App Development for Startups

Which funding stage fits which kind of build

Tepia has built for founders at every stage and the right engagement differs by where you are.

• Pre seed or bootstrapped. A clickable prototype from Tepia’s Design phase (questionnaire, moodboards, wireframes, sample designs) is often enough to close angels and test demand.
• You have capital, a thesis and 6 to 12 months to show traction. Tepia’s goal is a product in the store with retention instrumentation so your next round is argued with data.
• Tepia’s modernization work applies here.

Tepia does not accept equity as payment. That keeps the relationship simple, keeps your cap table clean and means Tepia’s incentive is the product working, not a future exit.

Why retention is the metric Tepia designs for

Most startup apps fail after launch rather than before it. Industry analysts consistently report that a large majority of app installs are abandoned within the first month. Tepia’s positioning, apps engineered for retention, comes from that reality: the job is not to ship, it is to be opened again on day 7 and day 30.

In practice that means Tepia designs onboarding to reach the first moment of value in under two minutes, wires analytics events for activation and return visits before the first Beta, and reviews that data with you during Support. Tepia clients’ apps average 4.5 stars on the App Store and Google Play, which is partly a design outcome and partly the result of fixing the bugs real users find quickly.

The Work App, a mental wellness product Tepia built for iOS and Android, is a useful example: habit loops, reminders and content pacing were designed together rather than added after launch.

How Tepia approaches startup app development

Tepia’s six phase process is the same for a founder as for an enterprise client, but the pacing is tighter and the scope discipline is stricter.

1. Discovery (typically 1 to 3 months, often 4 to 6 weeks for a startup). System investigation, interviews with your target users and a review of any third party services you depend on. You receive an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories that become the build contract.
2. Design. Design questionnaire, moodboards, a style guide, detailed wireframes and sample designs. Many founders use the sample designs in their pitch deck.
3. Development and Testing (typically 2 to 6 months). Alpha and Beta schedules with written test plans: functional, user acceptance and non functional. Tepia runs TestFlight and Google Play internal tracks with your early users.
4. Training. Short, hands on sessions so your team can run the admin tools and support users without calling an engineer.
5. Launch (about 1 month). Store submission, review compliance, data migration if you have an existing waitlist, and Tepia support reps during rollout.

A Tepia project manager runs the schedule and is your single point of contact, with design and engineering leadership based in the US and engineers working overlapping US hours.

How to choose between Tepia, a freelancer and a no code tool

Tepia is not the cheapest way to get a first version and will say so. The tradeoff is that what you build usually has to be thrown away once real users arrive, and a single freelancer is a single point of failure when they take another contract.

Tepia is the better choice when you have capital and a deadline, when the product has to pass App Store review and handle payments correctly the first time, when investors will look at the codebase, or when you want a team that stays after launch. See Tepia’s comparison of an agency versus a freelancer and low code versus custom development for the details.

Participant Media’s Director of IT put it this way about working with Tepia: “If I could build an in-house team, it would be exactly like them.” Review Tepia’s portfolio, read the process page, or get in touch to scope your MVP.

Frequently asked questions