How to handle an investor question/rejection?

[Alejandro Moyano]

Hi, i developed an app on python+b4x for my startup and we got the MVP (minimum viable product), as we got early adopters, we did an incubators application and we found a rejection to the frontend tech, their main questions was:

• They could't find another apps using it, and they found apps made in b4x looks amateur: i reply to this that most developers are realy bad on graphical design and even can't choose a good color palette.
• They ask me about the testing capabilities, unit test, coverage and be a quite skeptics on the responsiveness
  

Finaly they told me that we may change the frontend to apply, the tech look good for prototype but no for production, and they encourage us to use something like react native, flutter or xamarin.

The develop took around 6 full-time months, make it all front-end again would take a lot of time or money, as we came from desktop develop jump to that kind of tech would be an steepcourve as we will have the overload of been juniors developing a new product.

What can i reply?

 

[moster67]

Because they are ignorant Don't tell them that explicitly though but in some other way...
Unfortunately, this has happened to me as well but I replied: do you care about the final product and if it is working or not? I was unable to convince them so I had to let them go...

 

[Alejandro Moyano]

Is though i spent a lot of my life time and money (my saving) to make my dream of work on a niche product with clients across all latam, i'm started to think that most incubators will gave me the same reply, they like the solution but not the technology of implementation.

Because they are ignorant Don't tell them that explicitly though but in some other way...
Unfortunately, this has happened to me as well but I replied: do you care about the final product and if it is working or not? I was unable to convince them so I had to let them go...

 

[aeric]

MVP is always basic. It should improve in term of function and design through out time.

 

[Sandman]

On top of my mind, and perhaps bit of a hot take:

• They are not going to change their minds, don't waste your time or energy trying to convince them that your solution is good. Either you do as they say or you find another way forward.
  
  
• B4X has amazing strengths, but tests aren't one of them. Accept that and make the best of the situation. (Post a Wish for this if it is important for you.)
  
  
• Their comment about responsiveness is probably based on some vague fear from them because they don't know B4X. Look at the forum, it's not a common topic. (I assume you didn't manage to actually make it sluggish, in that case you should post a thread about it so you can solve that problem.)

In the end you messed up by investing a lot of time and money to produce this without touching base with them first. You could probably have avoided this situation by having a conversation about your MVP before coding a single line.

I realize this situation sucks in many ways, but in the end there are valuable things to be learned here for future projects. My two biggest take-aways:

• Make sure to validate before actually producing anything.
• Try really hard to listen for the gold nuggets. While they most likely are wrong about B4X vs other environments, perhaps they are right that your app looked amateurish?

Also: Don't give up. If this project doesn't make it (most projects aren't successes), perhaps the next one is. Or the one after that. Etc.

 

[Alejandro Moyano]

I hired a graphical designer the app looks fine, the solution have more than 80 uses cases (RUP)
I have an closed group of 61 using the alpha version.
U cant differs if its made in react, flutter, Kotlin or B4X, i think their problem is that they don't trust that b4x will work fine in many devices as i couldn't test in something like microsoft app center.

Maybe its security concern as my app handles sensitive data or maybe is just religious, they saw something that looks like basic and instantly reject it.

Txs for the cheers.. i applying on another places and looking for a react native freelancer help.

 

[Cadenzo]

I have always this feedback. The weakest point on my apps is the design. I am not a designer and may be, it is not important enough for me. I like smart features but in startups they very much cares about design, so many new apps exists that nobody needs but they look great!

Like templates of websites there should be also B4X view templates. For dialogs they exits, why not for forms and custom listview items? That would be nice...

 

[ilan]

and they found apps made in b4x looks amateur: i reply to this that most developers are realy bad on graphical design and even can't choose a good color palette.

i agree with that, i think that people here should put more effort on the App UI because at the end this is the most important thing that will bring you installs.
but we do have here some very nice apps like from multiverse and others.

WallDrox Wallpapers- HD, 2K, 4K Backgrounds - Apps on Google Play

Thousands of HD, 2K, 4K Wallpapers updated every day! Auto wallpaper changer

play.google.com

there are more but i cant find them right now.

 

[Martin Larsen]

The fact that they mention Xaramin tells me that they are way off since Xamarin certainly does not excel in responsiveness!

Anyway, there is not much to do. You best choice is probably to hire someone to convert the app.

 

[sfsameer]

i have faced this situation my self with many investors but eventually i got the response that i needed from them which is investing.

the main key factor was the platform i was developing on, once i mentioned b4x they had a big question mark on their head.

But the how i convinced them is by showing great results, results they were looking for and they even brought 4 developers and i taught them how to use b4x and now the project is almost online and ready to go.

my advice to you my friend is to show them what you app is capable off and not what the IDE can do. if your app isn't what they are looking for then it doesn't matter if you are using Xaramin or native language or b4x their answer will always be no, but if your app is great then they wouldn't even care if you developed it using notepad or paint lol

work on your app more and keep developing it and keep adding features and find new investors

 

[tchart]

Alejandro, sorry to hear this but do keep going! The fact that you have a user base already is fantastic.

In my career I have met many people like this, some people are just difficult and if they are already being like this imagine what they will be like when they have invested money and are more involved.

You didnt mention if the app is mobile, desktop, web etc. Can you clarify?

For mobile I'd say the winning argument is that B4X always creates native apps. For desktop its a bit harder to defend as Java apps just dont look great

For web/server the beauty of B4X is that you can pretty much use any front end look at all the examples using material, skeleton, etc. The backend shouldnt really matter as long as good practises are in place.

I come across many technologies in my day to day job. Nothing is perfect. Everyone love things like node.js right now but to be honest node is an absolute hog for system resources. Many of my B4X server applications run on 1 cpu and 500mb RAM. They run on linux, windows and mac. I see that as a much better solution.

Some shiny new tools are not always what they seem. Depending on how long youve been doing this you may or may not know but there was a once a shiny new tool called AppForge which allowed you to create Pocket PC mobile apps in Visual Studio. Sounds great right? It was great but the company became insolvent and as a result they turned off their activation servers which left thousands of developers unable to continue developing - see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppForge

This kind of situation will never happen with B4X. Even if Erel stops development of the IDE the users can still create new libraries to extend functionality. If Erel turns off the B4I build servers you can use a local server to build. So you arent locked in.

Just a thought but perhaps we should collectively create a Q&A for these kinds of scenarios?

Good luck!

PS I just did a Google for Pocket PC ide and the first result mentions Basic4PPC (Erels product).

 

[MrKim]

More than once in my life have I lost out because the platform was wrong. At one point in the late 70's early eighties we had the best product on the market - way ahead of everyone else-it was schematic design program that would feed right into computerized PC-Design-state of the art. We couldn't sell it because it was written in Forth.

The funny part. If it had been written in Borland's Pascal we could have sold. Where is Pascal now?

 

[Alejandro Moyano]

Thanks to all guys, i finally got founding but they will make me rewrite the b4x frontend on react native.

The main concern was scalability now, as they told me that b4x is a niche product and not tested on larger solutions, the reasons for they choose:

• React is mainstream, will be easy an cheaper to get developers with the right skills
• The developers can be reused for a web version

They don't have concern of the python backend as flask or django are well tested technology, finally they drop my role as developer and told me that i must focus on system and market analysis.

I'm, happy and sad at the same point i think that b4x will never get momentum if non startup rise and new ones follow.
Could be that looks like basic (i love it), i think that if the syntax would looks like python may have greater success..
Anyway, thanks to the cheers and keep coding.