After reading the lean startup i’ve been fascinated by the “bootstrapping” culture, distilling an idea down to it’s fundamentals and getting out there to prove there’s a real demand for what you’ve made. I don’t know if it’s the simplicity, the enthusiastic followers or the pivotal involvement of coffee that draws me to it, but I find it fascinating!

The Minimum Viable Product (MVP for short) is the smallest version of a product that can be made but that can still achieve everything it needs to. That means really nailing what you’ve chosen to include so you can still demonstrate the product’s value, even without all the bells and whistles (There’s a lot more to it than that, but I won’t bore you with that right now).

Another part of the Lean methodology is to write down all of your assumptions and test as many of them as you can, as quickly as you can. By doing this you’re able to prove whether or not your business is actually viable. This is a good exercise to do, just because it makes you concerntrate on the problems you’re trying to solve. You should be able to think of at least a few, otherwise you wouldn’t have had the idea in the first place!

As an example, here are the assumptions i’ve made for Coherent:

- Hosts aren’t happy with the system they’re currently using
- Competing systems are too expensive for most spaces
- Too many features baffle the user
- Co-workers want to connect and collaborate with other co-workers

From here I decided to start thinking about a framework for my research, there is a large amount of work that has to be done before I can really figure out where we fit in the market. After looking at lots of business plans, I decided to merge all of the different structures into a hybrid, that you can see below. It’s nothing special, but it gives you an idea of the areas i’ll be looking into over the next few weeks:

Obviously each of the subheadings will need exploring much deeper, but I find that this list gives me a bit of perspective. If i’m getting stuck into tiny details, it acts as a reminder that there’s a million and one other things to do before I think about where I want buttons to go!