I’m privileged that my own start-up has seen success so far. I co-founded Prequel, an app that reached the milestone of 100 million users in 2022. In just four years we’ve gone from two individuals writing business plans in a cafe in New York City’s Bryant Park, to a team of over 200 talented international staff and a healthy profit.

One of the most interesting parts of our story is that we reached this point without relying on external investment. We’re not the only app with an audience of this size, and plenty are far bigger, but in most cases they have spent a fortune to build up a user base, while we’ve relied almost entirely on relatively modest personal investment, with growth coming from our product being loved by customers, after making careful choices about the right way to promote it, and who we partnered with.

That’s why I believe that a great business idea is all you really need. It sounds old-fashioned, but if your customers want whatever you have to offer them, they will come - as long as you also ensure the execution of your plan is done well.

Timing is everything

But let’s be honest. All businesses need a little luck as well. History’s best and most successful ideas were also in the right place at the right time. In software, a key consideration is always the current generation of hardware. It never makes sense to write software that only offers a good experience on the most expensive devices that few people can afford.

Prequel is an app that offers a wide selection of photo and video editing tools for smartphones. Some of the tools are computationally demanding, using AI to make dramatic changes to images. Prequel simply wouldn’t have been possible on the first generation of iPhones, but for many years now, mobile processors have become so powerful that even older, less expensive phones are quite capable. You can guarantee that these devices are what the vast majority of your potential customers will inevitably be using.

Knowing you have a brilliant business idea depends on understanding your market. With Prequel, we could see attitudes changing towards media, especially imagery. Younger people don’t remember the limitations of film cameras, dial-up internet or analogue TV. Instead, every experience is now seen through a smartphone lens, a potential image to be shared on social media. If you’re a parent, the domination of social media in young people’s lives is hardly news to you.

What also helped for us is having a genuine passion for artistic content. If you’re creating something you hope your customers will love, it’s important that you do too.

I love music and art, and have tried to integrate these creative passions into our company culture. Prequel is at the point where art meets technology - an area widely known as meta art, with AI techniques to generate imagery combined together with human editing skills. It’s a very new field and one where there are plenty of opportunities for great ideas.

I’ve tried to build a reliable, trustworthy team that shares the same enthusiasm. When hiring, a demonstrable passion for what you’re trying to achieve goes a long way to determining whether someone is the right fit for your organisation.

And that matters greatly for a start-up. By definition, you’re not like older, more established organisations. You’re trying out things that aren’t proven yet, you can fail fast and think differently, explore new ideas and tread new ground. Your teams need that same pioneering spirit.

Don’t ignore Gen-Z

Gen-Z quickly moves on to new ideas and is harder to impress, which is why so many brands struggle to reach this audience. In tech, today’s exciting development is often taken for granted tomorrow.

By far, the biggest group of Prequel’s paying customers are aged under 25, so we can confidently say our product has had some success reaching young people.

The right place and time for us has been the mainstream proliferation of powerful but affordable handsets that we know can handle our software, cameras that can capture great audio and video, and the explosive demand for personalised content to share on social media.

Reacting to the competition seldom works, but pro-actively evolving your product to meet the demands of tomorrow is a different thing. Your ideas shouldn’t be static, but as Steve Jobs once said, you should skate to where the puck is going.

Gen-Z is a growing demographic, making up 20% of the US population[1] in 2021, but this figure doesn’t accurately reflect the influence of this age group. Young people have always had great spending power (including via parents) and ability to set tastes and trends.

Reaching this group depends on both knowing and seeing how norms are shifting, not just through perception of technology but society too. You might find this equally applies your staff as well as your customers. Research has shown changing attitudes among young people towards corporate honest and integrity, gender and diversity, careers, finances, media and the environment. Taking these changing opinions into consideration at the earliest point in a business plan can only help later.

If I could summarise the reasons for our start-up success, I’d argue it’s a combination of all the above. The advance of technology always makes new things possible, allowing for new kinds of products to address changing demands among consumers.

And right now, demands are definitely changing, Being on top of that change and able to meet those demands is the first and biggest step on the path to success.