Detailed Notes
In Part 2 of our interview with Angelo Zanetti (Elemental), we dig into a modern product strategy: go web first—especially when you’re still validating demand.
We cover: • AI-assisted development: speed vs risk (and why guardrails matter) • Planning like an architect so you don’t rebuild later • Why “go web first” is often faster + cheaper than mobile early on • When mobile actually makes sense (and when it doesn’t)
🎧 Listen/Watch the full show: https://develpreneur.com/go-web-first-ai-safe-mobile-timing
About Angelo Zanetti Angelo is the co-founder and CEO of Elemental, a South African-based software development agency helping startups and scaleups worldwide bring digital products to life.
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#BuildingBetterDevelopers #GoWebFirst #AI #MobileApps
Transcript Text
[music] [music] [music] [music] Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season of Building Better Foundations. This is the Building Better Developers podcast, also known as Developur. We are in part two of an interview. Uh we're going to be speaking with Angelo again here in a few moments. But first, I'm going to introduce myself and let somebody else introduce themselves. Little uh cliffhanger there for you. My name is Rob Broadhead. Hi, one of the founders of developer, also the founder of RB Consulting, where we help you sift through your technology junk drawer and build a roadmap for success, leveraging technology and making it work for you instead of uh maybe even against you. Good things and bad things. A good thing would be I have like the tools that are out there to do our work are phenomenal these days. uh the things that like it's funny how when I would think back to when I was starting out my career and how slow and ponderous some of the compilers and things were and how long it took to deal with them and it's like you know you could go like have a whole meal before you got back and your code was actually compiled so you could test your latest changes versus now you can test entire applications in a day basically with some of the tools that are out there. So loving that. Uh the downside of bad things is like there are just not enough hours in the day still because with the ability to do more, there is more that I want to do. And it just seems like my the desire to do more is constantly outpacing the ability to get some stuff done. But right now, I'm going to pause. I'm going to go get some stuff done while Michael introduces himself. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malage. One of the co-founders of Developer. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we create and test custom software that solves your problems. Uh good thing, bad thing. Uh good thing, um similar to Rob, there's so much out there helping us uh improve on our jobs and businesses. Uh when we're recording this, it's nearing the end of the year. There's some actually some new updates to some of the versions of Java Spring Boot that just got released and I'm going to be digging into those. Uh downside similar to Rob, the more these tools speed things up, the more we want to do. And we still just run out of time to get stuff done. >> Yeah, life is uh it just the more the more things change, the more they stay the same. The more it's just like, yep, I still just don't have enough time to get the crap done. I just whenever we get we're more productive, but now we just put more on our plate to get done. But right now, we are going to take a few things off of our plate. mostly the stepping into the next portion of this interview and here we go back to our conversation with Angelo. Um I do want to like I guess shift a little because you've been doing this for you know quite a while. you've been doing development and now even though you've gotten out of it. Um, how do you see like especially cuz now you've been through I think a couple of uh you know the gamechanging moments of things that have like apps have come out since you started and you know before that it was you know there's the web was it's what it was and then you had the applications and you've had you know now the latest is obviously AI has become a a big part of development uh but even you go back a few years and and the uh code generators basically came back. So a lot of ids, a lot of tools were already even before AI was kicking in. We're doing a lot of that generation. So how have you how do you see especially like I guess this latest wave of you know the latest silver bullet of AI. How do you see that and how do you see it impacting your your development teams and and moving forward? I >> think I think it's it's helpful. I think that it can make developers a lot more efficient, but it's also a very powerful tool that if you're not an experienced developer, it can actually cause more harm than good. Um, [gasps] yeah, I posted we we've got like a a a few chat groups on our with our business and then someone sent me a a a little meme or something like that where I think it was Cursor where Cursor by accident dropped, you know, this uh Vibe Coders database and and for those of you who don't know what drop means, it basically deleted the whole database and recreated it. And he asked Cursa like, "Did you just like delete my database?" And Chris was like, "Yes, I'm sorry I had to delete it because of the database changes, but I'm sorry. I what I should have done is I should have asked you, >> do you want me to drop the database and recreate it?" And uh so it's it's it's powerful. Like it's they really are powerful these tools, but you really need to kind of know what you're doing. Um, but it can definitely make you more efficient and it's, you know, it learns your coding style and it can, you know, obviously auto completion as you mentioned has been in the IDEs for for a long time, but I think it's like even more powerful now like with cursor and other tools where it can do multiple auto completions in multiple files that aren't even open. Um, but that's also where the danger can come in because you know, you kind of you need to know what it's doing. Um, yeah. So, I think it's it's a tool. You got to use it. You got to embrace it, but you also got to be wary of it. Um, where it's going to go in the future, I'm not I'm not exactly sure. You know, is it going to replace developers entirely? Possibly. But I think there's a lot of still a lot of um value and experience in terms of dealing with people what their ideas are and sort of thinking and reading between the lines in terms of okay this is actually what they need and this is how we need to build it and this is what we need to consider for the future based on previous experience. So there's still that sort of human element of translating an idea into code and into a vision but also making it scalable and um robust and future proof. So I think that's where there's the seniority plays a big role and experience but maybe the sort of simpler tasks um you know will will sort of be maybe a little bit more automated with with AI and and with code generation. So along with the lines of AI these days and like you said having like senior developers and that um and leaning on the developers to help you build the applications from a founders's perspective. However being a founder if you aren't really technically inclined how do you kind of structure that? How do you think through that uh to avoid wasting time, wasting money and kind of like we started early on building things that don't scale that have too many features in it? >> It's a good question. I think it's almost like building a house, right? You don't just start putting in a foundation and start putting up walls and windows and things like that. You actually start with an architect. So I think planning is still really really important. You know thinking about your product, scoping it out properly, defining it from a technical specification point of view, thinking about the different scenarios, the different user journeys, the different exceptions and I think that is a very very good step but I think it's also overlooked and I