow! While this DM was automated, we are not. Ping us if you want to build an app, and seriously thanx. :)”

The DM’s kind-of personal, it’s honest, it’s funny, and reinforces what we do and how we can work with a potential client.

FIVE: Queue up relevant content

Constantly finding content to post to your Twitter account can get very time consuming, luckily Klout and Buffer exist to make this a little bit more manageable.While Buffer was great a few years ago, the recommended content they provide is limited; Klout does a better job of this. Strictly speaking Klout gives you more categories to chose from and doesn’t limit the queue to 10 posts like Buffer.

On the other hand Bugger lets you shorten urls with t.co and j.mp which Klout does not, and which I personally like.At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which you use, but it matters what content you share. It should speak to your brand message, be relevant to your audience, and be insightful and interesting. Additionally, getting your team to help with your twitter queue is a great way to build additional content that can broaden and add personality to your voice.

Summing up

While these four steps will grow your twitter base and do so quickly, remember, the people you get by these means are real breathing blood and flesh human beings and you should engage with them, talk to them, and if you’re doing it right, genuinely find the content they share interesting. You should also treat them well, and be kind, people generally enjoy kindness and just because you’re automating low level tasks, doesn’t mean the people you talk to, and how you talk to them should be automated.With that, the last bit of information is, when starting out, no one wants to follow a brand with 7 followers, so do yourself a favor and buy a couple of hundred followers to get you going on fiverr.

Want to know more? Sign up for our newsletter or contact us to see how we can help you grow. 

 

Today we launch a new section of the site titled SWARM Experiments.

A fun collection of little web apps, libraries and feature-ettes that we we’ve built and find interesting.

With the launch of the Experiments we’re also publishing our first experiment titled “SWARMsecret“, a fun little web app that lets folks anonymously tweet from the @SWARMsecret twitter account. We’re also open sourcing the code on our GitHub account. So what’s the implementation?Imagine you’re at a party, a big party, there’s a couple hundred people, they’re all a little tipsy, there’s a big screen that says you can anonymously tweet at folks at the event. What happens? The pilot for what is now SWARMsecret at Internet Week New York after party at the DL in the Lower East Side, NYC. The results didn’t disappoint. Well….

Some examples included:

Shot of the WebApp at Internet Week New York

“I like turtles.“

“Guy in black shirt. You look good. I’m drunk.”

“Fernanda rulzz the bar. Guys watch out!”

“To the guy with the great ass in the black blazer… Call me, beep me, if you want to reach me”

In short a collection of fun, engaging, sometimes funny tweets from people at an event, all displayed on a big screen for everyone to read and participate in, which made it all a lot more fun. Now here, for you to enjoy.But wait, there’s more. ;)We’ve also made is ridiculously easy to deploy. All you have to do is connect a Twitter account through OAuth and grab an id from a Follow Widget, deploy, and let anyone on the internet tweet from it anonymously. Super fun at parties. Try it out, or grab the code here, and if you want to see this experiment live, come to the next Startup Funeral, to be held Nov 14th.

A good part of the work we do at SWARM is offering support for startups, and a big part of that support is guiding founders on strategy for designing pitch decks, a necessary yet somewhat elusive skill. Luckily, we’ve got this down to a science, and in the past year we’ve seen our decks close over 10 million for a handful of companies and we’d like to share a bit of what we know with you.

First thing’s first, with so many decks from leading tech startups floating around, i.e. AirBnB, Buffer, Mint.com and others, and then next to everyone else having an opinion on what you should or shouldn’t put into a deck it may be hard to navigate just what it is exactly that investors are looking for.

To set things straight, a pitch deck by itself will not seal the deal, it’s a tool that should belong to your arsenal and be used when ready, and while investors differ on when that is – an accelerating curve for right and up is a surefire way of knowing you’re getting there.As with any presentation, the most important thing is to know your audience and define clear objectives. Learn who you’re pitching to, ask people who know the audience, in this case Angels or VCs and what they respond to. You should know them, but not cater to them. Your unique brand, company, personality and knowledge of your sector are what will make the difference.

With that being said, let’s jump into the structure of a Winning VC / Angel pitch deck.

Deck Text

1. Introductory page

This should embody your brand, what you do, what is unique about you and should engage the audience.

2. Product  

This is all about what you’re building, what your product is and a one line pitch.

3. Problem definition  

What problem are you trying to solve? Why does it matter? How big is it?

4. Solution  

How your product solves the problem. This is the perceived customer value of your product.

5. Market 

How big is the market opportunity, is it attractive, growing, what makes the segment you’re entering worthwhile?

6. Revenue  

Are you making revenue, if so what’s your run rate? If not what’s your burn rate.

7. Customers  

If any, and or list your target customers.

8. Competition  

Who is your competition, how are they positioned, and how are you different from them?

9. How you win  

This is meant to communicate why you will win, and while some sectors have space for multiple players, there will usually be a market leader. How will you become that leader, or outright kill the competition.

10. Why now?  

What market indicators point to this being the right time to invest in and see your product grow?

11. Business model  

How are you going to drive revenue and make money? In general, don’t say online advertising.

12. Team  

Take this to heart, people invest in people not ideas or products, which is why it’s imperative to communicate why your team is complimentary and cohesive.

13. Ask  

How much money are you looking for? And what are you going to use it for. You can typically split this out into two different slides if need be, but try to keep it concise.

14. Summary  

Sum up and add contact info.And that’s it. Your investment deck is complete. Visually it should communicate what each slide is saying, it should never read like a wall of text, in fact the less text on a slide the better, and never ever read off bullet points. Your deck is there to support you, not provide a reading list of bullets that you’re communicating to your audience.If you have any questions please ask, and if you think this process can be augmented in any way, we’d love to hear from you, and if you’d like to talk to us about your deck then please get in touch.

DOWNLOAD THE DECK

• KEYNOTE TEMPLATE
• POWERPOINT TEMPLATE