A family company is a business enterprise involving family members. A family business may involve several potential combinations, such as parents and children, husbands and spouses, multiple generations, and extended families as board members, stockholders, advisors, and employees.

There are many business advantages linked to working with your loved ones, people that you have known for a very long time, or your entire life in some cases. 

Family-owned companies are desirable, in principle, since collaborating with family members is intended to form a sound and loyal basis for the business.

You’re expected to meet the people and be happy to work with them everyday-these is your family business partners.

Make sure you talk early and often about the responsibilities, investments, and aspirations of everyone in the business. It’s even easier if you draw up partnership contracts that set out the essence of the business arrangement in plain legal terms, to make sure that family and business even when combined, will both work with a different set of rules.

If you have the chance to start a company with family members you need to think long about all the benefits of having such ties with your family members and weigh all the pros and cons about that decision.

Also, have in mind that problems may arise, as with any business. In this case, though, problems in family-owned businesses may end up tragically.

Once you have made up your mind to start a company with family members, including a partner, and you have planned out for the project your family can work on, and everyone is ready and agreed you can go ahead and start thinking about creating an app.

Why developing an app?

Apps are very popular and people spend much of their time enjoying games, getting educated, entertained, or even for business purposes. 

According to MobiLoud, people spent 90% of their mobile time using apps in 2019.

Nowadays, there are apps for everything we can imagine of.

DotNek highlights that the Google play store has 2.7M apps for Android users and the Apple store has 1.85M apps for iOS (August 2020).

The following guide should help improve your chances of developing a profitable app.

How To Create A Profitable App

As A Family Business

Market Insights/Best Practices

An app developer will tell you that you need to educate yourself about application development best practices to give your app the best chance in the marketplace.

You also need to learn as much as you can about the audience you’re trying to reach with your app. You nor your family will want to devote much time to this project if it doesn’t have a shot at success, so try to find out everything you can about the demographics and psychographics you’re going for.

Figure out how your app will be used and how you’ll reach your audience. Every detail matters, so get this part done before you start.

Come Up With A Great Idea

The first thing you and your family need to do once you have listened to your audience is to come up with a “big” idea.

There are many apps out there, so try to narrow down your ideas to a niche. You want something with the least amount of competition.

Try to dedicate a significant amount of time to this step before you move on. Brainstorm as many ideas as you can and then start excluding those that don’t look promising.

You should also find out if other folks have thought of your idea, and if so, find out more about these companies.

What are they doing right? Are there gaps your app could fill? Consider all of this before moving on to the next step.

Related: 7 IDEALS Methodology Phase #2 Big Ideas

App Funding And Management

Creating a successful app is going to take a significant investment. Since you’ve got your family helping you, start discussing your budget.

There are several ways you can fund this project. You guys can do it together if you all have enough money, but you could also seek investors.

If you come up with an impressive app idea that you can present to potential investors, you might get funding that way. Find out how much everyone will spend on the entire project to know how much you need to make this happen.

Figure Out Your Business Model Early

You need to figure out your business model as early as possible. Once you’ve got a good grasp on that, you can weave that into the app effectively.

Monetizing an app can be done in many ways; some app developers add an in-app purchase option. This model offers basic app functions for free in hopes that people will purchase add ons later on.

Others just charge a one-time purchase fee before people even download the app.

Regular ads can be used as well, so choose your methods wisely.

Create A Good Maintenance Plan

Users abandon apps all the time, so be sure you create an app that is fascinating, interesting, easy to use, runs fast, and keeps up with the latest technology trends and standards.

To achieve this goal, you need to develop a good maintenance plan that’ll help you make updates when the time is right.

What you want to do is use customer-driven data to get this right.

Let your audience tell you what bugs they want to be fixed. Try to analyze how your audience uses the app so that you figure out how to improve the app.

This will be an ongoing project, so make sure you and your family are ready for this kind of investment.

Pay Close Attention To The Security

The next thing you want to worry about is security. The app you’re developing is meant to store all sorts of personal data.

Customers are willing to invest time in using the app and they take security for granted because they think you’ve taken the proper precautions.

Don’t make the mistake of skimping on security. If you make a mistake here, your app’s credibility will get hurt.

You are going to need proper data encryption and user session authorization. You will probably also need certificate pinning and token validation.

Talk to an app security specialist to see if there’s anything you’re missing.

Final Thoughts

Developing an app is not a one-night project. It takes time, energy, resources, devotion, and money.

Perform research, try to find gaps in the highly competitive marketplace, listen to your audience, discuss with them before you develop anything so you can come up with ideas, and trust yourself and your family members.

You’re in this together.

Think of it as a long-term project that needs your dedication, so take care of security, maintenance, and ongoing improvements and updates and you’ll be able to monetize it in various ways once you have people using it.

Hopefully, these steps make it easier for you and your family to get started on the right path and create an app that makes you and your users happy.