think people just want to build quickly but then you kind of rush stuff and you haven't thought about you know knock on effects. So I I think that the the planning you know scoping specifying phase is really really important and um because it's not so tangible it's often undervalued but I think that is key to the success of a project and not only in the initial MVP it's the key to the scal the scaling you know scalability which I spoke about earlier in terms of scalability in terms of features and in terms of data so thinking about that up front you you know what is it going to look like in a few years time? Is it going to are we going to have like multiple payment gateways, multiple payment options? Are we going to have multiple languages? Are we going to have a loyalty system? Is it going to be gamification? Great. If if those are sort of things that we need to consider, let's make provision for them now. And then what does the data look like? You know, is it going to be like millions and millions of records and at what point does the database slow down? At what point do we need to kind of archive data? How are we going to handle that? So again, that happens. you know, ideally upfront as a best practice, but in in you know, often, you know, things need to get to market quickly and that step is is skipped by founders or they just don't even know to do that. You know, they just think you need to write the code. You know, they don't even know to plan it. And it's almost like you need a a systems analyst or a architect to kind of go, let's go to the drawing board first before, you know, let's write code. Cuz if you speak to a developer, they're probably just going to start writing code. they like that, you know, maybe senior ones will plan it a lot better. [sighs and gasps] >> So, expanding on that just a little bit, so from a founders's perspective, I I believe earlier you mentioned lovable. Um, what are some tools that a founder could use to help them wireframe besides just, you know, writing it out on paper, putting it on, you know, a PowerPoint, something like that. What are some good tools that they could use to kind of build their idea or kind of wireframe their idea and get like clickable demos without having to really write code? >> Yeah. So, obviously you got things like Figma, but you need to be a you've got to need some design skills for that. I think there's a a platform called Reloom. I speak under correction. um which basically uh allows you to you know to kind of prompt and create wireframes that um you know can become clickable prototypes. We've we haven't done that much work with it. We just played around with it. I think that's that's sort of something that a non- tech founder could use to to create some, you know, some screens, some user journeys, some process flows, some clickable prototypes and then, you know, use that as a base to design and build the the rest of the product. >> Oh, those are some very good examples. Uh just one other followup here to that even um so when dealing with founders and you know I've run into this over the years and kind of curious what your experience is when you have an idea and and you are like hey I want to solve this problem. Yes, you can just go out and try to look for that problem on the internet. Are there any focused approaches that you could offer our listeners to help them kind of narrow their focus on how to do product marketing to determine if their idea is a good for a mobile app in a slightly different way. So where we've seen a lot of success and and also just speaking to other, you know, dev houses and other tech founders, I think there's a lot more success when someone comes from a certain industry and they know that industry sort of inside and outside. They've been in the industry for many years and they've seen a niche uh or a niche, you know, a problem and they've seen it over and over again and it's not getting solved and then they they they create a solution around that as opposed to me going well I think that the restaurant industry has got this problem and it's my hypothesis and my theory and then now I need to go and validate it. I think that's quite difficult. I mean it's not it's not to say it's it's it's not possible but I think you have a lot more success where the founders are from that industry whereas they're kind of trying to solve problems for an industry that they they're not based in. I mean keen to hear your your takes on that and and your experiences on that. I don't know if you have any but yeah maybe it's contradictory to mine. That's actually kind of funny because uh I was working with a uh a founder visionary a couple years ago and that was one of the things he wanted to do. He's like, "Oh, I want to go build this restaurant POS system for restaurants." He had never owned a restaurant, never worked in a restaurant and really had no idea what the software was needed for. He just had this idea and he wanted to spend money and time building this and it was like time out. you know, it's like go do a little more market research on that and then other people I've worked with, like you said, that have been in the industry and have figured out, hey, this is a problem. How do I solve it? Uh, tend to do better. So, that was just kind of funny that you used a similar example of something I actually ran into. >> Out of interest, did he go ahead with that or not? >> Uh, no. Eventually, I finally talked them out of that. Uh, because it they were not going to be very successful with that. it it was more like a clouds in the sky idea and it's like you don't have enough money or time or resources and it's not going to go anywhere. >> Yeah. And that's where their ego comes in, right? Cuz they believe that they right and they want to, you know, they want to they they want to pursue it. And I think you save them a lot of money and pain right through talking them out of it. But Rob, from your side, do you have any kitty if you've got any examples of this or any experiences like this? Yeah, I tend to I guess they tend to fall into two categories that I've what I've experienced is there's the ones that are somebody that's an outsider that sees something and like you know it would be like in a restaurant and they're like oh I see this problem I can go solve this because you know I can get food to the table faster or whatever it happens to be. They they see something but they haven't really lived it. They're just like they have a problem. it's something that's a issue they have but they haven't really experienced from the inside and they it may be that there are solutions for that especially these days there's a lot of times that they'll say like oh there's got to be you know I'm going to go build this product and once you start looking you realize that product actually exists you know a dozen different ways because it's actually a common problem and people have solved it they just didn't know it because they're not part of that you know that industry they're not on the inside the ones that I that I find are far more successful I think like you do is that the ones that have been the problem comes out of being within that industry actually spending time and and realizing that you know it's a they've got a special problem or something like that that just doesn't hasn't been addressed or if it's been addressed it hasn't been addressed very well. Uh good example is a lot of times I've seen in the healthcare industry where there are there are applications to solutions that are sort of general purpose. they they solve for a lot of places, but they don't solve maybe for a specific uh type, like a specialist, like maybe a um like a podiatrist has something that's a little bit different or I know that there's there's a lot of people that think that health care and dental are the same thing, but dental records and all the stuff they track and how they do stuff is very different from, you know, other specialists. And of course, hospitals are very different from clinics. And so I find that it's yeah it's it's a lot of times I want to talk to them when I'm when I'm talking to somebody with an idea like that. It's like where did this come from? How did you how did you how did you come about the problem itself? How do you see that? How often have you seen it? Because it may be specific to them. It may be something that's like wow that's a horrible problem. And as you talk through it, you realize that they're the only person that ever is going to, you know, suffer with that problem or it's such a so niche that it's just like that's going to be tough for you to do. Especially if it's an it's a if it's an expensive solution, it's like all right, you know, if you're solving things for only a few people and those people aren't rich and aren't willing to spend a ton of money, then you, you know, you're probably not going to go very well with it. And uh I found that like that's this goes back to I love doing like proof of concepts and clickable demos and and very minimal MVPs and things like that to say like let's get this out and get it in front of people that aren't like your best friend or your family. They're like, "Oh, I love it. It's great." And get in front of people, particularly those that have like they've got skin in the game where it's like, "Hey, let's get something out there and see it. Will they pay some money for it? Would they, you know, what would you pay for this?" So you can start figuring out is this real or is it just you know a nice to have or something like that. I I love what you said earlier is like what happens does is there going to be some sort of pain if you take this if you give them this application or this solution and you take it away because I think that's um I think that's a really good marker is it's like okay that means that they you know they were uh there was some lack of there's some discomfort caused by that solution not being there. >> Yeah. It's essentially >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I do want to I want to sort of switch gears a little bit on this too. is that um because you do web and application and I'm I'm curious as what your uh your experience in doing uh webs web applications and and apps and where you like I guess the biggest struggle in particularly when you try to do a hybrid kind of thing where there's a there's a web solution and there's a a mobile particularly I mean sometimes mobile native then you just got completely separate code bases but I'm thinking more of the kinds where you're you're trying to do that hybrid approach and some of the issues particularly for de developers that they may want to you know keep an eye out for when you're trying to to solve for both of those platforms. >> Um yeah I I think it's [snorts] maybe I can answer this in a little bit of a different way. I I think you know with founders it's like they'll come to us and they'll say listen I want a mobile app and you're like well why do you want a mobile app? No, no, I love apps. My competitor's got an app. And then we're like, yeah, sure, okay, that's maybe a semi- good reason, but you know, the point is you want to get something out to market quickly. You want to get it, you know, this MVP. We spoke about this many times. And generally, web is easier and quicker to build for, right? So, it's, you know, it's it's nicer on the budget on the wallet. you can get to market quicker and you can, you know, everyone's got a browser on your mobile phone, on your tablet, on your, you know, your laptop or whatever, but not everyone wants to install an app, right? And then you've got you've got um you know, as we spoke about in the beginning, like SEO versus kind of marketing within app stores is a big thing as well. And you know you've got to do a lot of different things or extra things with mobile apps. You know if you're going to do the store submissions you know that takes a lot of time. Generally developing mobile apps you know if it's a hybrid mobile app compared to a web app you know the functionality might be very similar but it just it takes longer because of the nature of that development. You know you got to do a lot of compiling. you got to deploy to an emulator or to devices or test test flight and that takes time and that costs money and you know if you're just trying to prove product market fit you know does this product that I'm building solve a problem we generally say go web first and then if you're getting traction you know you can always go mobile app later and I'll give an example we built a big platform here in South Africa uh and this client's been speaking to us for many many years. So it's a web- based platform and he kept on saying like you know I want to do a mobile app want to do a mobile app but it's quite costly you know it's not cheap and it's there's a lot of things to consider and you know there's a lot of development behind the scenes and eventually his market his user base is asking him you know through social media through direct engagement like when you bring out a mobile app you know I want the mobile app and you know it's come up so many times now that the time is right to do it, right? So then that makes sense, you know, from a cost from a a traction from a testing the market transitionary point of view. The other thing that you know where you'd need a mobile app is where you need something specific on that mobile app, you know, so maybe you need something specific to the hardware, you know, um where you can't get that through a a um a web application or even a hybrid app. um that's less and less common now because even like hybrid apps are getting more and more access to the devices hardware. Um but yeah, so that that's another instance and then there might be certain things you need to integrate with like SDKs that you can only do that through native you know so that you only your only option is to go native your only option is to go mobile app based you can't build a web application based for that. Um, and then another thing that people need to think about is the costs of these app stores. You know, if you've got a subscriptionbased or inapp payments, these app stores can take 20 to 30% of those payments, which a lot of founders don't even know about. They go the mobile app route and then they find out the hard way that, hey, you're giving away a large margin of your income to the app stores. So, that's that's something to think about as well. Um, yeah. So, I've answered your question in a little bit of a roundabout way, but I think it's quite an important consideration, you know, when you look at web verse mobile. Now, when you do a um when you have something that's that's web, and now you're you come back, you say, "All right, we're going to do a a mobile application." do you or I guess more what are maybe what are your thoughts on the web application being treated or the mobile application being treated almost like a second or a brand new application so that you're not because there's some I'm definitely in the situations where they want to just like make the app the mobile app look like the web but you know we know that once you get there real estate's different all the kinds of other stuff on the screen that makes it very difficult a lot of times to try to just you know shrink the web down to even with responsive design there's It tends to be I think there there can be an argument definitely for just design the the mobile application especially the user interface the UX from ground up for mobile as opposed to trying to to pick it up from web and what are your thoughts on that? >> Yeah, I agree with you. I think that you know trying to wrap a mobile version of the of the website or a responsive web-based version into a mobile app I don't think it it works so well. I think, you know, you can even get penalized for that. Um, and I think that mobile apps have got a different look and feel. They've got different usability. You know, you typically got that bar at the bottom where you've got all your different buttons, but a mobile responsive website doesn't doesn't have that sort of usability look and feel. So, yeah, I agree. I think it should be its own project. I think it should be handled