How many active users / revenue / profit is a sign for you the product should be taken seriously?
With a friend, we want to create an app.
(For now, we take it as a fun project, and the upfront investment is at most €75 + our time & know-how:
€25 – monthly Lovable Plan to build the very first MVP
€25 – Play Store registration fee
€25 – domain at a discount + hosting – but will purchase later)
The field is quite overcrowded (so the market exists);
But with good distribution and solid app features, there is a chance to grow the user base and even make some profits, at least from ads in the app.
How many users/revenue would you consider a clear sign that the project deserves more attention?
[E.g. we decided to purchase a domain after the first 100 users are acquired, and that will be a sign we should shift the app more.]
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I think if you have any real users that indicate to you they are getting value out of your product, and they like it more than the competition, is a clear sign that you should continue. When I started Sonokinetic with my business partner Rob way back in 2008 we had no idea whether it would work, but even after a few sales we knew we had something and it grew from there.
I guess the other question is whether you are offering a free, freemium, or a paid service - obviously if you have a few people that have given you money and are happy with the value you delivered, that is a very good indication of a product/service that will bring value to customers like them, and is worth pursuing.
A crowded field usually means demand exists, so the real question is whether you compete head-on or offer something different within it.
For a signal to take it seriously, I’d watch retention more than raw installs. If a few hundred organic users (not friends and family) are still using it after 30 days, that’s a stronger sign than a spike of downloads.
Willingness to pay, even from a handful of people, is another one. Ad revenue alone tends to stay tiny until you have a very large daily active base.
Finally, if you and your friend genuinely love using it, that’s a perfectly good outcome by itself. I’ve built a few apps this way. Competing with big players is expensive and often unprofitable, so I use mine myself, and since most of the tooling has free tiers, the ongoing cost is close to zero. If it grows, great. If not, you still got something you enjoy