Startup Software Development

THE VISION

As a startup Chief Executive Officer, you want to actualise your business idea, get a functional product. You want to offer a strong value proposition to attract investment and get to market faster. You focus on building a compelling MVP to test your idea and gather user feedback.

As a Chief Technology Officer, you’re looking for ways to reduce startup development time and costs, and gain access to a team of experienced developers that you can engage but not hire in-house.

As a Chief Marketing Officer, you want your product to appeal to as many audiences as possible, and entice them to interact. Your goal is to create and align with the company’s marketing strategy.

As a Chief Security Officer, you ensure your product runs smoothly and scales as the company grows. You are looking for a team to maintain and update the product and ensure it meets security and performance requirements.

THE CHALLENGE

According to Crunchbase, the global startup landscape has painted a picture of decreasing funding and increasing difficulties for startups. Here's a list of the main obstacles they will face in 2024:

The volume of investments in startups in 2023 fell by 38% compared to 2022. Early-stage funding suffered the most ( 40% decline).

The decline in the value of tech stocks and the slowdown in IPOs from 2022 has made investors more cautious. Each stage of funding has higher requirements, making it more difficult to raise capital.

AI remains the only sector to see growth (up 9%), driven by large investments in basic modelling companies.

Startups in 2023 have been forced to cut costs, make layoffs and focus on unit economics.

Investors dominate, demanding stronger value propositions and disciplined growth strategies.

Startups in 2024 need to be prepared for an investor-centric market, greater investor scrutiny and potential increased competition and consolidation. You need to focus on building a sustainable business, demonstrating a clear value proposition and adapting to a changing funding environment. This requires recognising risks, thinking strategically and choosing development partners responsibly.

RISKS AND SOLUTIONS

Entrepreneurs who are fascinated by their ideas often overlook the complexity and multifaceted nature of the challenges they face. These are:

Crafting a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is crucial for testing your concept and gathering valuable user insights. This requires expertise in design, development, and user testing.

Tight budgets and deadlines are realities for startups. You need a solution that accelerates development while keeping expenses in check.

Assembling a skilled team in-house can be time-consuming and expensive. You require developers with diverse expertise who can adapt to your evolving needs.

As your product scales, ensuring its security and smooth operation becomes paramount. You need a partner who prioritizes robust architecture and ongoing maintenance.

Only a comprehensive approach will allow your startup to realise its potential and turn an idea into a thriving business.

COMPUTOOLS OFFER

As a company that helps build digital businesses and has sufficient experience, we help you go from an idea to a successful product, developing and testing your startup to minimise risks and increase the chances of success. Our offer is:

1. Drawing up a concept:

We offer you help with product ideation. We research your user personas, their pain points, and corresponding solutions. Having this knowledge, you can understand what the product should solve and how it can benefit the users. After identifying the pain points our team formulates several ideas, and these hypotheses will be tested in the subsequent stages. By understanding the competitive landscape, we can determine what features to add or improve in the product to make it stand out in the market. If the product idea falls into an industry category in which we already have experience, you can choose the most efficient course of action and development. We suggest practices and technologies to develop the product.

2. Creating an Interactive Prototype or MVP:

You get the prototype or minimal viable product designed to be user-friendly and engaging, giving you a clear idea of how the final product will look and feel. We conduct user testing on the interactive prototype or MVP to get feedback from potential users. It helps identify any usability or functionality issues and enables us to make necessary improvements to the product. Once the interactive prototype or MVP has been thoroughly tested and refined, it is delivered to the startup. The MVP helps your startup test the market, gather user feedback, and make informed decisions about the product's future development.

3. Validating hypotheses:

Our experts conduct market research to gather data on your product-market fit. We run advertisements to attract potential customers to the interactive prototype/MVP and collect data on their behaviour and preferences. After that, our experts analyse it to determine the feedback . If the data collected shows that changes are needed, we update the functionality and rerun the test to gather new data. This process continues until the product meets the desired level of market fit. Once the interactive prototype/MVP is launched, we monitor its performance closely. We track user behaviour, engagement, and feedback to identify issues and make necessary adjustments.

4. Calculating costs and deadlines for a fully functional solution:

Together with you, we define the project scope, including the solution's goals, objectives, features, and requirements. Once it is understood, our experts break down the development process into stages: research, design, development, and testing. We estimate each stage's time and costs. This will include the hours required for each task and any external costs, such as software licenses or hardware purchases. Once the project timeline and budget are created, we will work with you to refine the plan. We provide you with a detailed quote for the project, the includes the project scope, development process, estimated time and costs for each stage, project timeline, budget, and any other relevant information. We help to prepare a presentation to attract investors.

5. Working on a fully functional solution:

You get a detailed blueprint of the product's architecture and user interface. The product design process involves wireframing, prototyping, and user testing to ensure the final product meets your requirements. Once the product design is finalized, our engineers start building the product's backend infrastructure and coding the frontend user interface. They ensure that the product is scalable, secure, and performs optimally. They also provide product compatibility with multiple devices and platforms, such as desktops, mobile devices, and web browsers. Once the product is tested and approved, we deploy it to your servers or cloud-based infrastructure. We provide ongoing maintenance and support to ensure that the product continues to perform optimally and meets the changing needs of your business.