For founders who need to launch apps, ‘being non-technical will not be a limitation’ – TechCrunch

Primarily based in Warsaw, Poland, Intent assists all kinds of corporations with the whole lot from product design and UX to growth and deployment of related units. It caters to various sectors, with prospects resembling sleep tracker ŌURA, trivia recreation HQ, Tomorrow Well being, Samsung, Mercedes-Benz and Nike.

To get a take a look at how Intent tailors its strategy to shopper wants and the way the corporate helps shoppers get their merchandise from inception to the market, we spoke with Wojciech Borkowski, its head of enterprise growth, and CTO Peter Tuszynski.

As a growth store, how concerned do you get when serving to shoppers validate concepts earlier than they bring about their apps to market?

Our service goes past being a typical dev store, as we align with shoppers to be “assume companions” — that is the methodology we use when approaching any new challenge. We assist shoppers to validate concepts, as their success is essential to the result of a challenge. We act as a second pair of eyes and assess the challenge and its assumptions by our frameworks and methods, resembling design sprints and lean canvas.

It’s necessary to have a battle-tested course of for product validation. Our shoppers are sometimes very centered on the {hardware} aspect, which requires us to be extra diligent when engaged on the software program/firmware aspect of the challenge to make sure the whole lot will work collectively easily.

Are you able to describe the consumption course of for brand new shoppers? How do you assess their necessities, and what info do you want earlier than you possibly can share an estimated challenge timeline and funds?

We apply our personal processes partially or totally relying on the place the shopper is at with their product growth. Our PM and UX groups additionally conduct workshops, as we usually work with net-new challenge varieties and issues that we haven’t executed earlier than.

We have to perceive the funds, challenge goals, and timelines to assist the shopper navigate the challenge and get it to suit their necessities. That is executed by workshops and some methodologies that we use to get us and the shopper aligned when it comes to data and challenge scope.

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What’s a ballpark quote for the common challenge, and the way steadily do you talk with shoppers as soon as the work is underway?

Every challenge is totally different, however the majority of tasks fall into the six-figure vary.

We have now developed other ways of working that we apply primarily based on the challenge kind and shopper expectations. We deploy a variety of instruments to maintain shoppers updated, and that is usually accompanied by totally different assembly varieties, resembling developer dailies and weekly or biweekly demos and planning classes, which observe a scrum format.

What share of your shoppers are non-technical individuals who have an thought, however no coding expertise? How a lot of a limitation is that for launching an app?

Round 50% of our shoppers are non-technical founders beginning a net-new challenge, which suggests Intent acts as a “assume associate”, or, in impact, a CTO for his or her challenge. Many profitable startup founders don’t have any technical background, however do possess nice product, gross sales and advertising and marketing abilities, so being non-technical will not be a limitation when working with the best technological associate.

We not solely act as a associate, we will additionally assist them construct their very own inner crew, even going so far as hiring a CTO.

As a marketing consultant, helps shoppers keep away from scope creep a part of your position? In that case, how do you assist handle their expectations?

Sure, that’s why we emphasize understanding their buyer personas and person journeys. We then work with the shopper to scope out their MVP utilizing industry-leading workshop methodologies and processes.

We’re very diligent in prioritizing the options that make their manner into the prototype, and we actively keep away from reinventing the wheel through the use of many ready-made parts that we will rapidly combine into the challenge with out spending a lot time doing customized growth.

What’s your common timeline for delivering a working app after you’ve signed a contract? What do you might want to accomplish earlier than you possibly can share wireframes?

Every challenge may be very totally different, as we attempt to prioritize the event of brand name new concepts that take us out of our consolation zone. That stated, we will usually construct an MVP for any product inside 4 months.

Do you additionally oversee the QA course of? Can Intent assist shoppers navigate the approval course of for app shops?

Not solely can we oversee the QA course of, we deeply consider in partaking QA engineers from the earliest days of the challenge to allow them to get a head begin on designing the general testing technique and creating take a look at circumstances.

Moreover, our employees has a deep understanding of the approval course of for a given app platform, together with the rules that have to be adopted. Our engineers frequently attend conferences like Apple’s WWDC or Google’s IO, the place they get to satisfy and discuss with people who’re accountable for the approval course of to allow them to give higher assist when any sudden points come up in the course of the utility submission.

Do you present any advertising and marketing providers?

We don’t provide pure advertising and marketing providers to shoppers, however may also help them determine personas for his or her shopper varieties, which in flip helps them establish the very best distribution channels.

Do you’re employed on each hybrid and native apps? What are you able to inform us about the advantages and disadvantages of every, and when do you encourage shoppers to go hybrid?

We work on each native and hybrid apps. Since we specialise in constructing apps that discuss to numerous peripheral and related units, native applied sciences prevail. Nonetheless, we’ve got working expertise with practically each hybrid stack on the market (React Native, Flutter, and so forth). The truth is, we keep among the most generally adopted open supply Bluetooth Low Power libraries for ReactNative.

Each challenge is totally different and loads of the work we do is net-new, which means it hasn’t actually been executed earlier than. There isn’t a silver bullet stack we advocate to our companions. Nonetheless, our crew has discovered Flutter is nice for deploying prototypes rapidly. For apps that require the native appear and feel, particularly on iOS, we are inclined to lean in the direction of a local toolchain.

Have you ever ever turned down a shopper? Are apps you gained’t work on, e.g, video games, courting, and so forth.?

Sadly, we solely settle for a low share of shoppers who strategy us, as a result of we’re extremely specialised in delivering digital options the place a bodily system is current. The {industry} of related units continues to be maturing, which suggests we needed to coin our personal time period, “PxD,” which we describe because the “intersection of bodily and digital.” cultural match can also be an enormous issue on each side, as nobody needs to butt heads all through the challenge.

Who owns the supply code as soon as the challenge is full? How is the supply code managed?

The mental property rights of the challenge and code possession belong to our companions. We don’t apply vendor lock-ins. We discovered the easiest way to retain a shopper is to ship excellent work backed by years of expertise.

Sometimes, we use Github to retailer all our supply code and combine it with steady integration pipelines so that every piece of code our engineers decide to the repository is routinely examined and constructed. For some particular tasks, we’ve got aligned with our associate’s setup, which embrace Gitlab and self-hosted git repositories.