DevDay (http://devday.pl),
20th of September 2013, Kraków
Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4eTOvq2WmM&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLBMFXMTB7U74NdDghygvBaDcp67owVUUF
Workshop - Best of Both Worlds_ Combine KG and Vector search for enhanced R...
DevDay 2013 - Building Startups and Minimum Viable Products
1. Building Startups & Minimum Viable
Products
@Ben_Hall
Ben@BenHall.me.uk
Cornershop.io
Hacker in Residence and Partner at Cornershop / #1seed
2. You talk about it, we ship it.
#craftsmanship
@Ben_Hall
Ben@BenHall.me.uk
Cornershop.io
Hacker in Residence and Partner at Cornershop / #1seed
3. Let’s make some money
#craftsmanshipisdead
@Ben_Hall
Ben@BenHall.me.uk
Cornershop.io
Hacker in Residence and Partner at Cornershop / #1seed
4. Who am I?
• Hacker in Residence at Cornershop / #1seed
– Meerkatalyst / MaydayHQ (Co-founder)
– Swapit (Lead Dev / CTO)
– 7digital
– Red Gate Software
• Multiple open source and side projects
• @Ben_Hall or Ben@BenHall.me.uk
25. Identify a Minimum Viable Customer
Segment
•
•
•
•
Influencers
Users of competitor products
Potential new users
People in different verticals with similar business
models
• Understand industry, customer segments
• Test different value props, identify which
connects best
31. KEEP TAGLINES SIMPLE
BUT SAY WHAT YOU DO!
DON’T SAY YOU’RE DISRUPTION
OR INNOVATING
LAME!!! Only others can say that
http://insideintercom.io/what-everyoneneeds-to-know-about-disruption/
32. CustDev can only get you so far
At this point you should have a
concept / vision clear in your own
head
34. What is a MVP?
• “An MVP is an experiment that tests a critical,
falsifiable hypothesis of your business” Devin
Hunt
https://speakerdeck.com/devinhunt/mvps-in-practice
36. Lesson learned from
Rate it Slate it
Prototyped Functionality
Took 2-3 hours to go from a concept to
learning valuable insights
37. Avoid writing code if you can
• Email / blog first startups are cool!!
• Sunrise (Just raised $2.2m, started as morning
email of your day’s schedule each day)
• Mattermark
38. Speed of delivery is key
•
•
•
•
Beg, steal, borrow – just get it done!
Ability to learn
Should be based around your vision
Lesson from “Project X”: Took too long to
release because the aim wasn’t to learn about
customers but make money. Missed a
number of (commercial) opportunities.
Failing? Likely.
39. Don’t reinvent the wheel
TOO MANY FUN THINGS IN LIFE TO
WRITE BORING CODE
40. Do you need a full application?
WebFlow.com / strikingly.com
42. Really need to build…
• Foundation over bootstrap etc
• KISS!! Do you really need EmberJS, Backbone
etc etc etc?
43. Build on the shoulders of giants
Community
NodeJS *AMAZING*
ElasticSearch *AMAZING*
4SQ API, Screen scraping, hidden APIs –
whatever is required to get the job done.
KEEP IT SIMPLE. KEEP IT DIRTY.
44. Low traffic, dyno is paused. First user needs to spin it up. Keep alive script
A WORD OF WARNING ABOUT
HEROKU
46. Cult of the Software Craftsman
• Code Quality is not a feature!
• Do you really need 80% test coverage? What
value is that actually adding?
• Do you really need that abstraction? That IoC?
That level of separation? That ability to scale?
• Is that really going to change your world?
52. Building a startup?
Don’t turn into a developer!
• This isn’t an exercise in learning new
technologies.
• It’s an exercise in building businesses
• Don’t confuse the two.
64. Drive Traffic
•
•
•
•
PR (Hacker News, Techcrunch, The Next Web)
Buy traffic (PPC)
Social Media
Email still king
• Piggyback off others
– Paypal > Ebay
– Airbnb > Craigslist
65. Speak to people using the product
• Red Gate UX team
• Watch, Listen, Learn
• Introduce explicit touch points in the
application for reaching out
– Rate it Slate it inbox beta list
• Do people want the feature?
• Can we build a email list of people who are actively
engaging with the product
67. A/B Tests?
• Waste of time at the early stage.
• Complex to configure, not enough traffic to
make them statistically significant.
– Mayday A/B tests
• Took ages to get data, could have just asked people
71. Get feedback. Not working?
Change it. Kill it. Move on.
Building startups people care about is
amazing!
Working on ones no-one cares about is
sole destroying.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/newyorkbaltimore/8010607852/sizes/k/in/photolist-dcSsCu/Taking everything you’ve heard this week and applying it to real businesses with the aim of making *money*
Stages of a startupBuild, measure, leanDon’t be scared to failDon’t be scared to kill it if it’s not workingBe public, be visible, talk to everyoneDon’t fail too early!
Meerkatalyst example Thought I understood customer problem. Problem I had personally while at 7digital, knew others had it, ran with it as a side project before joining Springboard startup accelerator
Ideas by themselves are worthless100% on executing the visionPrevious company tried to split attention across 4 company streams. It doesn’t work.Without a core desire, you’ve already lost the game
Ideas by themselves are worthless100% on executing the visionPrevious company tried to split attention across 4 company streams. It doesn’t work.Without a core desire, you’ve already lost the game