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MenuWhen is it better to find a technical co-founder before developing an MVP vs. hiring a freelancer to build it for you, and vice-versa?
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A co-founder is a long-term relationships that should be built on trust, and passion, and time... time to fight, time to recover, time to build rapport. Ultimately, your co-founder shouldn't be based on *any* specific idea, because the two (or three?) of you could work on anything you are all passionate about, and either experience wild success or learn some great lessons along the way.
An MVP doesn't require a co-founder get built. In fact, the less technical code required the better. You should be able to validate most ideas with some very basic tools: WordPress site, Email list, a set of google forms, and a little love.
I think the most important question to ask yourself is, "Am I willing to have my idea change for the right person? Or am I just trying to find the best person to execute on my idea?"
For what it's worth, I've seen much more success with the former than the latter.
I push back on the premise of the question.
Before you look to find a co-founder or spend a cent on building something, make sure you've thought your idea through. Who are you for? What's the problem you solve? Are you clear on the insight you are working against and the positioning you will use when you bring the product to market? Many of the problems I end up working with founding teams on down the road can actually be traced to them having started out building something and then trying to figure out how to sell it, rather than starting with the need and a clear view of their prospective customer.
Spend your time and money there, first.
Co-founders are permanent, long-term members of your team and a technical co-founder is someone who has a long view of the product's development, is committed to seeing it happen, and can make it happen. If you don't need that, sub out.
Agree with the answers above. By definition, you don't need a technical co-founder before you create your MVP. Sometimes an MVP can be a free landing page or Wordpress or Mailchimp list, Eventbrite or some combination. Once you have traction and customers and a functioning MVP, any good technical co-founder will be more interested in taking a look and having a conversation with you.
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What's the best way to build a MVP web app that handles order management, purchasing, invoicing, supplier management and inventory?
The best way to build an MVP for any SaaS product is to create a landing page that looks like a real product. Here's an example of one I built. http://www.happiily.com In this case, it advertises the primary features of the product and invites people to sign-up. When they do, they are asked for information which qualifies the person and then sends me an email. I built this quickly and very inexpensively and started getting inbound leads from it shortly thereafter. I got on the phone with each person who signed-up and explained the features I wanted to build and was able to do a lot of customer learning based on that. Happy to talk to you in a call if you'd like to talk more about customer development with SaaS products.TW
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What is the best strategy to take to establish proof of concept for a online platform concept prior to a beta version being created?
Likely you won't like my thoughts about this. When I give talks about business bootstrapping, I suggest people only work ideas which meet my "Sunset Rule". Sunset Rule - You should be able to go from idea to first sale, before sunset, or best consider other ideas. This also relates to your MVP. If you can't dream up an MVP + sell it before the sun goes down, best consider other ideas. Years ago, I was at an Internet Marketing Party mixer in Austin, TX + sat to visit with a friend. She was down because she was starting a new business + had spent months working on a business plan + determined she required $80K to bootstrap her business + then had spent another several months looking for investors. A buddy of mine + I sat with her for 15mins + slightly retooled her idea. She launched the next day for a one time investment of $144/year (cost of a Meetup.com account) + was generating some significant profit in a few days. Chunk down your MVP, so you can manually make sales by the end of the day... for $0 investment + you'll know for sure you have a profitable business. If you can't sell one unit, by the end of the day... best consider some other idea...DF
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What's the best way for me to turn my edtech idea into a functioning web app to gain traction and raise seed round?
You always want to mitigate risk, for you and for investors, or partners. One of the easiest ways is creating fake landing pages of your product idea. You then run ads, fb or Google, and see if people 'convert'. Convert can be giving their email, clicking a button like buy now, faking all the way to checkout, whatever you think proves there is a market and need for a solution of your product. There are many other ways to test a product without building. I would suggest you pick up the book Lean Startup by Eric Ries, as he is the founder and master of the MVP, minimum viable product. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out as I was in a similar situation with my venture and in the EdTech space.CC
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Should I continue developing my site further or keep a simple landing page with email capture to test my idea?
Depends on your objective. If you really just want to know whether the idea is viable, you'll get the most bang for your buck by keeping things email-capture-only or putting up a "smoke test" where you have a Buy Now button that redirects to a "it's not available yet; but leave your email if you want to be notified when it's ready"... and see if you can get anyone to click "buy now" by clearly articulating on your landing page what the product will do for them. This also lets you test pricing sensitivity. If you can't get anyone to leave an email or click "buy now" based on a really good description with images (or even better a video "demo") then building the actual product is unlikely to be worth it.SR
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Shall we register our company before testing the MVP?
I do not believe you should incorporate your company yet as there is a chance you will scrap the idea or iterate on the assumptions after analysis. I suggest you run your initial testing on a very minimal MVP to see if there is interest. I would go further in saying that you should not even allow people to pay only have them click on the payment option because at that point you know that it would be a conversion. The ONLY thing you are proving with an MVP is validation of an idea. Only make the mousetrap front end and see if you can drive users to where you want and stop. Even if you frustrate some people, it was worth it as you now know for sure people will buy or do what it is you wanted. Schedule a call with me to find out more. God knows I have done this enough times. Good luck JoshJJ
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