The Startup Extinction Party
Did you receive your invite for the startup extinction party? It’s going to be off-the-hook with Eleon Musk and mark Zuckerberg attending. No? You mean you did not get a late night email or phone call from your VC in early March as covid-19 made it’s world wide entrance?
Let’s get you sobered up to reality. My conjectures are based on the WHO plan for 2 billion vaccine doses to establish 50% herd immunity, reported on here:
WHO 2 Billion vaccine Doses Herd Immunity Plan
Basically, the vaccine will be ready for production at the end of 2021. Than it will take all of 2022 to get it into people’s hands. Thus, realistically it will not be until mid-2023 when VC funds again flow normally to B and C round startups. Are you going oh shite, yet?
Oh, it gets worse. Since the 1990's the human race has been searching for a corona-virus vaccine with no success. Out of those 200 vaccines being tried, ero could prove viable during clinical trials and we would have to start the whole process again. Thus, putting it back to 2025 when we get back to normal.
Would it not be nice to find an extra $1 million to $2.2 million in developer savings to than bank for an extra capital fund runway of 1.5 to 2.5 years? If you do not do ity you will be one of the 80 to 90 percent B and C round startups folding in the next 18 months.
I am just a former native android app developer(catkus music) with a radical solution to your dev costs problem. I know a way you can decrease that 5 mobile dev staff down to just one just by converting that android native app to use a different front end sdk than the android native sdk. Such as conversion saves $1 Million to $2.2 million over 3 to 5 years with just 3 to 6 months dev time.
Both your mobile dev team and your VP of engineering will not tell you this solution as it decreases their company politics power by decreasing the mobile dev staff by 75%. But, I am not going to kid here. Yes, I suggest it as one of you will eventually sign a dev contract with me to convert your android app to flutter and to train the mobile dev you decide to keep on staff in advance flutter. Yes, I am not a saint, does that matter in saving you between $1 million and $2.2 million?
The key here is Flutter is a light widget UI, the web html is a light widget UI, whereas mobile native is a heavy Uii widget library just like most desktop heavy UI widget sdks. We went from mobile web which has lower dev costs due to a light widget UI to a heavy widget UI namely mobile native. Or to put it another way if you have 100 million users you went form a cost to get a user of one cent to seven cents.
Okay, the raw numbers. The assumption is that you have to pay the dev firm $600,000 to convert the android app to flutter and train that one remaining mobile dev on advance flutter. The other assumption is that you immediate terminate 4 mobile devs out of your team of 5 mobile devs:
Dev Costs Per year
Per Dev $140,000
$140,000 times 5 equals $700,000 in dev costs for mobile native
$140,000 times 4 equals $560,000
$560,000 times 3 equals $1,680,000
$1,680,000 minus $600,000 is $1,080,000 for 3 years of mobile dev savings moving to flutter
$560,000 times 5 equals $2,800,000
$2,800,000 minus $600,000 equals $2,200,000 over 5 years of mobile dv savings on moving to flutter
App size
Android kotlin app is usually at 68,000 lines
The same app in flutter is only 12,000 lines
Now, not every B and C round startup will be able to do this. You would have to be a 2019 or 2020 funded startup and have an android native app in Google Play Store to do this conversion to flutter and get the $1 Million ot $2.2 million in savings to stretch your capital fund runway from 1 to 2.5 years.
But, it’s the difference between the 80 to 90 percent of B and C round startups going extinct in the next 18 months and possibly your startup surviving to the next VC funding round.
I cannot put all the details here as they depend upon your situation. Email is free, you should spend some time asking about it.
Author Note: I am just a former android native app developer(catkus music) who switched to flutter and is now crazy enough to start a startup during the pandemic. My contact email can be found on my linkedin profile:
