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Start Small, Stay Small
A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup
Lean Startup + The 4-Hour Workweek
Developers who want to build online software.
But more generally...
Example: Customer interview tracker for lean practitioners.
Rule of thumb: Stick to markets where you can take out a full-page ad in a magazine for < $5000.
Use keyword analysis to find a market with some demand but little competition.
Example: "customer interview tracker", "lean interview notes", etc.
If you find a good niche...
Home, pricing, and sign-up. Maybe a static product tour.
That's about it.
Use AdWords to drive traffic to your site.
Try to get people to click on a "Buy" or "Try now" button.
(Put up a coming soon banner if you feel bad.)
Example: Left as an exercise for the reader.
If you get enough conversions...
Product is only part of the equation.
Estimate the work:
4-12 hours per page.
10-20 hours for DB design.
10-40 hours for back-end features like payments.
Shoot for 200-400 hours.
Pages/features for our customer interview tracker:
Cut aggressively.
Or outsource.
Section about virtual assistants omitted.
Spend some time on pricing.
Prefer email lists, blogging, and organic search
to
social marketing, forums, banner ads, etc.
The rest of marketing omitted for time.
Grow it: go to conferences, add features, hire, expand from a vertical into a horizontal market, etc.
Start over: Outsource, automate, or sell.
Let's build it!
30 minutes:
Present 1 thing you learned, or 1 thing you changed based on feedback.