Billion Dollar App

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Building world's best tip calculator

Billion Dollar Tip Calculator

Now that you have built the world's best tip calculator how do you make it a billion dollar app? We could publish it to the app store and price it at $1.00. Then we can sit back while a billion people download it. Simple enough? You say it won't work? Why not? Because the market for people willing to pay a dollar for a utility app like tip calculator is almost nonexistent. To build a billion dollar app or any business the steps are as follows:

• Identify a market that is big
• Identify a gap or inefficiency in that market
• Build a product to address that gap or inefficiency

As you can see, we started with the last step first. But don't worry, most folks make the same costly mistake. When that happens we pivot! Here are some ideas for making our app a billion dollar business.

• When people are waiting for the bill they could be entertained with a game. Gaming is a big market. Can we include a game in our calculator? Why is this a bad idea? Maybe because you will be competing to displace other games like Candy Crush or Angry Birds. What is more likely, the user popping into one of these games already on their phone or using yours?
• The best time to rate the restaurant experience might be in the process of paying the bill. Since we are now part of this process could we ask the user for a star rating and a quick review? Now we are in the territory of Yelp, Urbanspoon, Zagat etc. Combined they have few billion in market cap.
• After you are done eating and you pull up the tip calculator, what if the bill appears within the app? Could you click a single button to make the payment right from the app and walk out? Now we are in the space of mobile payments. This is a massive market and steadily growing. Is building this functionality feasible? Can we get restaurants on board? Can we market it to get a large number of users? 

Building a successful app is much more than just writing the code. It involves analyzing markets, working out the economics, building a great product, marketing, partnerships etc. In future posts we will also explore the business side of things.

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About me

I decided to get back to programming after a break of 10 years and want to take you along for the ride. I'm going to start with iOS development because I carry an iPhone and it will be fun to use to the little things I create. As we improve our skills we will branch out on different platforms.

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