as its own code base but also with its own interface and how users engage with it and um and you got things like push notifications which work really well on mobile apps which you know you do get push on web but it's kind of very limited and it's not yeah it's it's it's not really that well used. So I think again there that ties in with that whole usability of the of the mobile app. So, kind of a final question kind of flowing with all of that. Um, what are some of the, uh, hybrid tools you like to use to build your web applications? There's so many out there. What are kind of your favorite flavors? >> Yeah. So, excuse [clears throat] me. Um, we've done quite a bit of uh, development in Ioni and Cordova, you know, that works nicely with Angular. There's Flutter as well. We built a few apps in Flutter. um you know, React Native, we we've worked with one or two apps in that, but yeah, that that's about it. You know, we don't want to spread ourselves too wide. Um and I think that they're all they're all good tools. They've all got benefits. They've all got slight disadvantages. So, you know, there's not really one that we are preferencing over the others. Um yeah, but there are others that we don't even use that people are using that, you know, are are good as well. Well, I want to we have once again hour has flown right by our time that we're hanging out here with you. So, u definitely want to appreciate uh tell you I appreciate you you hanging out and giving us some uh some really cool stuff from uh uh all the way on the other side of the world practically from us right now. But, uh anybody else that's listening, I'm sure a lot of them are like, "Wow, this sounds like a great company." you guys are maybe they're sitting there going, "Hey, I've got some app ideas or some web ideas that I would love to have somebody uh work on. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you?" >> Yeah, they can come to our website. So, www.elemental.agy or they can look me up on LinkedIn. Um, yeah, that simple as that. >> Excellent. So, we will make sure we get uh links in the show notes for anybody that is interested. And uh we will go ahead and and wrap this one up. And uh thank you for for hanging out with us and uh sort of wandering through the the the desert or the forest or however it is, all of the snaggles of of web and application development and and tackling some of these latest questions and uh you know where where we think things are going. >> Thanks. Thanks, Rob, for the invite. It [clears throat] was my pleasure. I I enjoyed I think we tackled quite a lot of subjects in a really short period of time, but yeah, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you. >> Definitely very much so. It's one of those that we have uh we have more than uh you know filled everybody's time I think well with a with a content heavy contentrich uh hour couple episodes now of time. So thank you so much those you guys are listening. Go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time. Now we do a um we have this video and audio and so for the video side of it we do like a a bonus section uh a lot of time and what would be I think the best question we do for this is like what would be your um like one or two items of advice for somebody that is going to jump into this let's go with this one is trying to decide like should I do a web app or a mobile application like where should they start to figure out which one or whether they can, you know, how to solve that problem if they're a non-technical founder. >> Generally, we always say go web first. I think it's cheaper, it's easier to build, it's quicker to market, it's less costly. Um however if they if all their competitors have got mobile apps and the user expects a mobile app so say for example I don't know a property portal you know and and all the property portals have got mobile apps and you come with a web app you know the users are pretty much going to want a mobile app I think then you got to go mobile or if you need certain capabilities you know as I mentioned earlier from the the hardware the device you know then I think going mobile app makes sense. But I think going web is yeah easier, quick, quicker, cheaper. Get it out there, test it, and you can always evolve your product to a mobile app down the line. So good. I happen to Yeah, I agree very much. There's been a lot of I've had a lot of those conversations with founders where it's uh they say, "Oh, they start with I want a I want a mobile app." And then we start talking about it and it's like there's really no there's really no business, you know, need for the the app. And then when you start talking about the price differences and the and the really the time frames because even if you everything else equal, you're probably going to have to tack on a lot of times, you know, at least two to four weeks just to get something into the the stores between all of the like the, you know, getting it out there, getting all that extra content out there, getting it approved. And and like you said, like just the test the test cycles and that the debugging cycles just tend to be a lot slower because you've got to compile and push stuff out versus web apps can a lot of times you can turn that sucker those suckers around almost instantly. You can, you know, make some changes, go test it, fix it, and boom, you're on to the next one. >> Yeah, exactly. Refresh the browser [laughter] and then your changes are there. >> That's the only problem. Sometimes you got to make sure you got to clear the cache. But that's about the hardest part about it. Uh, exactly. Great. >> All right. >> Well, thank you so much for hanging out with us. This has been great. Uh, really enjoyed the conversation and, uh, we will get you, uh, this will come out towards the end of January, probably closer more like, uh, early February when this goes out. We'll get you links to these and feel free to share them out wherever you would like. >> And, um, I guess, yeah, if nothing else, have a good, uh, merry Christmas, happy new year, and uh, we will reach out to you again, talk to you again in the in the new year. >> Yeah. Perfect. Thanks a lot. I will I'll definitely syndicate it to my uh my LinkedIn. Our company will also share it as well. And then um it'll be great if we can rate ourselves on the Pod Match platform as well. Yeah. >> Oh, definitely. >> Give you guys a really good rating. I really enjoyed it. So, thanks for your time again. All right. >> All right. Thanks a lot. Have a good one. Enjoy your evening. You >> too. Thanks, guys. Okay. Bye-bye. >> Take care. >> [music]
Transcript Segments
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Hello and welcome back. We are
continuing our season of Building Better
Foundations. This is the Building Better
Developers podcast, also known as
Developur. We are in part two of an
interview. Uh we're going to be speaking
with Angelo again here in a few moments.
But first, I'm going to introduce myself
and let somebody else introduce
themselves. Little uh cliffhanger there
for you. My name is Rob Broadhead. Hi,
one of the founders of developer, also
the founder of RB Consulting, where we
help you sift through your technology
junk drawer and build a roadmap for
success, leveraging technology and
making it work for you instead of uh
maybe even against you. Good things and
bad things. A good thing would be
I have like
the tools that are out there to do our
work are phenomenal these days. uh the
things that like it's funny how when I
would think back to when I was starting
out my career and how slow and ponderous
some of the compilers and things were
and how long it took to deal with them
and it's like you know you could go like
have a whole meal before you got back
and your code was actually compiled so
you could test your latest changes
versus now
you can test entire applications in a
day basically with some of the tools
that are out there. So loving that. Uh
the downside of bad things is like there
are just not enough hours in the day
still because with the ability to do
more, there is more that I want to do.
