How to get Your Big Idea into Build.
So Nick Starr is alive, and my Apple iMac, much more important to me than the iPhone (and so it ultimately will be for The Street) is coming out in 14 hours-ish, I'll be pre-ordering the 24" baby the moment it's on streetwise.com.au or whatever other site delivers with wifi superslim keyboard and power/memory boost. Let's hope it's not like the meant to be coupled Tarantino/Rodriguez' Grindhouse flicks which still havent been shown downunder, and now they are talking November and prob separate releases like the UK.
So this isn't about the iMac or Grindhouse, but it is about moving from the idea to build stage of Product Development : Given I'm stuck deep in specs, project plans/wikis and contracts - I thought I'd share. Call it therapy. While in a corporate gig you need to be able to do a few things well at select times, make sure your boss likes you, as well as working for the right company in a good industry) : With a few wins, you can get headhunted and more money; In a startup you gotta do all of it well, there isn't "the IT department", "marketing", and "legal". You see alot of people leave corporate gigs, flirt with a startup business for 12-18 months, and then back to corporate land (who like the startup on the resume as it's character building) But if you want to win, thrive, sustain. It's alot harder. But here's my 2 cents.
The agile inspired BulletPoint process I'm liking, thru trial and error, and working with a range of 'collaborators' on is :
1. A Really Fn Kewl Idea, that has a real purpose. Something you or someone u can objectively empathise with, would actually use the service, for a purpose. It all starts with a great idea (my business school preferred the language : "a financially quantifiable opportunity") Extra marks for non-consumer and enterprise.
2. The Backer of Said Idea, who has a pile of benjamins (as few as the Paul Graham 6 gorillas per founder approach) or the $6b Microsoft is lumping down for digital marketing biz's. The Backer says "Yes I want to invest in you. Your Team. The Idea. I love it." They call you up and email at weird times. And you like it. N'Him'n'Her. Especially at the start it's all blue skys : "Look how crap the competition is.. We could do this so much better etc" Nod. But set realistic expectations. No one wants to hear how your last divorce was so succesful.
3. Friendraising the Best People Out There - Your generalist specialist friends/linkedin/geek-forum associates that say no to jobs all the time to concentrate on optimising their ad sense/weird photo application and get by on $2k daily rate call-ins from corporates who need critical fixes that can be done remotely. They hear your idea and say "That is the best fkn idea I've heard in along time, in fact I had the same idea a few years ago, and have always wanted to do it." - If they don't say this, maybe there's a reason.
4. Now You Find a Really Big Monitor - You mainline every single website in the space, find the leader and join - both as a end using consumer and paying customer (eg advertiser, subscriber) and start delving into every single feature they do well. Screengrab key UI pics like FactoryJoe, and delicious links key research. Delve into open source projects that touch the field. And very importantly look at parallel industries and how it could be applied to your space. There are lots of lesson from the Last.fm's and Wesabes that can be applied elsewhere. Not just music and finance.
5. You get your legals and commercials Sorted - Dont get too excited or too cheap that you avoid paying usually 4 figure legal fees to document everyone's role in this world changing idea. This document may well become your best friend, or in lieu of its existence your worse. And get signatures on it. Dot and cross.
6. Dont Write a PHd now - Many non-engineers think it prudent at this point to write 100 page functional specs to append to that shining business plan/IM. And lots of digital marketing companies like to sell them. Why not start at the end first and (like I do) design a really bad powerpoint/skitch/photoshop page, and show the person you trust the most. Ideally a front end/UI/producer type who will take your stick figure, bad cutnpaste job and challenge you on what each link does and then after discussion, mockup a schweet photoshop design of the actual page.
7. Prototype the Top Level Pages - Spend far too long on the home page, get multiple designers to pitch and do paid work on the home page. Obsess about it. Until you go crazy, take 20% out, sleep on it and if you are happy with it when you wake up go with it. It's months till you launch anyway, so you can iterate, but sometimes the first design is the best. From home page, you know in order what the 5 major next clicks are. Some call this the Consumer Experience. But it can also be the Advertiser Experience. Powerpoint-Photoshop. You almost have a demo of 5-10 pages that is enough to convince the next level of institutional support you need. (investors, strategic partners, your wife/husband) Heck CSS some pages up, make this baby sing, dance and get some more money.
8. People Dont Know what they want, but they know which pictures they dont like on a web page - Go back to your Backer, the great team of people you recruited/contracted/email-skyped (incl the ones you really wanted who said no to start of with because they were busy) and say "Hey check this out." Wait for silence, awkward body language "It's good but...." - Don't appear to write too much down here, smile, nod, be constructive - But file away all the responses, and determine which are substantial/real/show insight and which are chasing dragons, one-off opinions you can ignore. The real insights will stay with you and stop you sleeping till you fix them.
9. Identify the Technical Storyboards and User "Use" Cases - It can be a bit painful but identify each major act each user of the site/system/product can do. Knock them onto a wiki so they can be evolved, till they are all captured concise. You also need them later for your developer brief. Because obviously you've got your fulltime dedicated engineering team of 1-5 geeks, somewhere in the world, who are going to require basic requirements, designs, wikis, timelines, deliverables etc
10. Now Speak to End Users + Experts - Speak to end users of existing substitute services currently (dont tell me there arent any or your business sux) and find out where they spend their money and where the pain is. Also speak to experts in each particular field that is specific to this industry/type of application. Merging this focus group vox pop like data with experts is key to learning. Being able to find the artists + boffins in this area is so important in moving from 7/10 to 9/10. And is esp hard downunder or if u r somewhere regional. It's not like everyone has worked on a Open Social Networking RSS Real Time Widget Analytics technology startup before outside Mountain View. Hence Skype, Blogs etc. And conversely its not like they're all in the land of SoCal and available. Look at Estonia, Moscow, Pune - who knows where the expert you need is.
