How To Startup!

14
(not being a programmer) By Steve Poland http://blog.stevepoland.com/about
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    21-Oct-2014
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    Business

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How to startup! (and not be a programmer) [idea investigation; competitive landscape; what problem are you solving; how are you solving better than others; who would actually use your service if you came through the way you plan?; pencil wireframes/sketches of information architecture; digital mockups; pretty design; cutup of pages; programming; testing; bug fixes / revising; private launch (more testing/feedback/revising); public launch; marketing; blogging; reaching out; listen]

Transcript of How To Startup!

Page 1: How To Startup!

(not being a programmer)

By Steve Polandhttp://blog.stevepoland.com/about

Page 2: How To Startup!

Don’t devise a Solution to a non-existent Pain

What pains do you or others have?

Here’s 100 web startup ideas: http://bit.ly/100ideas

Page 3: How To Startup!

If you can’t find a competitor, you aren’t looking hard enough.

◦ Twitter = Facebook◦ Facebook = Twitter, MySpace, Friendster, etc◦ YouTube = MetaCafe, Vimeo◦ Google = Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos

Page 4: How To Startup!

Are you worth the switching cost?

◦ Evite has been out-dated since 1996.◦ Founder of Friendster launched competitor in

2006.◦ Socializr couldn’t get the masses to switch.

Page 5: How To Startup!

ASSume nothing! Talk to potential customers, now Talk about your business idea to

everybody! (ok, maybe not directly to your competitor)◦ You have the passion for it. ◦ People won’t steal it. They may think about it for a

second, but tomorrow they won’t. It’ll take 100’s of hours.

◦ Ideas are nothing, Execution is everything.◦ Talking with others will help you refine your

idea.

Page 6: How To Startup!

Will customer #1’s experience be just as good as customer #100,000?◦ See http://bit.ly/1st-user ◦ There has to be value to User #1 and then you’ll

see User #2 come on board, and so forth. ◦ MyBlogLog gave bloggers stats at first — that was

of personal value/utility to them. Later on, MyBlogLog applied all the social networking features that we’ve come to know/love about MyBlogLog — but that was after they had a bunch of users in their system.

◦ Ditto on Delicious.

Page 7: How To Startup!

Can you sell someone on it in 30-seconds?

If not, it’s too complex – you might be making up this “pain” that the person can’t grasp in 30-seconds because they don’t have that “pain point”.

Page 8: How To Startup!

How will you make money?

◦ If advertising or anything else, be realistic with how much you likely can make and how the business would eventually sustain itself.

A ‘Twitter’ story rarely happens.

I prefer making money off Customer #1.◦ Self-funded vs Investors.

Page 9: How To Startup!

I personally start with pencil on paper mockups.

Then I get digital mockups designed (focus on the user-experience / flow).◦ Then a pretty design and style guide.

Mockups cutup into HTML, to give to a programmer to make it actually work.

Page 10: How To Startup!

Finding a programmer is as hard as finding your husband/wife for life It’s potentially a marriage.

NDA signed

RFP (1-2 pages about the project, with a spreadsheet of line items for each page/component of site/app)

Be aware of their questions, it’ll help you gauge how well they “get it”

Page 11: How To Startup!

Project Management software – I use BaseCamp (http://www.basecamphq.com)◦ Manage task lists, milestones, discussions.

I have two weekly meetings with my programmer, and constant IM’ing during week.

I try to keep discussions about functionality in BaseCamp, so we have it archived.

We use Unfuddle (or Github) for version control. Unfuddle has ticketing (nice!)

Page 12: How To Startup!

“If you're not embarrassed by your first release, then you launched too late.” –Reid Hoffman

Put dates to milestones.

Internal private beta - We just play with it Public private beta - Select people to play with it Public beta - Anyone can play with it

No longer a beta ◦ (Gmail has been beta 5+ years)

Page 13: How To Startup!

Testing, Bugs, Fixes, Feature Requests Listen! Allow users to contact you easily

– put your phone number up, email address, contact form, AIM, etc.◦ Bugs and changes into Unfuddle.◦ Ideas for future features into BaseCamp.

Uservoice.com is great for gathering feedback/input (feature requests) from users.

ClickEgg and Userfly for user experiences.

Page 14: How To Startup!

Contact:◦ Steve Poland◦ http://blog.stevepoland.com/about◦ http://twitter.com/STP

Slides: http://bit.ly/howtostartup