And it just seems like my the desire to
do more is constantly outpacing the
ability to get some stuff done. But
right now, I'm going to pause. I'm going
to go get some stuff done while Michael
introduces himself.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malage.
One of the co-founders of Developer. I'm
also the founder of Envision QA where we
create and test custom software that
solves your problems. Uh good thing, bad
thing. Uh good thing, um similar to Rob,
there's so much out there helping us uh
improve on our jobs and businesses. Uh
when we're recording this, it's nearing
the end of the year. There's some
actually some new updates to some of the
versions of Java Spring Boot that just
got released and I'm going to be digging
into those. Uh downside similar to Rob,
the more these tools speed things up,
the more we want to do. And we still
just run out of time to get stuff done.
>> Yeah, life is uh it just the more the
more things change, the more they stay
the same. The more it's just like, yep,
I still just don't have enough time to
get the crap done. I just whenever we
get we're more productive, but now we
just put more on our plate to get done.
But right now, we are going to take a
few things off of our plate. mostly the
stepping into the next portion of this
interview and here we go back to our
conversation with Angelo.
Um I do want to like I guess shift a
little because you've been doing this
for you know quite a while. you've been
doing development and now even though
you've gotten out of it. Um, how do you
see like especially cuz now you've been
through I think a couple of uh you know
the gamechanging moments of things that
have like apps have come out since you
started and you know before that it was
you know there's the web was it's what
it was and then you had the applications
and you've had you know now the latest
is obviously AI has become a a big part
of development uh but even you go back a
few years and and the
uh code generators basically came back.
So a lot of ids, a lot of tools were
already even before AI was kicking in.
We're doing a lot of that generation. So
how have you how do you see especially
like I guess this latest wave of you
know the latest silver bullet of AI. How
do you see that and how do you see it
impacting your your development teams
and and moving forward?
I
>> think I think it's it's helpful. I think
that it can make developers a lot more
efficient, but it's also a very powerful
tool that if you're not an experienced
developer, it can actually cause more
harm than good. Um, [gasps]
yeah, I posted we we've got like a a a
few chat groups on our with our business
and then someone sent me a a a little
meme or something like that where I
think it was Cursor where Cursor by
accident dropped, you know, this uh Vibe
Coders database and and for those of you
who don't know what drop means, it
basically deleted the whole database and
recreated it. And he asked Cursa like,
"Did you just like delete my database?"
And Chris was like, "Yes, I'm sorry I
had to delete it because of the database
changes, but I'm sorry. I what I should
have done is I should have asked you,
>> do you want me to drop the database and
recreate it?" And uh so it's it's it's
powerful. Like it's they really are
powerful these tools, but you really
need to kind of know what you're doing.
Um, but it can definitely make you more
efficient and it's, you know, it learns
your coding style and it can, you know,
obviously auto completion as you
mentioned has been in the IDEs for for a
long time, but I think it's like even
more powerful now like with cursor and
other tools where it can do multiple
auto completions in multiple files that
aren't even open. Um, but that's also
where the danger can come in because you
know, you kind of you need to know what
it's doing. Um,
yeah. So, I think it's it's a tool. You
got to use it. You got to embrace it,
but you also got to be wary of it. Um,
where it's going to go in the future,
I'm not I'm not exactly sure. You know,
is it going to replace developers
entirely? Possibly. But I think there's
a lot of still a lot of um value and
experience in terms of dealing with
people what their ideas are and sort of
thinking and reading between the lines
in terms of okay this is actually what
they need and this is how we need to
build it and this is what we need to
consider for the future based on
previous experience. So there's still
that sort of human element of
translating an idea into code and into a
vision but also making it scalable and
um robust and future proof. So I think
that's where there's the seniority plays
a big role and experience but maybe the
sort of simpler tasks
um you know will will sort of be maybe a
little bit more automated with with AI
and and with code generation.
So along with the lines of AI these days
and like you said having like senior
developers and that um and leaning on
the developers to help you build the
applications from a founders's
perspective. However being a founder if
you aren't really technically inclined
how do you kind of structure that? How
do you think through that uh to avoid
wasting time, wasting money and kind of
like we started early on building things
that don't scale that have too many
features in it?
>> It's a good question. I think it's
almost like building a house, right? You
don't just start putting in a foundation
and start putting up walls and windows
and things like that. You actually start
with an architect. So I think planning
is still really really important. You
know thinking about your product,
scoping it out properly, defining it
from a technical specification point of
view, thinking about the different
scenarios, the different user journeys,
the different exceptions
and I think that is a very very good
step but I think it's also overlooked
and I think people just want to build
quickly but then you kind of rush stuff
and you haven't thought about you know
knock on effects. So I I think that the
the planning you know scoping
specifying phase is really really
important and um because it's not so
tangible it's often undervalued but I
think that is key to the success of a
project and not only in the initial MVP
it's the key to the scal the scaling you
know scalability which I spoke about
earlier in terms of scalability in terms
of features and in terms of data so
thinking about that up front you you
know what is it going to look like in a
few years time? Is it going to are we
going to have like multiple payment
gateways, multiple payment options? Are
we going to have multiple languages? Are
we going to have a loyalty system? Is it
going to be gamification?
