Final Post

My entrepreneurial idea is one for an app that would run on both Apple and Android products, particularly smartphones, ipads and tablets.  The app, called “Connected” is one that allows you to stay in touch with your friends easily no matter where you are.  Using Apple and Android integrated software, this app automatically shows the location of your closest friends via GPS right on your mobile device.  You will never lose your friends again!

What started out as a simple idea of an app to help friends and family “Connect” from wherever they are has become a full-fledged possibility for a business startup.  When I first thought of Connected, I thought it would be great to have an app similar to Find My Friends except one that everyone could and would use, including android users.  My friend and I use Find My Friends often, but some improvements would make the app much more useful.

Connected began using integration of android and apple iOS to create an app that would work more automatically among users.  Instead of having to signup and manually add new friends, a user could connect with friends via their phone’s address book/contacts.  The issue of privacy quickly arose with this automatic pairing, as it is not ethical to be able to track anyone at any time.  A sense of privacy was lacking.  Based on comments from peers and revision of the app, I came up with a system that allows users to accept other to follow them also using the automatic integration with contacts.  The app would automatically notify the other user (via text/email) that someone wants to follow him or her and give him or her the option to allow or deny.

After looking deeper into competing apps and websites I found that there were other forms of interaction I could incorporate into the app.  Some of these included direct messaging through the app itself and social interaction using twitter and Facebook, which would not only benefit the user, but act as a source of promotion too.  Based on research, I learned that a user-friendly GUI also plays a major role in how well an app does.  Taking the best features from competitors and changing them to my own style, plus added a new layout in Photoshop yielded a very easy to use, yet practical GUI.

In order to actually create this app I would need a team of 2 to work with me.  I would need someone who is very knowledgeable in App design and creating apps to actually make the app interface (GUI) as well as code the app to work with the mobile software as we need to.  I would need another employee to get in touch with Apple and Android to work out specifications on app integration with contact list to make sure this is a possibility. 

I would look to find some possible investors to jumpstart our app production.  Another thing I would need to figure out is whether or not the app would be free.  Should I charge $.99 for the app and have no ads or make the app free to all users and run ads on the app somewhere?  Should I need to run ads, I would need to get my App design employee to help embed ads on the app with a something such as Google Adsense/Adwords.  Needless to say, the production of the app is still very far out, however, the simple idea has expanded greatly and is definitely a possibility