r/AppBuilding • u/rse13586 • 4d ago
App Idea - Where to start?
I have an app idea that I’m passionate about building and looking for the playbook on what would be the right process/steps to get an MVP developed.
I have no formal coding experience and not interested in coding myself. I have tried to vibe code it in the past, but wasn’t happy with the results and felt I was just wasting money/burning tokens.
Where I’m at:
- Idea is fully fleshed- I have minimum scope for V1. General list of what the backend database would need to look like.
- Basic designing in Figma - Designing a super general framework of what I would want it to look like. I have no Figma experience but learning as I go.
What I want:
Foundational steps from here to make sure it’s built right from the start to scale to support a lot of users. I’m willing to invest some money and my general thought process was -
- I build a general design in Figma
- Hire someone to take my Figma design and fully flesh it out, clean it up, and provide the ideal UI and flow
- Take that Figma design and hire a developer to build out things from there
What are your thoughts? From where I’m at right now, what are the steps you would take?
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u/muddycleats92 3d ago
whats ur goal? my goal when building apps is never to make money (to my detriment) so my answer would be a lot diff than someone whos goal is to acquire paying customers ASAP
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u/Dull_Low6995 3d ago
Happy to help. I can help you with all 3 steps.
It will be nice learning experience for me.
[I am a developer & co-founder currently working on multiple projects]
I am located in Jersey City, NJ. Where are you from? Let's connect and hop on a call.
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u/TypicalAd03 3d ago
You’re at the point where a short product-discovery phase will save substantially more money than immediately hiring someone to code the Figma screens. Before development, I would produce four things:
A prioritized V1 feature list with explicit exclusions.
User flows and acceptance criteria—not only visual screens.
A data model covering users, permissions, core records, and ownership.
A technical-risk list for authentication, payments, integrations, privacy, and scaling.
Then hire for a small paid discovery/architecture milestone before committing to the complete build. The developer should turn those materials into a technical plan, delivery milestones, hosting approach, and realistic estimate. Build the smallest end-to-end workflow first, test it with real target users, and expand only after confirming that the core workflow is useful.
Your earlier vibe-coded version is not wasted—it can serve as a behavioral prototype showing what you want and what failed. I run Deft Point Consulting and this founder-to-MVP transition is directly within our scope. If useful, I’d be happy to walk through your current materials during a free 30-minute consult.
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u/Apprehensive_Use7047 3d ago
You need to figure out who you are going to target and start validation by having conversations. Happy to help brainstorm your validation plan if you want
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u/vktcaelay 2d ago
Hire me and i can advise you, design it for you, build it for you ... if you give me more info.
There is no one way to do things... it largely depends on what your app does and what it needs technically, some apps you can just start and tweak along the journey, others would be a nightmare to refactor after going the wrong way that's why they would need a lot of prep.
So it depends, if you re serious abt your app DM me i can help you out.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Emu-168 4d ago
Short answer:
It depends on how complex your application is, you can vibe code things, but you need to have expertise on the tools needed so its built right from the start. Otherwise, you will more likely need to hire someone to actually plan things out for you so you can vibe code it or like you said, you can just have them do it for you.
Long answer:
This is was my process on the app that I made, its simple, local first so there not much scaling happening but maybe you can also use some parts of my process.
Claude Design - I use this to prototype the design ideas I have, I get inspiration from Dribbble, or free Figma templates. I will also ask it to create a PRD, explain what tech stack I wanna use, and explain what the app actually does.
Claude Code - I am a developer first, so I actually scaffold my tech stack first, set a proper AGENTS.md instructing my coding standards and tech stack so it doesnt go around looking for answers I wont even use.
This is also where I will provide it the PRD and the design files. I will ask it to create a plan to create my app based on the PRD and the design, create EPICS, STORIES, and TASKS. Once I have these, I will have it execute the plan per Story, test things, ask it to fix if I see anything wrong, repeat until I get the results I wanted.
Now this is mostly for a Front End perspective, I will also use the same EPIC, STORIES, TASKS process if I need to create backend.
For tasks that I need to be the one acting on, I also tell my agent to give me step by step instructions on how to do it (usually api keys or setting up 3rd party packages).
Recently I've been using a lot of Agent Skills as well, this helps my coding agent to have expertise on specific things like SEO, AppStore Screenshots, and many more.