Newbies, what's something major you learned from starting a company or writing an app?

It's not only about the product. I am a customer first founder and believe in focusing on the product to give the best experience.

The winners will sadly be the best marketers. My product is better than my competitors i.e they copy me and I am definitely setting the standard for https://storycreatorapp.com/

They have more teammates and alliances. Overall they just know how to market better. They recently hit $50k MRR but I will catch up and beat them soon.

I think the takeaway is you need to be getting ready for a battle. The product is only a variable. You will need to build a brand around it and worry less about the tech and more about the people. How they feel, and how effective you are at reaching people.

Don't get me wrong having the tech down is key, but just having it down is not enough.

**** This "The amount of work you do for a company/Consultancy, Probably make them more money you think (in dollars). "

If you are planning to offer your app in multiple countries. Prioritize internationalization early on, it's quite a pain to do later once you've already built out your architecture and have thousands of strings on the client and backend...

Building an app and selling an app are two different things. Both require extremely different kinds of skillsets.

You just have to ship it. It will never be perfect. Make it valuable then ship it.

Completely agree with @Primer.

@vikingsec Please incorporate yourself before charging any money from customers / signing any contracts.

1. This helps you avoid any potential lawsuits / legal issues from unhappy customers
2. Tax reasons: You can claim bunch of stuff like your home office, equipment for some tax rebate
3. Grants / Funding: You can apply for government's grants from innovation programs.

I ended up going with Stripe's Atlas program to incorporate. Pretty satisfied with experience, a bit on the pricier side. You can also just do it yourself depending on which country you're based.

Pay an attorney to incorporate and have him/her make the stock plan and operating agreement. This is something that is hard to fix later. Most will do this for $1 to $2K. Compared with $300 or so to do it yourself and another $2k later to correct it.