OK I've reached 10 points, I'll stop there, I guess after that you build stuff and you become very successful.
So this isn't about the iMac or Grindhouse, but it is about moving from the idea to build stage of Product Development : Given I'm stuck deep in specs, project plans/wikis and contracts - I thought I'd share. Call it therapy. While in a corporate gig you need to be able to do a few things well at select times, make sure your boss likes you, as well as working for the right company in a good industry) : With a few wins, you can get headhunted and more money; In a startup you gotta do all of it well, there isn't "the IT department", "marketing", and "legal". You see alot of people leave corporate gigs, flirt with a startup business for 12-18 months, and then back to corporate land (who like the startup on the resume as it's character building) But if you want to win, thrive, sustain. It's alot harder. But here's my 2 cents.
The agile inspired BulletPoint process I'm liking, thru trial and error, and working with a range of 'collaborators' on is :
1. A Really Fn Kewl Idea, that has a real purpose. Something you or someone u can objectively empathise with, would actually use the service, for a purpose. It all starts with a great idea (my business school preferred the language : "a financially quantifiable opportunity") Extra marks for non-consumer and enterprise.
2. The Backer of Said Idea, who has a pile of benjamins (as few as the Paul Graham 6 gorillas per founder approach) or the $6b Microsoft is lumping down for digital marketing biz's. The Backer says "Yes I want to invest in you. Your Team. The Idea. I love it." They call you up and email at weird times. And you like it. N'Him'n'Her. Especially at the start it's all blue skys : "Look how crap the competition is.. We could do this so much better etc" Nod. But set realistic expectations. No one wants to hear how your last divorce was so succesful.
3. Friendraising the Best People Out There - Your generalist specialist friends/linkedin/geek-forum associates that say no to jobs all the time to concentrate on optimising their ad sense/weird photo application and get by on $2k daily rate call-ins from corporates who need critical fixes that can be done remotely. They hear your idea and say "That is the best fkn idea I've heard in along time, in fact I had the same idea a few years ago, and have always wanted to do it." - If they don't say this, maybe there's a reason.
4. Now You Find a Really Big Monitor - You mainline every single website in the space, find the leader and join - both as a end using consumer and paying customer (eg advertiser, subscriber) and start delving into every single feature they do well. Screengrab key UI pics like FactoryJoe, and delicious links key research. Delve into open source projects that touch the field. And very importantly look at parallel industries and how it could be applied to your space. There are lots of lesson from the Last.fm's and Wesabes that can be applied elsewhere. Not just music and finance.
5. You get your legals and commercials Sorted - Dont get too excited or too cheap that you avoid paying usually 4 figure legal fees to document everyone's role in this world changing idea. This document may well become your best friend, or in lieu of its existence your worse. And get signatures on it. Dot and cross.
6. Dont Write a PHd now - Many non-engineers think it prudent at this point to write 100 page functional specs to append to that shining business plan/IM. And lots of digital marketing companies like to sell them. Why not start at the end first and (like I do) design a really bad powerpoint/skitch/photoshop page, and show the person you trust the most. Ideally a front end/UI/producer type who will take your stick figure, bad cutnpaste job and challenge you on what each link does and then after discussion, mockup a schweet photoshop design of the actual page.
7. Prototype the Top Level Pages - Spend far too long on the home page, get multiple designers to pitch and do paid work on the home page. Obsess about it. Until you go crazy, take 20% out, sleep on it and if you are happy with it when you wake up go with it. It's months till you launch anyway, so you can iterate, but sometimes the first design is the best. From home page, you know in order what the 5 major next clicks are. Some call this the Consumer Experience. But it can also be the Advertiser Experience. Powerpoint-Photoshop. You almost have a demo of 5-10 pages that is enough to convince the next level of institutional support you need. (investors, strategic partners, your wife/husband) Heck CSS some pages up, make this baby sing, dance and get some more money.
8. People Dont Know what they want, but they know which pictures they dont like on a web page - Go back to your Backer, the great team of people you recruited/contracted/email-skyped (incl the ones you really wanted who said no to start of with because they were busy) and say "Hey check this out." Wait for silence, awkward body language "It's good but...." - Don't appear to write too much down here, smile, nod, be constructive - But file away all the responses, and determine which are substantial/real/show insight and which are chasing dragons, one-off opinions you can ignore. The real insights will stay with you and stop you sleeping till you fix them.
9. Identify the Technical Storyboards and User "Use" Cases - It can be a bit painful but identify each major act each user of the site/system/product can do. Knock them onto a wiki so they can be evolved, till they are all captured concise. You also need them later for your developer brief. Because obviously you've got your fulltime dedicated engineering team of 1-5 geeks, somewhere in the world, who are going to require basic requirements, designs, wikis, timelines, deliverables etc
10. Now Speak to End Users + Experts - Speak to end users of existing substitute services currently (dont tell me there arent any or your business sux) and find out where they spend their money and where the pain is. Also speak to experts in each particular field that is specific to this industry/type of application. Merging this focus group vox pop like data with experts is key to learning. Being able to find the artists + boffins in this area is so important in moving from 7/10 to 9/10. And is esp hard downunder or if u r somewhere regional. It's not like everyone has worked on a Open Social Networking RSS Real Time Widget Analytics technology startup before outside Mountain View. Hence Skype, Blogs etc. And conversely its not like they're all in the land of SoCal and available. Look at Estonia, Moscow, Pune - who knows where the expert you need is.
OK I've reached 10 points, I'll stop there, I guess after that you build stuff and you become very successful.
posted by redbarren at 1:36 PM
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