Lean startup with a distributed team

Lean Startup with a distributed team

By HUGO MESSER, Ekipa.co

Content

1. About Hugo & Ekipa.co

2. Distributed lean startup: challenges & solutions

3. Creating MVP versus Building Too Much

4. Customer Interviews

5. Summary

My lean path

• MBA in Rotterdam

• 2001: I-Clip, first startup

• 2002: Had to work at a publisher

• 2004: Backpacking

• 2005: Bridge

• 2014: Ekipa.co

BRIDGE

▪ Global IT Staffing = Remote Colleagues

▪ Bridge Method ©

▪ 10 years experience, office in India & Ukraine

Ekipa.co; Canvas

Distributed Lean Startup: Challenges

1. Programmer is not sitting besides you▪Changes take more time▪Things can take longer▪Scrum

2. Routing feedback through the team ▪ Team lacks direct talks with users▪ Slack▪ Product owner in NL, translates feedback to user stories

Distributed Lean Startup: Solutions

▪ Development team ◻ Scrum◻ Jira◻ Continuous integration

▪ Marketing team ◻ Rockefeller habits

Challenges with implementing Lean startup:Creating MVP versus Building Too Much

▪ We built way too much > why?

▪ Marketplace: get supply to create demand

▪ B to B: it’s about trust & long sales cycles

Customer feedback

▪ No traffic, no data > customer interviews

▪ How to get the right questions?

▪ Huge tunnel vision

Sample Survey

1. How do you take on / deliver projects if you don't have the people available?2. If you consider hiring an external team for a project, how do/would you search?3. Have a look at a sample team profile http://bridge-teams.com/team/32/bridge-.net-team. a. On a scale of 1-10, which items are important for you to see in the profile of your team:- the company - projects- the way they take a project from A to Z (process)- team details- profiles/cv's of individual team membersb. What would you like to show about your own team? What did we miss? What would you remove?4. What would be the decisive factor to make you work with an external team?5. What would it take for you to post your first job on our platform?6. How would you describe our platform in 1-2 sentences to someone else?7. Who do you know that could benefit from using our platform?

Results

We interviewed 50 + people

Expectations

A. Cues on what to develop versus what not

B. Validation of the concept

C. Leads

Result

D. Messy feedback, but we saw patterns

> reviews; from individuals > teams; sales versus post project

E. 95% ‘yes great platform’

F. Few leads

Summary

▪ Lean distributed development works

> Use Scrum

> Do it after the MVP ideally

▪ Remote management

> Use the rockefeller habits

▪ B to B: qualitative interviews in structured format

gives clarity + prospects

BOOKS about managing remote teams

http://ekipa.co/ebooks

CONTACT

[email protected]

+31 6 54 230 708

hugomesser

http://www.facebook.com/hugomesser

http://www.linkedin.com/inhugomesser

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