As a part of our ASK RODINHOODERS series, may we present Rahul Varshneya. Rahul is one of our key contributors on trhs. If you haven’t read his articles, first READ ALL OF THEM NOW! Rahul is synonymous with anything to do with Apps and is always ready to answer any questions you throw at him!
Meet Rahul…
“Everyone wants to build an app today, but this wasn’t the case when I started in this space 5 years back. We spent time getting inroads into the tech heartland – Silicon Valley and worked with numerous startups that were early adopters of the mobile ecosystem.
We’ve been working with customers across enterprises such as Novo Nordisk, Warner Bros and Dubai Duty Free as well as successful entrepreneurs from across the globe.
Such is our experience in working with startups that have failed and some that were spectacularly successful. That experience and insight helps us build better products for our customers.
I’ve personally been mentoring mobile-first startups for the last four years through Clarity and personal meetings and am on the board of three mobile-first startups.
I’ve been featured in Bloomberg TV as well as a book (Boss Maker) helping people startup, written by a UK-based author. I write columns on mobile product and marketing strategy at the international editions of the following publications: The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, Inc, The Next Web and you can also find my writings in VentureBeat, Forbes, Business Insider and Fox Business.
I’m the co-founder of Arkenea LLC, America’s premier mobile app consultancy helping startups in mobile product strategy and development.
Hit me up for anything related to:
- Product strategy
- Customer engagement and retention
- Building viral loops
- Marketing strategy
- Marketing stack for pre-launch, launch and post-launch
Mistakes I could help entrepreneur avoid making
There are several mistakes that many app entrepreneurs make at various stages of their startup, but none of them come close to the gravest of them all – assuming they’ve got a bad product at hand when they fail to get traction.
Most apps are not bad products. They may have just failed to capture the fancy of their audience in its current state. To build a successful mobile app business, you have to listen to your customers, analyze what their challenges are and how your app is or isn’t helping them.
Based on that feedback, continue to iterate, which will help you build a product that resonates with your audience.
To be able to get that level of quality feedback from the right audience (your app’s target audience), app developers should focus on distribution right from the get go. Only when you have significant traction will you have enough data to support what’s working and what isn’t.
Engaging an audience from the beginning also helps app developers establish a connect with them. I would any day opt to build my product with customer traction than in a silo with a focus group.”
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Rahul is following this page – so just go ahead and ask him everything you wanted to know about apps in the comments below!
Follow him on twitter @rahulvarshneya
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