We are all fans of bargaining. It makes us feel smart and special. Buying something for cheaper than it is gives the message of saving money, being smart and superior.

There is a time an place for it.

I personally used to bargain for everything, product or service. In time, I came to realize, it is not as beneficial as it seems for every case.

Let’s consider for a finished product such as buying a house, car, clothes…

These are finished products, the seller knows the cost and there is a profit margin on top of it that you can play with. This is strategically acceptable because for a finished product, there is no more left on the table to negotiate on besides the payment. The product’s quality will not diminish just because you pay 10% less. There is room for bargain, and if you ask to pay a price that erodes all the profit margin, the seller will not sell and counter.

This is the background process for bargaining for a finished product.

For a service however, which is an unfinished product, when bargaining comes to the table things are a little different. When I say a service, it is services of an Accountant, Lawyer, Software Developer, Tailor…

I personally always choose to overpay, give a bonus to my service providers. I know they are professional and even if I bargained they would give me their good work but I want to make sure I get the best work possible, get great service and be a quality customer. So I like to pay more than my service providers expect because my work is important to me and I like to show how serious I take it with a little extra in the agreement. This principle has always given me the best service possible, my service providers went above and beyond in unexpected situations and surprised me in a good way in times. I always found it ugly to sound like “I would like this service of yours, so please invest your time and your energy to accomplish what I want to do, but I don’t want to pay your full price, I want to pay less”. Take better care of your service provider, a little extra you throw out will be your insurance, will make you much better than an average customer thus ensuring you get the best service possible, get taken care of.

This is the mentality we go forward with in Cognata Technologies, we always take care of our service provides to the fullest, so that we can serve the utmost quality to our customers. The strong and favorable relationship we have with our service providers create a favorable contract to our customers as well.

The message here is, do not get held up in 10% discount or whatever. Don’t even touch or talk on the subject. Take good care of your service providers and you can be certain that they will go out of their way, go above and beyond to succeed on your project. A little incentive goes a long way. Put yourself in their shoes.

It seems like a lot of entrepreneurs have this fear. They have a great idea, concept, product, then start being afraid someone else will do it before they do. For this blog post, I am referring to mobile apps, but I believe the information contained here applies to most startups and their products.

Here are a few reasons why there is no reason to be afraid of someone else stealing your idea, few reasons why you shouldn’t care if someone else does, few reasons why you should be afraid and few things you can do about it

Reasons why you shouldn’t be afraid

• Not everyone has the time, money and the motivation to risk the comfort of their current lives to start a venture on your idea. It takes a lot to become an entrepreneur. You are risking your current economic situation (which affects you and your family) and getting out of your comfort zone.
• You are afraid because you’re in love with your idea and don’t want to lose it. This is more emotional than rational, and the cause of this may be, you love the idea, but you are not where you are supposed to be regarding progress. This causes a feeling of falling behind, and a fear of someone else will do it before you do it. Get going on it!
• It is about execution, not the idea. Everyone has world-changing ideas. Only a few are willing to sacrifice enough and fewer the abilities to succeed on it. So make sure you have the strength and skills to make it. Not everyone does.

Reasons why you shouldn’t care if someone else steals your idea

• Ideas, in the beginning, are untested concepts so it will take time and money (resources) to turn the idea into a market-ready product. There will be a lot of corrections, adjustments that you will need to make. If someone else is willing to expense those for you, you might as well learn from them.
• If no patents involved, which applies for mobile applications, and software (I am not getting into legal here) anyone can make it anytime they want. Your product becomes unbeatable with its content. Facebook as a software platform can be duplicated, but its user base can’t be. So focus on building content and value.
• If market penetration is easy, not much you can do about it so why care. Just focus on building a bigger user base, creating more value for customers and asking a fair price for it.

Reasons why you should be afraid

• If your platform isn’t bringing as much value or is overcharging customers. In this case, the platform will eventually be overtaken by competition that offers more value or better pricing.

