Taking A Shot In The Dark Here, Anyone Want To Partner With Me?

Tutorials and DIY Guides
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I need to make an app based off of a Google Sheet I created which is used in the Oilfield. It’s for dispatching, keeping track of hours, employees, and equipment. It has conditional formatting, data validation, and a simple workflow.

I made it because dispatching was such a headache. I worked for an oilfield service company, which serviced drilling rigs, which means we were on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So when we dispatch, its one guy on the phone, taking calls from customers, calling and coordinating employees to form crews and having to send people with specific tools on specific jobs. With up to 80 employees, you can imagine the struggle of doing that alone.

My Sheet made it easier though. At a glance you could see who was in, who was out, who was off, how many hours they have, and more. Now, I want to go full steam ahead with this idea of mine and I believe I have several good reason why:

  1. My company lives by my Google Sheet now and it doesn’t even do half the stuff I want it to, things that would make it even better.
  2. The area I live in has an untapped market for this kind of stuff. All the other apps i’ve come across that are even remotely like this require the employee to have the app, in turn forcing employers to not only supply a phone, but train them.
  3. The most popular app in the oilfield is RigData. There are well over 7,000 users on this app. The MINIMUM Subscription fee is $25/Per area per MONTH or $75/whole US per MONTH. So even at a minimum of $25/per user per month, they’re looking at Grossing around $175,000 per month. Also keep in mind the amount of upkeep involved, (RIGDATA IS A RIG MAPPING APP THAT HELPS SALESMEN, SERVICE COMPANIES, ETC. FIND DRILLING RIGS) and it’s updated once a week.
  4. What have you got to lose? I have the next 3 weeks off from work, I’ve been dreaming about doing this for a while now. I have my branding, my app name, my logo, slogan, functionality I need it to have, features i need it to have, everything. I’ve got a lot of literature on it too. This isn’t just a spur of the moment, “omg i have a cool app idea, someone build it for me,” its more like, “I’ve invested a lot of my own time into this idea, have some proven results that indicate a strong desire for such app, and I will be hands on right beside you. I just need someone to help answer all these little questions i have, like why can’t i just press enter to jump to the next text input box after finishing typing in it.”

If anyone is interested and you feel you could help me and get this going, I’m open to negotiating or working something out. When i say partner, I mean it. I will have you sign an NDA, and we can do this the right way. Thanks.

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What are you exactly looking for in terms of skill set?
The fact that you posted this in the Thunkable forum would seem to indicate that this environment is the one you selected; is that the case, or are there other considerations?

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I posted this here because I simply don’t have the capitol to fund developing an app via a third party. If i hadn’t found this, i’d be teaching myself code, which i still probably will at some point. I stumbled across Sketchware when looking at my options on having this app developed.

When I realized Sketchware seemed kind of dead, I looked for other alternatives, or I guess i was looking for the app that everyone left sketchware for. Still not sure if Thunkable is it or not, I’m assuming this is a distro of AppInventor? Not sure on that.

These are my obstacles that I need to overcome:

1.Budget. Thats why i’m here. I realize i probably won’t be able to get this app to do exactly what i want it to do, and that it will never compare to an app coded word by word, but I believe i can get my idea close enough and far enough alon to show some real promise with investors. A prototype if you will.
2. Learning Curve. Despite this being entirely more simple and easier than outright coding, there is still a learning curve. Thats whats killing me. I’m a perectionist. Trying to learn everything at once is killing me. I can’t go to the next step until the first step is perfect. And i mean perfect down to the design. So making one screen i’m sitting here trying to learn how to make buttons look like they’re sunk in to the background, 3d i guess, while also searching high and low on a resolution for jumping to the next text input when enter is pressed, while again trying to learn these block. I literally just learned today what the heck the difference is between thunkable x and classic. I kept reading all these classic tutorials and thinking they were just old and they must have updated the blocks to be more simple and this app is dead too because there are no new tutorials. (i started using thunkable x)
3. Going at it alone. I can’t do this on my own, i realize that. I need someone, or a few someones who can help me think, help me figure stuff out, disagree with me, throw new ideas on the table, question my decisions, drive innovation, and share the tasks needed to be completed with me.

So as far as a specific skillset? Do you know more than me with this program? Do you have any ideas, design experience, or interest in helping me create something that could change your life?

I need team. No, I can’t guarantee anything, no promises, no sugar coating. All I can do is tell you what i do know, what i believe will happen based on my experience, and the tangible facts around me. The only thing i can guarantee is that if this thing takes off like i truly believe it should, you will be compensated for it and we can back that up with a legitimate contract. We can set a variable rate of profit, base it on your contribution, and let the contract lay wherever the success of the app puts it.

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As you probably have figured out, Thunkable Classic is on the way out, and Thunkable does not want to support it anymore. Even the requirement to have API 28 support, which had been known for quite some time, was met with a faulty compiler, suffering from massive limitations (I have to comment out 2/3 of the code of one of my app just to get it to compile) that they haven’t managed to fix yet, 3 months later. To carry on with this type of framework implies taking our business to Kodular/AppyBuilder (which are merging, making the decision on which one to select a tad easier). For the record, Kodular and AppyBuilder were found to be 95% compatible with App Inventor and Thunkable Classic, most deviations are actually in the sense that they offer more components and arguments while losing none.
The limitation is that all those App Inventor like environment target only Android; which is not App Inventor’s fault, but very much the result of Apple wanting to impose all the rules (apparently aimed at ensuring that everyone needs to buy one of their iMac). X Thunkable is an effort to play by those rules, but you will see that it comes with so many limitations that it cannot be a proper substitute for Classic. If one needs to target multiple platforms, perhaps a different framework needs to be relied on. Though other people’s opinion may differ in this respect, my assessment is that a good compromise would be Flutter; the Dart language it is based on requires traditional code writing however; but the performance ought to be there since it is some kind of variation on JavaScript.
The reason this could be easier, as far as Apple’s lack of flexibility is concerned, is that Google is behind Flutter and Dart, and can perhaps force Apple to dance a little to their tune for a change.
I had been looking for an excuse to get serious with Flutter, this may be the opportunity do to so.

What is good about this forum is that you can click on someone’s avatar icon and be presented with links to see most everything they have posted before. I suggest you do this as some kind of skill evaluation; see if you like what you read.