Great. If if those are sort of things
that we need to consider, let's make
provision for them now. And then what
does the data look like? You know, is it
going to be like millions and millions
of records and at what point does the
database slow down? At what point do we
need to kind of archive data? How are we
going to handle that? So again, that
happens. you know, ideally upfront as a
best practice, but in in you know,
often, you know, things need to get to
market quickly and that step is is
skipped by founders or they just don't
even know to do that. You know, they
just think you need to write the code.
You know, they don't even know to plan
it. And it's almost like you need a a
systems analyst or a architect to kind
of go, let's go to the drawing board
first before, you know, let's write
code. Cuz if you speak to a developer,
they're probably just going to start
writing code. they like that, you know,
maybe senior ones will plan it a lot
better.
[sighs and gasps]
>> So, expanding on that just a little bit,
so from a founders's perspective, I I
believe earlier you mentioned lovable.
Um, what are some tools that a founder
could use to help them wireframe besides
just, you know, writing it out on paper,
putting it on, you know, a PowerPoint,
something like that. What are some good
tools that they could use to kind of
build their idea or kind of wireframe
their idea and get like clickable demos
without having to really write code?
>> Yeah. So,
obviously you got things like Figma, but
you need to be a you've got to need some
design skills for that. I think there's
a a platform called Reloom. I speak
under correction. um which basically uh
allows you to you know to kind of prompt
and create wireframes that um you know
can become clickable prototypes. We've
we haven't done that much work with it.
We just played around with it. I think
that's that's sort of something that a
non- tech founder could use to to create
some, you know, some screens, some user
journeys, some process flows, some
clickable prototypes and then, you know,
use that as a base to design and build
the the rest of the product.
>> Oh, those are some very good examples.
Uh just one other followup here to that
even um
so when dealing with founders and you
know I've run into this over the years
and kind of curious what your experience
is when you have an idea and and you are
like hey I want to solve this problem.
Yes, you can just go out and try to look
for that problem on the internet. Are
there any focused approaches that you
could offer our listeners to help them
kind of narrow their focus on how to do
product marketing to determine if their
idea is a good for a mobile app
in a slightly different way. So where
we've seen a lot of success and and also
just speaking to other, you know, dev
houses and other tech founders, I think
there's a lot more success when someone
comes from a certain industry and they
know that industry sort of inside and
outside. They've been in the industry
for many years and they've seen a niche
uh or a niche, you know, a problem and
they've seen it over and over again and
it's not getting solved and then they
they they create a solution around that
as opposed to me going well I think that
the restaurant industry has got this
problem and it's my hypothesis and my
theory and then now I need to go and
validate it. I think that's quite
difficult. I mean it's not it's not to
say it's it's it's not possible but I
think you have a lot more success where
the founders are from that industry
whereas they're kind of trying to solve
problems for an industry that they
they're not based in. I mean keen to
hear your your takes on that and and
your experiences on that. I don't know
if you have any but yeah maybe it's
contradictory to mine.
That's actually kind of funny because uh
I was working with a uh a founder
visionary a couple years ago and that
was one of the things he wanted to do.
He's like, "Oh, I want to go build this
restaurant POS system for restaurants."
He had never owned a restaurant, never
worked in a restaurant and really had no
idea what the software was needed for.
He just had this idea and he wanted to
spend money and time building this and
it was like time out. you know, it's
like go do a little more market research
on that and then other people I've
worked with, like you said, that have
been in the industry and have figured
out, hey, this is a problem. How do I
solve it? Uh, tend to do better. So,
that was just kind of funny that you
used a similar example of something I
actually ran into.
>> Out of interest, did he go ahead with
that or not?
>> Uh, no. Eventually, I finally talked
them out of that. Uh, because it they
were not going to be very successful
with that. it it was more like a clouds
in the sky idea and it's like you don't
have enough money or time or resources
and it's not going to go anywhere.
>> Yeah. And that's where their ego comes
in, right? Cuz they believe that they
right and they want to, you know, they
want to they they want to pursue it. And
I think you save them a lot of money and
pain right through talking them out of
it. But Rob, from your side, do you have
any kitty if you've got any examples of
this or any experiences like this? Yeah,
I tend to I guess they tend to fall into
two categories that I've what I've
experienced is there's the ones that are
somebody that's an outsider that sees
something and like you know it would be
like in a restaurant and they're like oh
I see this problem I can go solve this
because you know I can get food to the
table faster or whatever it happens to
be. They they see something but they
haven't really lived it. They're just
like they have a problem. it's something
that's a issue they have but they
haven't really experienced from the
inside and they it may be that there are
solutions for that especially these days
there's a lot of times that they'll say
like oh there's got to be you know I'm
going to go build this product and once
you start looking you realize that
product actually exists you know a dozen
different ways because it's actually a
common problem and people have solved it
they just didn't know it because they're
not part of that you know that industry
they're not on the inside the ones that
I that I find are far more successful I
think like you do is that the ones that
have been the problem comes out of being
within that industry actually spending
time and and realizing that you know
it's a they've got a special problem or
something like that that just doesn't
hasn't been addressed or if it's been
addressed it hasn't been addressed very
well. Uh good example is a lot of times
I've seen in the healthcare industry
where there are there are applications
to solutions that are sort of general
purpose. they they solve for a lot of
places, but they don't solve maybe for a
specific
uh type, like a specialist, like maybe a
um like a podiatrist has something
that's a little bit different or I know
that there's there's a lot of people
that think that health care and dental
are the same thing, but dental records
and all the stuff they track and how
they do stuff is very different from,
you know, other specialists. And of
course, hospitals are very different
from clinics. And so I find that it's
yeah it's it's a lot of times I want to
talk to them when I'm when I'm talking
to somebody with an idea like that. It's
like where did this come from? How did
you how did you how did you come about
the problem itself? How do you see that?
How often have you seen it? Because it
may be specific to them. It may be
something that's like wow that's a
horrible problem. And as you talk
through it, you realize that they're the
only person that ever is going to, you
know, suffer with that problem or it's
such a so niche that it's just like
that's going to be tough for you to do.
