This is a well put way to encourage engineers to think in terms of the business or social context of their inventions. I usually find that trying to work through a business model canvas or lean canvas helps point out which parts of the founder's thought process are missing or buggy. Takes 15 minutes to do it. Usually it's the customer or value proposition at the earliest stage, channel or pricing once the product is tech I ally validated.
Actually, I'd say: Build an audience, not a business.
It worked for Twitter.
Playing devil's advocate, my advice would be: build an app first, then a business. It's already hard enough to build an app that gets traction. Do the small stuff first, then worry about the bigger challenge later. You don't have a business without a good product (even a "minor" one that does 1 only single thing well)
I think the OP is talking about focusing in the big picture and not just throwing your app into the app store, without caring for marketing, nurturing an community, etc. At least, that is my impression.
An app is just a way for your business to be realized. You can build as many apps as you want if you aren't actually solving anything (unless you are in consumer space then things change drastically) you are working on the wrong things.
I have no idea how half my apps in 2010 got approved. it was really nice to see an app that i built in 1 week, bring in $1-3~ a day for a solid year. Then I spammed the crap out of that formula.
My very HN username is based around this idea of building a simple app and throwing it on the App Store and making 10 dollars per day, rinse and repeat..
Can you provide a link to the apps in question? Most of my free apps don't get past 7 downloads total...
Does that still work now?
Eh I haven't really tried in about 5~ years. I wanted to focus on more high quality content. It definitely died down near the tail-end of me experimenting with low-quality high-volume apps.
I disliked the part where the author plugged their own app lol. Eveything these days is an ad.
Easier said than done, but a rather valid trope that needs to be repeated every once and a while.