1. Making Sure You Are Ready to
Begin Building Your MVP
Coloft
April 2013
Tony Karrer, Ph.D.
CEO, TechEmpower, Inc.
akarrer@techempower.com
http://socalcto.com

2. 2
Background
• Ph.D. Computer Science, LMU Professor CS 10 Years
• Founder
– Sprinkler Systems Installation (age 15)
– Knowledge Stream ($59M exit)
– TechEmpower (1997 - present)
– Aggregage (2010 – present)
• Part-Time CTO / Technical Advisor
– Talk with 100+ startups each year

3. 3

4. 4
Stage?
Idea Ready to Build MVP
Launched
• Volunteers?

5. 5
Why Are You Building an MVP
• Get Next Round of Investment
• Get Early Customers
• Test / Prove Aspects of Product
– Cost of Customer Acquisition
– Conversion Rates / Pricing
– Viral Coefficient

6. 6
MVP Homework
• Customer Interviews: Problem, Solution, Feature
• Minimum?
• Features?
– http://www.socalcto.com/2011/08/32-questions-developers-may-
have-forgot.html

7. 7
Document for a Developer
• Business / Product Concept
• User Types
• User Stories
• Wireframes
• Feature Specification
• Technical Requirements (Scale, Systems)
• Others
– Personas
– Use cases
– Requirements

8. 8
Balsamiq

9. 9
Founder Developer Gap
• Mark Suster, GRP, Ideal
Startup Team
– http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/02/06/ho
w-to-configure-your-startup-team/
Technical Advisor
Programmer Friend
Part-time CTO
?

10. 10
Protect Yourself
• Own the Document/Issue Tracker/Code Repository,
Hosting Arrangement, SSL Certificates, etc.
• Iterations
• Deliverables/Features/Functions
• Test, Fix Process
• Price - Not to Exceed
• Termination
• Agile?

11. 11
Development Issues
• http://www.socalcto.com/2010/03/symptoms-of-weak-
development-team.html
• Missed deadlines
• Delivery of code/product that clearly has not been tested;
Bugs – no big deal. The system keeps crashing – no
problem; Annoyed at testers for finding bugs.
• Fixing one thing breaks something else
• No attention to detail, don’t ask questions

12. 12
Learn to Test
• Edge Cases
• Cross Device
(Email - Litmus)
• Performance
• http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweb1.html

13. Making Sure You Are Ready to
Begin Building Your MVP
Coloft
April 2013
Tony Karrer, Ph.D.
CEO, TechEmpower, Inc.
akarrer@techempower.com
http://socalcto.com