Next step?
Hi everyone, new member and first time poster here! I've been excited and looking forward to find a community like this.
I'm an industrial engineer with no SE/CS background building an MVP out of Excel and a lot of VBA (it's the only way I could do it myself). The idea is validated by executives but not yet with users (of the potential first client). It will save the users a lot of time on every project they work on.
My next step would be to release the MVP to said users and get feedback.
- Is doing the MVP with Excel a good idea?
- Once the idea is validated, should I go for funding and hire a programmer, or find a co-founder before funding?
- What options do I have if the client wants exclusive access to this platform for this industry and for this region? (raise the price?)
Thank you for any input you might have!
Don't remember on which podcast I heard it (one of startupschool), but outsourcing development is risky - it can take you 2, 5, 10 or 20 iterations until your product really hits the point. The higher numbers are more likely ;-) So a co-founder is much more into it then a paid programmer. Other option: learn programming yourself.
Good luck!
I'll try to find the podcast, thanks for the insight. A technical co-founder seems like the way to go in my case, as I'm learning to program at the moment but would definitely go for a dependable experienced programmer.
Sounds good to me - raising money in order to hire a programmer seems not to be the way to go.
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/3i-how-to-find-a-technical-co-founder
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/7j-how-to-find-a-co-founder
A lot more resources there, much insights for me.
Great resources, I reqlly appreciate it! This resonaded a lot with me: "You should think of all the ways you can patch together an MVP with existing non-coder tools, launch and get some users. At this point, it's much easier to convince and get someone to join you vs when you just have an idea."
What I would do is:
Once you'll have some pre-orders, then go for the next step.
I like this idea, I'll give it a try, thanks
At the startup I was with previously, we built most our proposal and analytics platform via Google Sheets partnered with Google Apps script. No one care and top execs were happy they didn't have to learn a new SaaS tool.
Try Google Sheets over excel. We had a master sheet where we updated data. Each client had a sheet of their own. Daily we would push data to them. Their sheets would update. Clean solution!
Good to know really, thanks!