Lessons We Learnt From Building & Deploying Our First (Fashion) App

I want to preface by saying when I started the Kl?m journey 8 months ago, I had absolutely no idea how we would go about building any of the technical aspects. I had no exact idea what we would build, who would build it and how we would deploy. These are all answers that we have figured out step by step. I made a promise I would share some of those answers here in the hopes it gives someone the courage to also get started.

1. Started with minimum value for the customer

What will first adopters get out of this? : With the MVP we knew we wanted the user to get some value out of the product. The value need not be perfect or pretty but it inherently needs to exist. Ask Kl?m's minimum value is outfit inspiration. If you have something you would like to know how to match in an outfit, you can ask Kl?m to give you some ideas.

We figured this out by asking people on our waitlist to choose three out of 5 things they would want something like Kl?m to give them. Then we built the MVP around the top two value requests that kept coming up.

The jury is still out on how Kl?m will do, I suspect this will be a separate post.

2. Are We The Right Team To Build This Business?

As we were setting out the testing parameters, we had to decide what were the things we wanted to structurally learn about ourselves as a team?

We needed to know if we are capable as a team to build something from start to finish. This was huge since we have never worked together before. We put test parameters in place by dividing roles and working in sprints. Once a sprint is done, we do a retro at how it all went or Stop, Start , Continue.

This was the most crucial set of sprints because everything was completely and utterly new and we were trying to put much needed order and foundation to a chaotic process.

We tested for collaboration, leadership and communication skills. Do our communication styles match and compliment each other? Does everyone on the founding team have what it takes to indeed be a founder or would they be better as individual contributors? Who has the strongest leadership skills? Who needs improvement? Are we , as a combination , strong enough to build this into a financially viable business? What combined skills are we strong in and what do we badly need?

We found out that as a team we had the industry knowledge plus engineering skills to pull this off but we badly needed product design skills. This became my next task- find incredible product design talent to join us and I did!

We also found out that we needed to reduce our co-founder number from four to three and this has been actioned.

3. Communication

Our team is fully remote and time commitments vary at the stage we are at and so clear communication is everything. Something that really helped us and moved us further than we would have otherwise was scheduling hackathons at the start of each sprint. These were two day internal events where we got together and planned the journey ahead for the sprint as well as start on some of the tasks.

At the end of it, we were aligned on the goals and vision of what we were doing then we set up weekly calls to check in on where everyone was at in the process. As the product manager , my job of course entails owning the project and its progress. When someone gets stuck, they have to open up about it so we brainstorm the issue together.

Tools that helped in this so far have been mural - for organising the hackathon plans , Trello for organising the sprint and tracking the projects and slack for in between communication.

I especially love the huddle feature in slack, I compare it to quickly running over to someone's desk to get their insight on something.

Not forgetting canva, my favourite tool for pitch decks and any kind of concept design you can ever dream.

4. Admin and paperwork

Okay so even after living in Germany for 3 years, I still got schooled about having admin together in this process. This is an incredibly crucial thing especially if you are building and deploying a mobile app for the first time which we were as this is our first product. Something I wish I knew were the steps for deploying apps on the the stores and so I will talk about what we ran into so you don't have to.

Deploying on IOS: You need a D.U.N.S number if your company is already incorporated (ours is). This number takes 7-14 days to be sent to you but it seems to be faster if you get id directly from the D.U.N.S website vs through Apple. You cannot deploy on apple without this so try get it as early in the process as you can. It is free of charge.

If you are not incorporated then you do not need this but your legal name will show up in the store vs business name.

Enroll in the Apple Developer Program: You need the D.U.N.S number and your legal entity information to enroll. The membership fee is 99USD per year in order to deploy actual app as well as tests via their TestFlight program.

After you request to enroll, Apple will need to call you to confirm all the information in your application and then send you a link to pay the fee. After this in a few hours you can proceed to add your App bundle and producing IOS Apps in your account. The full Apple process including D.U.N.S to deployment took about 7 days. It will be shorter if you have / don't need a D.U.N.S number.

Deploying on Android: This was a much quicker process, it is basic sign up but you need government ID uploaded. They will take up to 2 days to verify this. The fee is 25USD. It is non refundable even if they fail to verify and you don't proceed.

In your bundle code, remember to include a link to your privacy statement, you will need this. You website should have one and you just add the link to that page.

The full process with Android should take about 3-4 days pending any issues at steps in the process.

5. Timing and schedule

Whatever time you think you will be done by, double it. Especially for your very first release. Allow for a buffer to take care of all the things you haven't thought about but will inevitably happen.That said, constantly challenge your schedule and set deadlines at every turn.

6. Extend Grace

This is the very first technical product I have ever lead the development of from start to finish. Louise was building in flutter for the first time ever and as a group we were producing our first bit of work together. Mistakes were bound to happen and they did and so we made sure to note them as learning curves.

This is pretty much it as far as building, I will write about the methodology we are using in the beta testing as well as key KPIs once this is available.

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