Perhaps some of the most popular tech startup ideas come in the form of apps. From tech-savvy veterans to rookie mobile users, nearly everybody knows somebody who has hopes of creating and launching their own successful mobile app.
On the surface, mobile app creation seems like a fun task.
Find a problem that you care about and solve it with an app, right? It can’t be too complicated.
But it is.
Complicated, tedious and downright stressful — that’s how some of today’s most successful app developers might describe the process of getting their beloved app to market and onto the devices of mobile users all across the globe.
Successful app developers will let anyone with their own mobile app dreams know that the writing is the fun part.
Getting the app to market, on the other hand, can be a grueling task.
But in the world where there is literally an app for everything, there is also an app to help launch other apps.
Well, it’s not technically an app, but it does have a collection of tools that budding mobile app developers might find useful.
The website and genius brand is called LaunchKit.
The trio behind LaunchKit knows quite a bit about the troubles of getting an app to market.
Brenden Mulligan, Taylor Hughes and Riz Sattar are also the creators of Cluster app, which gives users a more private and personal way to share content with friends and family.
Think social media without the narcissism often associated with wanting strangers perusing through your vacation photos.
Mulligan explained that while creating the app was fun, there were tedious tasks throughout the process that were begging for more efficient, innovative ways to be completed.
One of those tasks was getting screenshots of the app and ensuring they were all in the high resolutions that Apple requires if one hopes to get past the pearly gates of the official App Store.
While the Cluster team didn’t have a more efficient way to tackle this problem when they were in the midst of the launch process, they are leading other new app developers to a better solution.
LaunchKit will grow to include more and more handy tools and services for people hoping to launch their own apps, and one of the latest additions is a screenshot builder.
“Create gorgeous images for your App Store page in minutes,” the LaunchKit website promises of the free service.
The free LaunchKit service comes after the team had already released an App Store template for Sketch earlier this year, but LaunchKit gives users access to such a tool without actually needing to pay $99 for the Sketch app.
“LaunchKit is the tool we wish existed when we were building Cluster, and stuff that’s helping us manage our Cluster apps,” Mulligan told TechCrunch.
There are only a handful of tools in the LaunchKit for now, but the company has plans of expanding the resources with time.
Other featured tools include a “Review Monitor,” to help creators keep up with the reviews their app receives, and a handy library that contains a collection of “writing and open source contributions” that could help out any budding tech entrepreneur.
While these services are free, LaunchKit will eventually start offering services that may have premium features attached to a free base version of the tool that users would have to pay for.