Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Ingenious App Studios is a boutique app development agency with an entrepreneurial spirit across all divisions. We partner with other entrepreneurs to take digital products from ideation to product-market fit with a strong emphasis on great design and technological innovation.
I am the founder and CEO of the company.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
I founded Ingenious App Studios to make the process of app development transparent, accessible, and affordable for entrepreneurs. Before founding the company I spent several years working in early-stage tech companies. In this time I gathered invaluable experience on what differentiates the process and methods of tech founders who build successful digital products from those who do not. At Ingenious App Studios, all our staff have been on an entrepreneurial journey of their own and similarly understand what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Our company mission is to spread our acquired knowledge and experience to as many tech founders as possible whilst aiding and support them in building successful products.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We are a remote-first team of entrepreneurial designers, developers, product managers, and more who are skilled in a range of technologies.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
Culture-fit is big for us internally, as well as with the clients we choose to work with. Therefore we take time to hire and develop the right personnel within the company and aim to retain our hires for life. For our clients, this means we retain the knowledge and skills used to develop their application even after it has been handed over and the same personnel is available to provide ongoing maintenance and support.
Further, as a remote-first company, we have no fixed office space. This reduces our overheads and we pass this cost-saving onto our clients by offering affordable pricing plans. Being entrepreneur focused we understand the importance of cash-flow in an early-stage business so we normally spread the project cost evenly over the entire project duration. We’ve found our clients love this and are very grateful to not have to pay massive upfront costs.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We continue to serve clients across a range of sectors including business, sports, gambling, and travel. We take a partnership approach with our clients so a lot of our work is repeat business. Rather than build a massive product, hand it over and be done with it, we incrementally and collaboratively build products for our clients and stick around while they launch, grow and expand.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
We are very transparent when it comes to determining the time and cost for development. Each and every feature contributes to the time and cost so we like to openly map out how long each feature will take and subsequently how much it will cost. By doing this, our clients are free to evaluate which features are critical and need to be included, which can be planned for a future date and which are unnecessary based on their business needs.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
We create bespoke mobile applications so the time varies for each of our clients. Again we are fully transparent in where our time is spent and our client is free to include or exclude aspects of their application based on that.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
The target platforms are the major determining factor for the technology stack we use. In most cases, our clients want to target iOS and Android platforms which makes cross-platform technologies like Flutter a great fit.
Which platform do you suggest your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
We believe it is best to capture as much of your market as possible and not restrict people from using your app only because of the brand of mobile phone they have. For this reason, the majority of our apps support both iOS and Android from Day 1.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
For the majority of our clients, a cross-platform application built using Flutter is the best fit. Cross-platform keeps the development cost and time down as we build the app once, rather than twice for each platform separately. Flutter also allows easy exporting to the web, so is also advantageous for clients who eventually want to branch out to a web app version of their product.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
We are very transparent when it comes to determining the time and cost for development. Each and every feature contributes to the time and cost so we like to openly map out how long each feature will take and subsequently how much it will cost. By doing this, our clients are free to evaluate which features are critical and need to be included, which can be planned for a future date and which are unnecessary based on their business needs.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
We spread the cost evenly over the development duration. For example, if the project cost is £20,000 and the duration is 4 months, you would pay £5,000 per month.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
We do not have a minimum client budget threshold. Apps vary in complexity so it only makes sense that very simple apps that do not take a long time to develop would have lower costs.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
We have built apps varying from £3,000 that have taken 1 week to build to apps costing £100,000 that have taken 1.5 years+ to build (note this was in a highly regulated industry).
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
We recommend a business model that fits with our client's business idea. Though generally, a freemium model has worked well with the majority of our clients over recent years.