What you can do about it

• Create value and ask fair (non-greedy) price for your product or services. Very simple. Do not overcharge or abuse your customers. This will eventually lead them to choose your competitor with more fair pricing or more value.
• Make sure the people you talk to have a reputation they protect. Talking to a person with reputation means they are likely willing to protect that reputation and are not going to jeopardize that valuable reputation by stealing your idea and have black ink on their white paper.
• Make sure they have the knowledge to offer you once they listen to your idea. When a person is asked a question, just because you consider them an authority by asking them, they think they have all the knowledge and start giving out information. If you don’t judge what they say with reason and lower your rational guard, you may be lead astray.

In summary, if you’re working hard and smart on your idea, asking a fair price for your product/service and create real value to your customers, there is no reason to be afraid of.

As a Mobile Development firm, I work with and do consulting for many clients who have high hopes from their product therefore great expectations from our development capabilities.

Here are the most common mistakes I see and you should avoid:

1)Investing a high % of resources before validating the idea

I recommend to all my clients to not invest minimum $ amount in the app before idea validation. All the app needs to do is provide functionality for basic concept to happen, forget all the rest, but whatever functionality we have, needs to work perfectly (see item #2).

2) Ugly UI

Less is more. Prefer quality over quantity. Instead of 10 features that somewhat work, have 2 that work perfectly. Why? Because users have do not see the code, the team behind the app, all they have is the UI to judge from. A beautiful UI is associated with large and trustworthy corporation and this is the quality association you want.

3) Starting on both iOS & Android

Apple filters the submitted apps and therefore has less apps, meaning less competition for SEO (search engine optimization). Apple users are higher class in terms of income and are able to spend more. They are more likely to be early adopters of a new technology. For these reasons, almost all app developments will recommend iOS first, watch out for those who recommend both.

4) Going native

Native code is a nice technology, but is not stable enough to support beautiful UI and complex functionality. To define complex, a calculator app is simple, an app with users, databases, payment methods, multiple screens is a complex app. A native app is good to push out something simple to both Android and iOS platform, but we had clients coming to us, who were provided with a native app, not knowing native app’s limitations for scalability.

5) Not choosing the developers wisely

Check their past work, meet with them if you can. If you do not understand code, a developer is no different then a doctor or a lawyer. You can’t evaluate their work, but you can trust their past work and principles.

6) Going overseas

When you do business outside the US, you no longer have the legal protection of US laws. Going overseas is a cheaper option, but as a development firm, we had plenty of clients coming to us because they either had unresolved conflicts or had difficulty getting their product the way want, if at all.

7) Sharing your budget

Some development agencies like to know a clients budget. You should never be asked about this. We avoid this question because we don’t want to sound like “we want to absorb as much resources as we can”.

8) Not asking for a breakdown

A developer should be able to provide you with a breakdown of the total cost, how much developer time will be involved with features. This should show you their confidence in their work and know how. Also, this level of transparency will allow you to discard unnecessary features that do not necessary add the value compared to the $ amount. Remember, in coding, there are cases where something simple in UI may be difficult in coding, something complex in UI may actually be simple in code (rarely the case). So you will benefit from transparency to choose and tailor your app.

9) Accepting $/hr contracts

I personally never liked this agreement, in law, marketing or development. When I hear $/hr, all I understand is “I don’t know what I am doing, therefore to avoid losing money, you cover all the costs, but I promise I will do my best. If I fail, sorry”. As a development firm, we know how much an app will cost. We have the experience to estimate it, if we make a mistake, that is a price we pay for the experience, not the customer.

10) Signing up for monthly plans

Don’t unless you’re Bank of America. Yes it is true that technology progresses and the app should be kept up to date, again, going back to mistake #9, the developer can give out a quote for modification that states code will be written to handle improvements in technology (new api’s, new devices…)

11) Not expecting Agile Development

Agile Development is the practice of showing the app as development progresses. This is contrary to completing the app and saying “there you go” after a few months. Agile development is to ensure you, the customer, that work is in progress, you can test as you go and point out flags. Also, you can start your marketing process earlier on.

An app business can be highly rewarding with the right strategy. Take care of your users and your developers and expect them to take care of you. The longer you can keep the lights on, the happier your users and your developers will be.

Omer Usanmaz

Mobile Developer | Cognata Technologies

www.cognatatechnologies.com