How to Waste ₹10 Lakhs on a Custom App No One Uses And What Empyreal Would’ve Done Differently
I never imagined we’d burn ₹10 lakh (roughly $12K) on a shiny new app that no one wanted. We started with grand ambitions, a clever app to solve a big problem, but skipped the most important step: checking if anybody actually needed it. We poured money into code and features, but launch day came with zero downloads and a sinking feeling.
It turns out we weren’t alone. Experts say nearly 42% of startups fail due to lack of market need. In our case, we mis-scoped the idea, bled scope with unchecked features, picked a wrong tech stack, and ended up with a confusing user experience. After each misstep, we’ll show how Empyreal would have steered us right: running early discovery workshops, trimming the roadmap, adopting a backend-first approach, and testing early on. By focusing only on what users actually need, a partner like Empyreal can save founders from the fate we suffered, costly regrets and zero traction.
Phase 1: Mis Scoped Idea Chasing Ghosts
Our story began with enthusiasm, not evidence. We had a vision for a groundbreaking app and jumped straight into development. In my head, we were solving a huge problem. In reality, we had never talked to any customers or even sketch-tested our concept. We built what we thought was cool, not what users wanted. By launch day, it was obvious: nobody needed 90% of what we built, and the core functionality missed the mark.
This was a classic “no-market-need” scenario. According to startup research, nearly 42% of ventures fail because there’s simply no market demand. We became that statistic. Our mistake was skipping discovery. We should have held off on coding and, instead, done a proper discovery workshop to align our idea with real user needs. A well-run discovery session breaks down an idea into tangible requirements, defines who the users are, and surfaces their frustrations.
Empyreal’s playbook would have caught this early. Before writing a single line of code, they’d schedule an early discovery workshop to redefine the product vision. For example, we could have used Empyreal’s approach of mapping out user personas and journeys to clarify exactly who needs our app and why. A discovery session typically covers questions like: Who are the real users? What tasks are they trying to accomplish? What frustrations do they face today?
The workshop would produce things like detailed user goals and a prioritized list of features, separating must-haves from nice-to-haves. In fact, Empyreal would apply the MoSCoW method, tagging each feature as Must, Should, Could, or Won’t, to focus on essentials.
With that clarity, we’d only build what’s absolutely needed for a first version. Instead of shooting in the dark, we would have spent our ₹10 lakh building the true must-have features that solve a real pain point. This early alignment is crucial. As Komodo Digital notes, “without a discovery process, there’s no way to challenge your original idea,” and projects without it can quickly blow past budget. In short, Empyreal’s first step is discovery, ensuring the app fits the market, not just our imaginations.
Phase 2: Unchecked Features The Bloat Trap
Buoyed by momentum (and pressure from stakeholders), we started stacking on features. Yes to chat. Yes to social feeds. Yes to admin dashboards. We thought adding more bells and whistles would impress users. Instead, every new feature diluted the core experience and sucked up time and money. Our MVP turned into a bloated Frankenstein. By the end, we were weeks behind schedule and over budget, with an app so complex even we didn’t understand it.
This is the classic feature creep trap, the gradual addition of unnecessary features at the expense of time, budget, and user experience. It creeps in when there’s no clear roadmap. Research shows about half of software projects suffer from scope creep. We were living proof. Lacking firm priorities, every good idea became must-have, and the project spiraled out of control. Even our user interface became a labyrinth, far more confusing than engaging.
Empyreal’s solution here is roadmap trimming. After discovery, their process explicitly chops the backlog down to essentials. Rather than building every suggestion, Empyreal would say no to non critical features. They’d revisit that MoSCoW prioritization from the workshop: only must-haves make it into the first release, while could-haves and won’t-haves are deferred to future versions.
In practice, Empyreal would sit with us to define a lean feature set. They’d insist on a clear product roadmap, a timeline of development where each milestone has fixed scope and budget. This discipline echoes what experts advise: a lack of defined scope or roadmap is a recipe for disaster.
By trimming the roadmap, Empyreal avoids the trap we fell into. Instead of building ten adjacent features at once, they focus on nailing the core user journey first. Maybe our app only needed a simple signup, a primary dashboard view, and one key function, and nothing more to launch with. Each extra feature is questioned: Does it align with the app’s core value? Does user testing suggest we need it now?
Empyreal likely would break development into smaller releases: build minimal functionality, release, get feedback, and then add carefully selected new features. Each tranche of spending is validated by actual user response.
In short, rather than letting features run wild, Empyreal’s playbook cuts the fat. They make sure every rupee of our ₹10 lakh goes toward building one thing that users actually need, not dozens of things they don’t. This keeps us on budget and on time, and keeps the app usable, not overwhelming.
Phase 3: Wrong Tech Stack Chasing Shiny Objects
By mid-project, our codebase was a tangled web of unfamiliar technologies. We’d picked a trendy but unproven tech stack in hopes of future-proofing our app, only to discover it required rare developer skills. This choice slowed development dramatically. We wasted weeks debugging obscure errors instead of making progress. The more we plugged features into this Frankenstein stack, the more brittle the system became. In retrospect, our technology decisions prioritized hype over practicality.
The lesson? Empyreal would have insisted we keep tech simple and sound. First, they emphasize building a robust backend before worrying about layers of frontend polish. Especially for data-driven apps, one expert advises: “You’ll want to create the backend first and then work on the UI around the logic you’ve developed.”
