The Idea is 1% of Success

Ideas for iPhone apps seem to flow as abundantly as wine at an Italian dinner party. Individuals and businesses have many insights, but what does it really take to develop a successful application?

Brad Rosen, Founder and CEO of Drync, is a Boston area serial entrepreneur with many successful products under his belt. Drync,  his latest venture, is an iPhone app that simplifies the way consumers research, remember, share and purchase wine. It has a database of hundreds of thousands of wines and over 100,000 users.

His approach for successful product development is to first develop a thesis and, ideally, focus on “a problem I have.” (His idea for Drync came up over a bottle of wine in Italy…) A high level development process includes the following:

• Develop a thesis and use cases (what problem is being solved, under what circumstances)
• Obtain initial market feedback (can be cheap, doesn’t have to be expensive focus groups)
• Determine distribution strategy (very important… how and where will the product/app be sold)
• Work through operational planning and hurdles
• Develop technical product (get the right technical team)
• Execute ongoing discoverability support (build cross-channel marketing and partnership support to help users discover your app)
• Iterate product once it is in the market (users will tell you what they like and don’t)

While the initial idea may be the driving inspiration throughout the process, successfully navigating the hurdles to operating and monetizing the business end up being 99% of success. So keep on brainstorming big ideas, but make sure you have a holistic approach for bringing your app to market and executing ongoing support.