Category Archives: The Lean Startup

The Lean Start-up is a cost and time conscious product development strategy

How to maintain delicate relations between investors and founders

This article expands a bit the issue of the kinds of relationships there are between investors and founders. How to manage the respective roles as, as either a founder of a startup or as an investor in a venture, is a major issue that needs to be rightly managed in early seed ventures and startups in general in order to achieve success.

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Approaches to MVP Testers – the Web App Case

Providing support for your Minimum Viable Product testers (sometimes known as Alpha version users) is an ongoing process that requires preparation and considerable time and effort in order to receive the kinds of feedback that you are after.

This is the second article which describes another type of venture, one where the product release was done to an ever-growing audience of testers which were not controlled. Because of these complexities, dealing with and offering support to our initial users required a different approach.

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Cross Platform Applications and Responsive Design

This article discusses one of the more important trends in current application design and development, cross platform application, which impacts your product’s ability to reach different types of audiences that use various devices. When developing your Minimal Viable Product (Minimum Viable Product)?" href="http://jumpstartcto.com/what-is-a-minimal-viable-product-Minimum Viable Product/">Minimal Viable Product (Minimum Viable Product), cross platform application support immediately becomes a big challenge to the problem of reaching your target audience.

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Formulating your Startup DNA

DNA usually refers to the fundamental and distinctive characteristics of someone or something, especially when it refers to those properties that are regarded as hereditary or unchangeable. The study of DNA is becoming a major field of science, and the study of manipulating an organism’s DNA is becoming more and more possible. In business, we sometimes use the term DNA to describe an organization’s essential qualities and therefore study its non-organic DNA as a way to try to improve an organization’s behavior as well as to be able to predict, or sometimes even change, those qualities that lead to its success.

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The Continuing Process of Gathering & Analyzing Users Requirements

Gathering User Requirements involves a process that uses several different methods and sources to find and collect data. This can be comprised of information from interviews, questionnaires , A/B testing and focus groups that will then, in turn, be analyzed along with KPI)" href="http://jumpstartcto.com/defining-your-startup-key-performance-indicator-kpi/">your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).

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A common mistake people make is that they tend to treat themselves as one of the users. Like a horses with blinders, we often myopically base what we think the requirements list is, solely on one’s own selfish needs and not on the real and objective needs of the users. The correct way is to first adhere to the process of gathering User Requirements before deciding on what you think those requirements ought to be.

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Defining your Startup Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

KPI’s and the Human Body

It is easy to understand what a Key Performance Indicator is by way of metaphor, because what the term KPI stands for, comes from our interactions with the human body. The most common KPI that is monitored in Western society is found by studying a person’s health condition, specifically by taking the body’s internal temperature. This is one of the most important indicators that can instantly tell us if someone may be sick or not. A gradual change in temperature or a quick fluctuation can indicate that the human body is recovering or fighting infection. There are several other indicators but only few of them are as important as the body temperature.  Body temperature therefore defines by metaphor what is known as the Key Performance Indicator.  In the study of Chinese medicine, there are other important KPIs which are measured to determine the human body’s condition. Demographically, the KPI is determined by a wide range of considerations, from the standards of measurement for the conditions of the prospective study, and from the background of the subject to the setting of the testing environment. These are all factors that contribute to determining the meaning of the KPIs we observe.

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How to Gather and Prioritize User Requirements and Functionality for a Minimal Viable Product?

In aMinimal Viable Product (Minimum Viable Product)?" href="http://jumpstartcto.com/what-is-a-minimal-viable-product-Minimum Viable Product/"> previous post we established a working definition of the Minimal Viable Product (Minimum Viable Product) and argued that it is more a process within one’s product development strategy that is supported in different  scenarios, than it is a definition of a goal in itself.

In this post is meant to extend the discussion of development processes that determine the Minimum Viable Product into areas of what functionality to include, as well as what to exclude, when designing your product’s offering.

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What is a Minimal Viable Product (MVP)?

The term ‘minimal viable product’ is a common buzzword these days in the realm of business start-ups and early stage ventures by product managers and developers who are trying to perfect their product offering.  The Minimal Viable Product (Minimum Viable Product) is actually better defined as a process and not necessarily as a product goal in itself.

A Definition of the Minimal Viable Product (Minimum Viable Product)

The basic definition for the Minimum Viable Product includes those features that allow the product to be deployed within the defined target audience.

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How to Develop Your Idea into a Product

The Minimal Viable Product

Building your idea into a product requires a process that involves several different modes of expertise and knowledge. Above all, one must have a plan or methodology to follow so that the outcome will meet one’s expectations and more importantly your plan will address what your proposed target audience needs.

First and foremost to your plan is the need to focus your idea. This is done by doing comprehensive research and identifying potential competitors, in order to understand what the proposed value of your offering is in comparison to other players within your niche market. Often it may be more difficult to be first player in your market than being in a position among several other players. Despite the fact that being first gives you the advantage, it also means your market is not yet defined and you need to educate your customers in advance on how to use your product.

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The Lean Startup

The Lean Start-up is an interesting concept from the brain of Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author; he authors a blog and has written a very popular book by the same name. He espouses the idea of streamlining your start-up’s focus to deliver the desired product to the right audience. And then to use that audience to perfect your offering.

Lean is not about money necessarily – though the aim is to do without large amounts of seed money – but about the best use of resources to accomplish your company’s goals.

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