article thumbnail

Document Your MVP for a Developer

SoCal CTO

He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. I asked some of the same questions I ask in my Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions and then I get to a very common conversation: Me : Do you have specs? Founder : Ummm. what do you mean?

Developer 354
article thumbnail

Customer Validation - 33 Great Articles

SoCal CTO

" Today I had two conversations with early stage startups (see Free CTO Consulting ). The other was a consumer play with possible viral growth. Would the consumer one get traction and be viral? Neither had done enough customer validation to be able to say the second line that Tristan suggested.

Customer 227
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

As a last disclaimer, please consult the definition of the word hacker if youre not familiar with the controversies surrounding that term.) Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. I would love to have an effective CTO or VP of Engineering to manage me.

article thumbnail

Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?

www.quora.com

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" Developer, engineer, CTO, or technical co-founder? Rockstar v.