Startup Product Roadmap, Phase 3 – Commercialization
Commercialization is focused on scaling your product and growing value. Since this is the first major product offering for your company, it’s also about creating a viable long-term entity.
Creating a Lean Startup
Startup Product Roadmap, Phase 2 – Pilot Release / MVP
Congratulations! You have a working prototype that’s solving a problem. Things are about to get real, really fast. It’s time to take the leap and build your Pilot Release.
Startup Product Roadmap, Phase 1 – Product Discovery
The Product Discovery phase is about determining that you’re solving the right problem, along with starting to validate and de-risk your solution. This phase of effort is arguably the most difficult of your product’s lifecycle. Each day can be an emotional rollercoaster of extreme excitement and frustrating lows.
The Startup Product Roadmap – Maturing your Software Idea into a Scalable Product
Planning to launch a startup around a new software product? The Software Product Roadmap will help you ask the right questions, talk to the right people, and make the right moves every step of the way.
Creating a Software Company? 9 Decisions You Have to Make
So, you have decided to sell software. Congratulations, you are now a software company! Maybe your building the next big new product that is going to change the world, or perhaps you are re-purposing an internal piece of software that has really helped your company. Either way, it doesn’t matter. There is a lot of […]
Drawing Your Business Ecosystem
We first read about business ecosystems in the Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development. Over the last year we have added a business ecosystem drawing exercise to our project kickoff practices. This exercise is designed to quickly give our development team a high-level understanding of our client’s business. A business ecosystem drawing shows high-level value exchanges […]
What We Expect Startups to Know
Ten years of working with entrepreneurs has given us some insights into what’s necessary to increase the odds of their success. While there is no magic formula you can follow to create a successful product or company, there are some things you can do to increase your odds, or, put another way, there are some […]
A Venture Capital Cheat Sheet
Lately I’ve found myself in many conversations about startups and sources of funding. It’s a natural part of the work we do at Atomic; we build software products for other people’s businesses, and many of the new clients who reach out to us are part of startups. Locally, the Momentum program and 5×5 night have […]
Lean Startup Is about More than Shoestring Web Startups
The Michigan Lean Startup Conference brought some of the thought leaders of lean startup to Grand Rapids a few weeks ago. The talks were excellent. I particularly enjoyed listening to Eric Ries on the lean startup concept and William Pietri’s perspective on temporary versus sustainable code. Jeffrey Schox explained the complicated business of IP in […]