Especially if it's an it's a if it's an
expensive solution, it's like all right,
you know, if you're solving things for
only a few people and those people
aren't rich and aren't willing to spend
a ton of money, then you, you know,
you're probably not going to go very
well with it. And uh I found that like
that's this goes back to I love doing
like proof of concepts and clickable
demos and and very minimal MVPs and
things like that to say like let's get
this out and get it in front of people
that aren't like your best friend or
your family. They're like, "Oh, I love
it. It's great." And get in front of
people, particularly those that have
like they've got skin in the game where
it's like, "Hey, let's get something out
there and see it. Will they pay some
money for it? Would they, you know, what
would you pay for this?" So you can
start figuring out is this real or is it
just you know a nice to have or
something like that. I I love what you
said earlier is like what happens does
is there going to be some sort of pain
if you take this if you give them this
application or this solution and you
take it away because I think that's um I
think that's a really good marker is
it's like okay that means that they you
know they were uh there was some lack of
there's some discomfort caused by that
solution not being there.
>> Yeah. It's essentially
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> I do want to I want to sort of switch
gears a little bit on this too. is that
um because you do web and application
and I'm I'm curious as what your uh your
experience in doing uh webs web
applications and and apps and where you
like I guess the biggest struggle in
particularly when you try to do a hybrid
kind of thing where there's a there's a
web solution and there's a a mobile
particularly I mean sometimes mobile
native then you just got completely
separate code bases but I'm thinking
more of the kinds where you're you're
trying to do that hybrid approach and
some of the issues particularly for de
developers that they may want to you
know keep an eye out for when you're
trying to to solve for both of those
platforms.
>> Um
yeah I I think it's
[snorts] maybe I can answer this in a
little bit of a different way. I I think
you know with founders it's like they'll
come to us and they'll say listen I want
a mobile app and you're like well why do
you want a mobile app? No, no, I love
apps. My competitor's got an app. And
then we're like, yeah, sure, okay,
that's maybe a semi- good reason, but
you know, the point is you want to get
something out to market quickly. You
want to get it, you know, this MVP. We
spoke about this many times. And
generally, web is easier and quicker to
build for, right? So, it's, you know,
it's it's nicer on the budget on the
wallet. you can get to market quicker
and
you can, you know, everyone's got a
browser on your mobile phone, on your
tablet, on your, you know, your laptop
or whatever, but not everyone wants to
install an app, right? And then you've
got
you've got um you know, as we spoke
about in the beginning, like SEO versus
kind of marketing within app stores is a
big thing as well. And you know you've
got to do a lot of different things or
extra things with mobile apps. You know
if you're going to do the store
submissions you know that takes a lot of
time. Generally developing mobile apps
you know if it's a hybrid mobile app
compared to a web app you know the
functionality might be very similar but
it just it takes longer because of the
nature of that development. You know you
got to do a lot of compiling. you got to
deploy to an emulator or to devices or
test test flight and that takes time and
that costs money and you know if you're
just trying to prove product market fit
you know does this product that I'm
building solve a problem we generally
say go web first and then if you're
getting traction you know you can always
go mobile app later and I'll give an
example we built a big platform here in
South Africa uh and this client's been
speaking to us for many many years. So
it's a web- based platform and he kept
on saying like you know I want to do a
mobile app want to do a mobile app but
it's quite costly you know it's not
cheap and it's there's a lot of things
to consider and you know there's a lot
of development behind the scenes
and eventually his market his user base
is asking him you know through social
media through direct engagement like
when you bring out a mobile app you know
I want the mobile app and you know it's
come up so many times now that the time
is right to do it, right? So then that
makes sense, you know, from a cost from
a a traction from a testing the market
transitionary point of view. The other
thing that you know where you'd need a
mobile app is where you need something
specific on that mobile app, you know,
so maybe you need something specific to
the hardware, you know, um where you
can't get that through a a um a web
application or even a hybrid app. um
that's less and less common now because
even like hybrid apps are getting more
and more access to the devices hardware.
Um but yeah, so that that's another
instance and then there might be certain
things you need to integrate with like
SDKs that you can only do that through
native you know so that you only your
only option is to go native your only
option is to go mobile app based you
can't build a web application based for
that. Um, and then another thing that
people need to think about is the costs
of these app stores. You know, if you've
got a subscriptionbased or inapp
payments, these app stores can take 20
to 30% of those payments, which a lot of
founders don't even know about. They go
the mobile app route and then they find
out the hard way that, hey, you're
giving away a large margin of your
income to the app stores. So, that's
that's something to think about as well.
Um, yeah. So, I've answered your
question in a little bit of a roundabout
way, but I think it's quite an important
consideration, you know, when you look
at web verse mobile.
Now, when you do a um when you have
something that's that's web, and now
you're you come back, you say, "All
right, we're going to do a a mobile
application." do you or I guess more
what are maybe what are your thoughts on
the web application being treated or the
mobile application being treated almost
like a second or a brand new application
so that you're not because there's some
I'm definitely in the situations where
they want to just like make the app the
mobile app look like the web but you
know we know that once you get there
real estate's different all the kinds of
other stuff on the screen that makes it
very difficult a lot of times to try to
just you know shrink the web down to
even with responsive design there's
It tends to be I think there there can
be an argument definitely for just
design the the mobile application
especially the user interface the UX
from ground up for mobile as opposed to
trying to to pick it up from web and
what are your thoughts on that?
>> Yeah, I agree with you. I think that you
know trying to wrap a mobile version of
the of the website or a responsive
web-based version into a mobile app I
don't think it it works so well. I
think, you know, you can even get
penalized for that. Um, and I think that
mobile apps have got a different look
and feel. They've got different
usability. You know, you typically got
that bar at the bottom where you've got
all your different buttons, but a mobile
responsive website doesn't doesn't have
that sort of usability look and feel.
