Why every new startup in 2021 should use Flutter
Flutter is Google’s hot app development framework, and if you have seen my previous posts, you’ve read how bullish I am about its impact on a dev shop. I highlighted many benefits our own dev shop found using Flutter to onboard engineers more easily, get products to market faster and improve our top and bottom lines. However, as useful as Flutter is to dev shops, it might be even more powerful for tech startups, particularly those that may lack certainty around their target market or product/market fit. Here’s why.
Less Time, Less $$$, More Iterating
Early-stage startups are all about experimentation and validating tech and market assumptions. We need to de-risk uncertainties to attract investors, talent, and potential customers. This builds the best valuation for our new company to lower our capital costs. And we need to do this quickly because each day we can smell the smoke of our burn rate incinerating our limited operating funds. That is precisely why if you are building and iterating apps, time is your most critical resource. And Flutter saves time.
Our dev shop found that we were building apps up to 65% faster vs. native applications & up to 30% faster vs. other cross platform apps. If you are a tech startup, much of your burn rate is engineering costs. Imagine being able to fund an extension of your runway by accessing those same savings rates. Tomo, a future of work tool, originally started building their desktop application with Electron.js, but after giving Flutter Desktop a try (even though it was still in alpha status) are now completely rebuilding with Flutter. Tomo’s CEO shared with me not only how quickly they have been able to rebuild but, just as importantly, how much more stable Flutter Desktop was than Electron.js.
One Code, Many Platforms
The appeal of Flutter to startups does not end with ease and quality. Once a startup establishes product/market fit it can quickly benefit by rapidly expanding to new platforms. Flutter runs on web, mobile, & desktop all with the same single codebase. Tomo began using Flutter as their primary front-end technology for desktop; because of that they can almost immediately launch a web & mobile application reusing the same code. When Google launches Fuschia, a new operating system to replace Android, Flutter apps will already be equipped to go onto the new platform as well. What better technology to help a tech startup start blitzscale!
Scaling
Your startup won’t be a startup forever right? So, your tech stack better be able to grow and mature along with the rest of your business. It is significant that it is not just small budget early-stage companies that see benefit from Flutter. Large, big balance sheet enterprises with mature tech teams are relying on it as well. When your startup standardizes on Flutter early, you can know it will not be obsolete when your business is operating at 10X or 100X where it is today.
In a report done by Nubank in 2019, they found that Flutter helps scale mobile development. Although this was done earlier in Flutter’s development, there were already important indicators of Flutter’s coming superiority. When evaluating tools, Nubank found only 2 points in which Flutter was weaker than React Native, and both were related to community management rather than functionality. And now in 2021, when looking at monthly activity on Flutter vs. React-Native vs. Kotlin Native, Flutter is a dominant winner.
Maintenance
Flutter is easier to maintain than other frameworks for two main reasons —
- Flutter uses it’s own UI framework “Material”
- It’s easier to maintain one codebase than many
When comparing to other cross-platform frameworks like React-Native, because it uses native components, native updates can break UI requiring a refactor. In Flutter, the UI is entirely owned by Flutter and it does not rely on native components.
When comparing to native, well, it’s just naturally easier to maintain one codebase vs. many. Imagine a product that is available to web, desktop, & mobile. If a bug shows up, we will have to fix the bug for each platform it occurs on & the QA team will likely have to write a test so that it doesn’t show up again.
We see the team at Phillips Hue as a pioneer in the use of Flutter. They originally built their app in native iOS & native Android but have switched to Flutter since.
“Flutter scales well to our needs”
“Flutter accelerates releases of new products”
“Flutter stimulated our transformation for better productivity”
“Flutter enabled our developers to be engaged and have fun at work”
— Alexia Sintotski, Lead DevOps Engineer
The early bird gets the worm!
Flutter is not just a reasonable solution; it is the superior one and should be the foundation of any startup’s tech stack. Flutter utilization is now a best practice for app development and as the Github Star graph indicates, it is long past being a newbie challenger. Founders are no longer asking why they should use Flutter, but rather how they can afford not to. Someone in your vertical will exploit the Flutter advantages. If it isn’t you, might it be your competitor?
The Pig and the Chicken (Sort of)
Maybe you know the old saying that the chicken is involved in a bacon and egg breakfast, but the pig, well the pig is COMMITTED. That’s the same for me. Full disclosure: We have completely pivoted from being a standalone dev shop to a company that builds innovative integration tools exclusively for Flutter. We have tethered our entire future to Flutter not because it is new or flashy, but because it is easy to learn, high quality, multi-platform, scalable, and extremely powerful. We’re all in. So next week I will tell you how a tech startup can get started with Flutter and provide some tips based on our own experience with the platform.
In the meantime, I’d love your feedback. :)
