Cyber Week Sale! 50% Off All Access

Creating an MVP App to Secure Investors Here's how you can build a minimum viable product app to raise money for your idea.

By Net Kohen Edited by Chelsea Brown

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You probably have a crazy mobile app idea and need to raise capital to create it. Developing a minimum viable product (or MVP) app is how you secure investors when you don't have a big budget. The MVP will let you present the app to VCs and investors while keeping the cost of development to a minimum. You can expect your MVP to only be a few thousand dollars. The best part is that you only need two things to make it happen: a designer and a developer.

Related: A Step-by-Step Guide To Building Your First Mobile App

Hiring a designer

To start, you'll want to hire a designer. Affordable and skillful designers can be found on sites like Dribbble and Freelancer. When you find your designer, you should make sure they fully understand your app, and then they can begin creating a wireframe. The wireframe doesn't need to be so complicated. Keep it simple, and only include the essential parts of your app. Once you get your wireframe, you can make tweaks and let your designer know what kind of styling you want for your app. Mention the color scheme you want and maybe even some apps that you love, so your designer can have some inspiration to work with. Depending on the level of designer you're hiring, each page design will be anywhere from $20 to $200. A great designer will charge you $2,000 for ten pages, and a new designer will charge you $200. Remember that the design is what will be selling your app, so you shouldn't try to save money here.

Many of you will be able to stop here and show your app designs to potential investors and VCs. This should be good enough most of the time, but there's a chance you will deal with people who want to see an app that works before they sign a check — and that's where a developer comes in. They'll be able to bring those designs to life.

Related: 3 Ways to Build A Mobile App With No Tech Skills

Hiring a developer

Now you've reached the hard part, hiring a developer. Today, you can find developers all over the internet. I recommend searching for developers on LinkedIn if you want to stay on the affordable side, or you can hire them on freelance websites like Toptal or Freelancer.

Before you hire a developer, you'll need to look at their recent work, where they're from, find out what language they speak, how much they're charging per hour and how much time they can dedicate to your project. If you need to save money, consider hiring developers outside the U.S. You can find talented affordable developers in Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh, Nepal and many other countries outside the U.S.

What's great about creating an MVP is that you don't need the best developers on earth to make it happen. Your MVP won't need a sophisticated backend to support millions of users; it is just a demo app that will serve a handful of people you'll be pitching. Think friends, family and potential investors.

When speaking to the developers, be sure that they know you only want a demo or MVP app. They need to know that you're not looking for a fully built-out project that can support tons of users. If they don't understand this, you'll be spending a ton of money on your cloud when you don't need anything serious running behind the scenes. After clarifying this, you can get into their past work. See if maybe they have done a similar app in the past, and ask to see that app, so you can get an idea of the quality they'll be able to provide you.

Related: Here's Exactly What You Need to Do to Launch a Mobile App

Costs

Once you find someone you like, expect to spend anywhere from $10 to $100 per hour and sometimes more, depending on their skill level and location. No app is the same, and they'll all cost a different amount to develop, so I can't give you an estimate for your idea. However, I can tell you how much my MVP app for LinkMe was. I designed the original app myself on Photoshop, so I spent nothing on the design. The development was simple. We only needed to show three things: the QR code scanner, a QR code generator and a user profile. Once you scan the QR code, then your profile will appear, and you're then able to see the name, number, email and all social media links for that user. All this ended up costing around $5,000. If your MVP is very complicated, you should think about removing some parts of the app to cut down on the cost. You can even request a price menu for each part of the app to get an idea of what feature or function is costing you the most.

I'm almost positive that you have already heard this, but you will always miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So, get to work and try your best. You only need to find two pieces to this puzzle: the designer and the developer. Go make it happen.

Net Kohen

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

CEO and co-founder of LinkMe

Net Kohen is the CEO and co-founder of LinkMe, a Miami-based social networking platform. Connecting and sharing your information should be simple. LinkMe bridges the gap between all your profiles.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Side Hustle

'I Just Hustled': She Earned More Than $300,000 Wrapping Gifts Last Year — and It All Started With a Side Hustle

When Michelle Hensley lost her husband to cancer, she needed to figure out how to earn an income for her family.

Business Ideas

63 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2024

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2024.

Business News

Hackers May Be Reading Your Texts — U.S. Officials Urge All Americans to Use Encryption Messaging Apps in the Wake of Massive Cyberattack

The FBI and security officials warn that messages sent by AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies customers are vulnerable.

Business News

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Says 'You'll Be Surprised' By How Google Search Changes Next Year

AI has already changed the look of search, but Google's CEO says there are more changes to come.