So, yeah, I agree. I think it should be
its own project. I think it should be
handled as its own code base but also
with its own interface and how users
engage with it and um and you got things
like push notifications which work
really well on mobile apps which you
know you do get push on web but it's
kind of very limited and it's not yeah
it's it's it's not really that well
used. So I think again there that ties
in with that whole usability of the of
the mobile app.
So, kind of a final question kind of
flowing with all of that. Um,
what are some of the, uh, hybrid tools
you like to use to build your web
applications? There's so many out there.
What are kind of your favorite flavors?
>> Yeah. So, excuse [clears throat] me. Um,
we've done quite a bit of uh,
development in Ioni and Cordova, you
know, that works nicely with Angular.
There's Flutter as well. We built a few
apps in Flutter. um you know, React
Native, we we've worked with one or two
apps in that, but yeah, that that's
about it. You know, we don't want to
spread ourselves too wide. Um and I
think that they're all they're all good
tools. They've all got benefits. They've
all got slight disadvantages. So, you
know, there's not really one that we are
preferencing over the others. Um yeah,
but there are others that we don't even
use that people are using that, you
know, are are good as well.
Well, I want to we have once again hour
has flown right by our time that we're
hanging out here with you. So, u
definitely want to appreciate uh tell
you I appreciate you you hanging out and
giving us some uh some really cool stuff
from uh uh all the way on the other side
of the world practically from us right
now. But, uh anybody else that's
listening, I'm sure a lot of them are
like, "Wow, this sounds like a great
company." you guys are maybe they're
sitting there going, "Hey, I've got some
app ideas or some web ideas that I would
love to have somebody uh work on. What's
the best way for them to get a hold of
you?"
>> Yeah, they can come to our website. So,
www.elemental.agy
or they can look me up on LinkedIn. Um,
yeah, that simple as that.
>> Excellent. So, we will make sure we get
uh links in the show notes for anybody
that is interested. And uh we will go
ahead and and wrap this one up. And uh
thank you for for hanging out with us
and uh sort of wandering through the the
the desert or the forest or however it
is, all of the snaggles of of web and
application development and and tackling
some of these latest questions and uh
you know where where we think things are
going.
>> Thanks. Thanks, Rob, for the invite. It
[clears throat] was my pleasure. I I
enjoyed I think we tackled quite a lot
of subjects in a really short period of
time, but yeah, it's been a real
pleasure. Thank you.
>> Definitely very much so. It's one of
those that we have uh we have more than
uh you know filled everybody's time I
think well with a with a content heavy
contentrich uh hour couple episodes now
of time. So thank you so much those you
guys are listening. Go out there and
have yourself a great day a great week
and we will talk to you next time.
Now we do a um we have this video and
audio and so for the video side of it we
do like a a bonus section uh a lot of
time and what would be I think the best
question we do for this is like what
would be your um like one or two items
of advice for somebody that is going to
jump into this let's go with this one is
trying to decide like should I do a web
app or a mobile application like where
should they start to figure out which
one or whether they can, you know, how
to solve that problem if they're a
non-technical founder.
>> Generally, we always say go web first. I
think it's cheaper, it's easier to
build, it's quicker to market, it's less
costly. Um however if they if all their
competitors have got mobile apps and the
user expects a mobile app so say for
example I don't know a property portal
you know and and all the property
portals have got mobile apps and you
come with a web app you know the users
are pretty much going to want a mobile
app I think then you got to go mobile or
if you need certain capabilities you
know as I mentioned earlier from the the
hardware the device you know then I
think going mobile app makes sense. But
I think going web is yeah easier, quick,
quicker, cheaper. Get it out there, test
it, and you can always evolve your
product to a mobile app down the line.
So good. I happen to Yeah, I agree very
much. There's been a lot of I've had a
lot of those conversations with founders
where it's uh they say, "Oh, they start
with I want a I want a mobile app." And
then we start talking about it and it's
like there's really no there's really no
business, you know, need for the the
app. And then when you start talking
about the price differences and the and
the really the time frames because even
if you everything else equal, you're
probably going to have to tack on a lot
of times, you know, at least two to four
weeks just to get something into the the
stores between all of the like the, you
know, getting it out there, getting all
that extra content out there, getting it
approved. And and like you said, like
just the test the test cycles and that
the debugging cycles just tend to be a
lot slower because you've got to compile
and push stuff out versus web apps can a
lot of times you can turn that sucker
those suckers around almost instantly.
You can, you know, make some changes, go
test it, fix it, and boom, you're on to
the next one.
>> Yeah, exactly. Refresh the browser
[laughter] and then your changes are
there.
>> That's the only problem. Sometimes you
got to make sure you got to clear the
cache. But that's about the hardest part
about it. Uh, exactly. Great.
>> All right.
>> Well, thank you so much for hanging out
with us. This has been great. Uh, really
enjoyed the conversation and, uh, we
will get you, uh, this will come out
towards the end of January, probably
closer more like, uh, early February
when this goes out. We'll get you links
to these and feel free to share them out
wherever you would like.
>> And, um, I guess, yeah, if nothing else,
have a good, uh, merry Christmas, happy
new year, and uh, we will reach out to
you again, talk to you again in the in
the new year.
>> Yeah. Perfect. Thanks a lot. I will I'll
definitely syndicate it to my uh my
LinkedIn. Our company will also share it
as well. And then um it'll be great if
we can rate ourselves on the Pod Match
platform as well. Yeah.
>> Oh, definitely.
>> Give you guys a really good rating. I
really enjoyed it. So, thanks for your
time again. All right.
>> All right. Thanks a lot. Have a good
one. Enjoy your evening. You
>> too. Thanks, guys. Okay. Bye-bye.
>> Take care.
>> [music]