Making Sure You Are Ready to Begin Building Your MVP

ColoftApril 2013

Tony Karrer, Ph.D.CEO, TechEmpower, Inc.akarrer@techempower.comhttp://socalcto.com

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Background• Ph.D. Computer Science, LMU Professor CS 10

Years

• Founder– Sprinkler Systems Installation (age 15)– Knowledge Stream ($59M exit)– TechEmpower (1997 - present)– Aggregage (2010 – present)

• Part-Time CTO / Technical Advisor– Talk with 100+ startups each year

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Stage?

Idea Ready to Build MVP Launched

• Volunteers?

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Why Are You Building an MVP

• Get Next Round of Investment• Get Early Customers• Test / Prove Aspects of Product

– Cost of Customer Acquisition – Conversion Rates / Pricing– Viral Coefficient

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MVP Homework

• Customer Interviews: Problem, Solution, Feature

• Minimum?

• Features?– http://www.socalcto.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-

may-have-forgot.html

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Document for a Developer

• Business / Product Concept• User Types• User Stories• Wireframes• Feature Specification• Technical Requirements (Scale, Systems)

• Others– Personas– Use cases– Requirements

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Balsamiq

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Founder Developer Gap

• Mark Suster, GRP, Ideal Startup Team

– http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/02/06/how-to-configure-your-startup-team/

Technical AdvisorProgrammer

FriendPart-time CTO ?

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Protect Yourself

• Own the Document/Issue Tracker/Code Repository, Hosting Arrangement, SSL Certificates, etc.

• Iterations• Deliverables/Features/Functions• Test, Fix Process• Price - Not to Exceed• Termination

• Agile?

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Development Issues

• http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-development-team.html

• Missed deadlines• Delivery of code/product that clearly has not been

tested; Bugs – no big deal.  The system keeps crashing – no problem; Annoyed at testers for finding bugs.

• Fixing one thing breaks something else• No attention to detail, don’t ask questions

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Learn to Test

• Edge Cases

• Cross Device (Email - Litmus)

• Performance

• http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html

Making Sure You Are Ready to Begin Building Your MVP

ColoftApril 2013

Tony Karrer, Ph.D.CEO, TechEmpower, Inc.akarrer@techempower.comhttp://socalcto.com