When’s The Right Time To Show Your Prototype? Brian Gladstein @briangladstein
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@briangladstein • EVP, Technology Marketing, GYKAntler
• Specialist in Advocate & Loyalty Marketing
• 2-time entrepreneur
• Lean Startup Challenge Boston
• Business Model Generation Meetup
• Startup Coach
• Launched dozens of products
• Stanford MBA, MIT Computer Science
The idea is born
The concept comes together
The kinks get worked out
The prototype gets useful
The Lifecycle of a Prototype
A prototype is not the thing you are making.
It’s a vehicle to discover why customers want to hire you.
Some of The Wrong Reasons • Need a pat on the back
• Want to amaze people
• Show off tech or design
• The “a-ha” moment
Don’t Think ‘When’…
• Prove you can build it
• Attract a team
• Attract investors
• Validate market
• Get beta customers
• Scope the project
• Vet out competition
• Solidify requirements
… Think ‘Why’
So When’s The Right Time?
When you are far enough
along to take a meaningful
action.
But not so far that you can’t start over.
“Remove any feature, process, or
effort that does not contribute directly to
the learning you seek.”
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup
“Remove any feature, process, or
effort that does not contribute directly to
the learning you seek.”
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup
Guide To Effective Prototyping Step 1: Create a hypothesis & develop an experiment
Step 2: Design the prototype to carry out the experiment
Step 3: Learn from the experiment
Step 4: Save only what you need and throw out the rest