Stephen McCurry Wantrepreneur + Producteer Stop looking for a technical cofounder and just do it
Stephen McCurryWantrepreneur + Producteer
Stop looking for a technical cofounder and just do it
Engineer Project Manager B. School Product
Manager Wantrepreneur
Stephen McCurry- Career Synopsis
EXECUTION is everything!
Ideas are cheap
1. The plan
Timeline
Killer Idea Meet cofounder Funding Build
ProductBuild
Business
Roadblock
• Building a startup is a non linear process
• Focus on short term milestones
• Constantly reevaluate priorities and roadblocks
The plan
Focus• Be selective over what meetings, conferences
and calls you take
• Constantly reevaluate priorities with respect to the next milestone
• Say no
2. Where to start
Where to start
• Product market fit• Validation• Understanding customer needs
Product market fit
• Being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.
• Requires iteration and likely to result in divergence from original plan – plan C, D etc.
• What assumptions are you making?
• What evidence do you have to support your assumptions?
Validation
Understanding customer needs
• Communicate
• Listen
• Empathize
Talking
No Business plan survives first contact with customersSteve Blank
Prototype
Iteration
Tools
Validation board
Tools for early stage validation
• Validation baordValidation
• Proto.ioPrototyping
• Launch Rock• Rocket StartLanding pages
• 99 designsCompany logos
• Google adwords• Facebook adsAd trials
3. Building
Introspection
Build options
• Outsource• Timeshare• DIY
Break it Down
Making Technology Decisions
1. Analyze options based on requirements2. Justify decision3. Experiment and adjust if necessary
Outsourcing / Nearshoring / Offshoring Development
e.g. Elance, Odesk
Tips:• Clearly define the requirements both functional and non functional
system requirement• Provide visual designs designs or mocks• Run a small project first as a trial• Have regular checkins and milestones, e.g. daily, weekly• You usually get what you pay for• Try to find a personal recommendation versus blind referral• At first it will sound great but chances of success are relatively low• Collboration tools – Bitbucket, Asana, Pivotal Tracker
Outsourcing
Project doesn’t end when final product is delivered.
Timeshare
• Get blocks of hours from developers you know
• Use people you know as technical advisors
Getting good at sales
• Define your business in 1 sentence
• Define the key features, benefits and needs you are solving in a 60 second pitch
• Practice your pitch
Product Definition• Use cases
• Acceptance criteria
• Wireframes
• Visual Design
Use cases
Example:
A Doctor logs onto the system to check their schedule for today
Acceptance criteria
• Doctor enters their user name and password then clicks login.
• The system loads the home screen for the logged in user.
• The users name and profile photo appear in the top right of the screen.
Wireframes
Visual Designs
Tools for defining the product
• Jira• Pivotal trackerRequirements
• Balsamiq• Proto.ioWireframing
• Photoshop (Creative Cloud)Visual design
DIY - Learning to code
After Just Four Weeks, The Homeless Man Learning To Code Has Almost Finished His First App
My day and most nights
Learning Resources
• GithubOpen source
• Udemy• Code AcademyOnline Learning
• General AssemblyOffline courses
• RailscastsBlogs
• Stackoverflow• Air PairCommunity
Standing on the shoulders of giants
• Nitrous.ioDevelopment environment
• ParseMobile Backend
• Urban airship• TwilioMobile messaging
• Socialize• KinveySocial platforms
• FirebaseCloud based backend
• ShopifyeCommerce
Building a landing page
www.workabout.me
Anatomy of a landing pageOption1 Option2
Hosting Heroku Linode – LAMP on Ubuntu
Technology HTML / Ruby on Rails
HTML / PHP
Domain GoDaddy GoDaddy
DNS DNSimple GoDaddy
Lead capture Database Mailchimp
Source code Github na
Splash image Shutterstock Shutterstock
Creativity takes courage (Henri Matisse)