Mobile app development isn’t a trend anymore, it’s a necessity for many businesses at some level. But what do you do as a company if your target market isn’t enterprise-level customers. If you don’t have large institutions busting down your door for a six figure custom build, how can you build and scale a successful business? 

Santiago Jaramillo spoke to that issue during last night’s Verge fireside chat. The nationally recognized founder of BlueBridge Digital has made his fame by being an equal-opportunity provider of technology. Thanks to Santiago, a budget of $5,000 can compete with a budget of $50,000 in the digital space.

So how the hell do you scale something like mobile development for institutions that aren’t looking to spend big money on mobile development?

The Power of Niche

The example Santiago uses is the same example that got BlueBridge nominated for a Mira Award this year. They wanted to provide mobile development for churches, but most churches couldn’t afford custom app development. So how do you provide them with an excellent solution without losing money? As it turns out, the power is in the niche.

“By building one single code base, we’re able to make improvements that percolate out to everyone” – @santiagojara #vergestartups

— Verge ® (@VergeIndy) March 27, 2014

In this example, Santiago was able to target Wesleyan Churches. By developing an effective platform for a Wesleyan app once, he was able to scale this to the level where he could serve dozens of churches with the same batch of code, making app development affordable for even the smallest budgets.

This has been the key to BlueBridge’s success. Because their mission is to bring world-class mobile solutions to small and medium sized businesses, they have a business model that would be difficult to scale if they weren’t deliberate about their client base. The secret to scaling for Santiago and Co., however, has been  deliberate client acquisition. If you’re going to take on a niche, whether it’s locally owned pizzerias, mom and pop dry cleaners, or in this example, Wesleyan Churches, the easiest way to scale is to attack that niche hard and sell the same solution to as many folks as you can versus doing custom builds.

We’ve talked before at Verge about the challenge of what is essentially “Work for Hire” jobs. If you put yourself in a position where you’re doing custom development on every single job you do, you’re not going to be able to scale efficiently. So what are some key takeaways for your startup from last night’s fireside? 

Key Takeaways

• Find your niche and stay in your lane. If you want to build scalable tech solutions, you can’t spread yourself too thin.
• Mobile isn’t the way of the future, it’s the way of the present. Get on board. To quote Santiago, “Every single day there are more smartphones sold than babies born.”
• Send a consistent message. It can be extremely easy to try to be all things to all people, but the key to scalable sales and marketing is picking a narrative and sticking to it. This is something that BlueBridge has been able to do extremely well, shattering all of their sales goals last year.
• BlueBridge is hiring! If you’re interested in what Santiago is doing with BlueBridge Digital. They’re hiring something like 3,000 people in the next two weeks. [joke] But they are hiring right now. Visit the BlueBridge Digital site for more information.

Key Tweets

“Every single day there are more smartphones sold than babies born.” – @santiagojara #vergestartups

— Verge ® (@VergeIndy) March 27, 2014

Get money, get paid. #vergestartups

— Dave Powell (@Daveisstrong) March 27, 2014

@santiagojara killin it reppin @GoBlueBridge at #VergeStartups fireside chat pic.twitter.com/LypRtcFoVk

— Kate Burkhardt (@K8_Burkhardt) March 27, 2014

The tech market is booming for app development. “Every day there are more smart phones sold than babies born.” –@santiagojara #vergestartups

— Katz Sapper & Miller (@ksmcpa) March 27, 2014