Empyreal follows an API first or backend first philosophy: define your data models, endpoints, and core services early. This approach has big advantages: it forces you to solve the hard technical problems, data structure, server logic, security, upfront.
With a clear backend in place, the frontend development can proceed in parallel, often using mock APIs to prototype the UI. This API first strategy lets frontend and backend teams work simultaneously, reducing dependencies and bottlenecks. That means we wouldn’t have sat idle waiting for one component to finish, the teams could parallelize work on a stable contract.
Empyreal would use standard, well-understood technologies for that core logic, a proven web framework and a reliable database, rather than chasing the newest fad.
Empyreal also likely would have us build a small, scalable prototype early on to validate our architecture. If our idea was really data-heavy, they’d push us to test performance and feasibility on the backend first, ensuring we could handle real workloads. Only once the core worked smoothly would we flesh out the UI. In our case, that might have meant spending a bit less on flashy frontend libraries and more on solidifying our server-side logic and database design.
In summary, Empyreal’s tech playbook is: focus on the foundation, not the frills. Build the data layer and core services first, then layer on the user interface. This prevents the nightmare we faced of being locked into an exotic tech stack that nobody could easily fix or maintain.
By approaching development this way, Empyreal ensures you have a stable, maintainable app architecture, not a house of cards. If we had started by figuring out exactly what problems our users had, and with which tools, we would have avoided building walls that didn’t need to be there.
Empyreal emphasizes this kind of early discovery and prioritization.
Phase 4: User Confusion When No One Engages
Finally, after all that development, we launched and heard crickets. We made one massive blunder: we treated launch like the end of the story. In truth, it was just the beginning. We hadn’t done enough testing or gotten real user feedback. The first people who tried our app mostly quit within minutes, frustrated and confused. The navigation wasn’t intuitive, and critical functions crashed. It was painfully clear we’d built something no one knew how to use, and because we raced through development, the bugs were piled high.
What we should have done is the opposite: test before scaling up. As Uptech advises, don’t release your new app before thoroughly testing it. They stress making testing a priority throughout development, running unit, integration, and performance tests continually. We didn’t do that. Empyreal would have insisted on building an MVP and putting it in users’ hands immediately for feedback.
For instance, Empyreal would organize usability tests and early user trials. These are structured ways to spot UX problems before an official launch. Ripenapps notes that usability testing is important to identify user experience issues before your app goes live, because a confusing interface causes frustration and missed conversions. In our case, just running a few live sessions with target users, watching where they tapped, where they hesitated, what they found unclear, would have revealed the fatal flaws we only discovered post-launch.
Empyreal might also follow a continuous feedback loop: release the app to a small beta group, gather metrics, time spent on tasks, drop-off points, error reports, then refine accordingly. This could mean dozens of tiny iterations: fix one crash, tweak one label, remove or rework one confusing screen, and then test again. Only after the app works smoothly and clearly for that initial audience would we consider scaling to more users.
This approach is validated by big successes. Take Instagram: its founders first shipped a very basic MVP focused on just photo filters, then listened to users and gradually added complex features like video, stories, and messaging. As a Ripenapps case study shows, this MVP mentality proved the idea before growing it. Empyreal follows the same logic: validate before you escalate. MVP testing before the full launch can ensure the overall success of your app.
In short, Empyreal’s final advice would be don’t scale what doesn’t work. They’d allocate part of that ₹10 lakh to thorough QA and real-user testing rather than marketing initially. We’d fix bugs, clarify UI flows, and make sure the app solves a genuine need. Only once those basics were solid would we move on to scaling features or user acquisition. That way, Empyreal ensures founders build confidence in the product before spending more.
Building on a tangled, untested stack without user input is like running in the dark. Empyreal would have illuminated our path, fixing our core logic first and insisting we test early and often so we never launched blind.
Conclusion: Build What Matters, Not What Doesn’t
Looking back, I see our mistakes clearly. We burned ₹10 lakh on an app that failed because we skipped the discipline of proven processes. Empyreal’s playbook, discovery, focused scope, robust backend, and early testing, stands in stark contrast to our trial-and-error approach. Had we followed it, our budget would have been invested in real user value, not wasted on needless fluff.
The takeaway is simple: validate before you build, prioritize ruthlessly, start from the core, and test with real people. These aren’t just buzzwords, they’re the pillars of Empyreal’s philosophy, and they’re backed by industry experience. For example, agencies that did take the trouble to build a tailored solution rather than a mismatched off-the-shelf one saw huge gains. One case saw a 40 percent drop in delays and happier customers after investing ₹8 lakh in custom tools. We learned the hard way that every rupee counts.
Empyreal Infotech positions itself as the partner that prevents these costly pitfalls. They work with founders to ensure only what’s needed gets built, leveraging workshops to nail requirements, lean roadmaps to avoid feature bloat, solid architecture to avoid tech debt, and a culture of testing to catch problems early. In other words, they help founders spend their ₹10 lakh, or more, exactly where it will make an impact.
So if you’re dreaming of the next great app, learn from our regrets. Use Empyreal’s approach or one like it. Only commit your funds to features that solve proven user problems. Otherwise, you’ll risk ending up like us, with a hefty bill and zero traction. Remember, an app is only as valuable as the users it serves. Build thoughtfully, test often, and you’ll save yourself a ₹10 lakh headache.
