Puff Count · B2C · quit vaping app
Turn pencil sketches into a 99designs contest; pay an Upwork developer per finished app
Built the MVP for under $5K with no coding or design skills
Workedfeature-developmentteam-process
What they did
Brain-dump features and competitors into a Google Doc, noting competitors' features, onboarding and UI. Sketch the app with pencil and paper, upload the sketches with the premise and feature list to 99designs, and get 50-70+ UI designs submitted. Hire a developer on Upwork (he recommends only Eastern Europe for quality at a lower price) after a 15-minute call checking vibe, excitement and whether they bring ideas. Pay per completed project, not hourly: paid when the app is live on the store with no bugs. A simple app like Puff Count cost under $5K; a ThemeForest template can get it under $1K. Keep the MVP simple.
What happened
Non-technical founder shipped all his apps this way; Puff Count MVP under $5K
- Stage
- Pre-launch (Build / MVP)
“You upload the sketches and you say, "Here's the app, here's the premise of it, here are the features. Make my app come to life." And you'll have 50, 60, sometimes 70-plus professional UI designers all submit their idea of what your app should look like.”
“I recommend only hiring developers from Eastern Europe. They're going to give you the best quality code for a cheaper price. Once you have your developer that you'd like to go with, you do it on a per-project completion basis. So I don't pay anyone per hour, I pay them when the app is complete, it's on the store, there's no bugs.”
“I always take like a 15-minute interview call with with the people that I like from the applicants on Upwork.”
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More from this episode
- Puff Count: Check rival apps' revenue, Google Trends and viral TikToks before buildingPicked quit-vaping; the app now makes ~$40K/month
- Puff Count: Log your niche's most viral TikToks, remake one, end with a 2-second plugOne remake got 8.3M views and tens of thousands of downloads
- Puff Count: Turn the TikToks that already did well into Facebook and TikTok adsFounder says the ad algorithms find buyers when the creative is proven; no numbers
- Puff Count: Skip pricey influencers and pay small, overlooked creators for cheap videosBig influencers cost a lot and didn't care about results; small creators cheaper
- Puff Count: Require a free trial signup after onboarding before any feature worksConversion jumped to 20-25%; founder says it changed the business overnight
- Puff Count: Test prices from $4 to $12; keep the one earning most per user
- Puff Count: Ask many questions in onboarding so users feel their problem before payingFounder says his data shows users convert much better; no numbers
- Wordle: Show ads in games people play a lot; charge subscriptions for quick-use toolsAds worked well for his games; founder says ads don't work for tool apps