Concept validation on a budget: test your business ideas in a week
So, you had a great idea and you think you could make money with it. Now you just need to hire some software developers to have a prototype and validate the concept, and that means spending money. Unwilling to go through the hassle and expense, that is the point where most of us just decide to move on with life and get back to our day jobs. But wait, what if I told you there are free cloud based tools that allow you to come up with simple prototypes on your own, and even integrate your prototype to over 250 services like Gmail, Dropbox, Twitter, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com Chatter, Foursquare, and many others? Let me share how I did it…
I was looking for a lead management system that I could afford while meeting my needs. The usual suspects (Salesforce, Zoho, SugarCRM, etc.) were not good options, so during my research, I came across Podio, a company acquired by Citrix a little over a year ago. Podio allowed me to create forms (they call these Apps) from scratch or to modify them based on existing templates. So, I copied one of the Podio templates and voila, in a couple hours, I had a framework tailored to my needs. One of the features I like about Podio is the ability to leverage this “App” design to create live webforms, which populate my App database in Podio. And to top it off, Podio has a tablet/phone app which you can download and access all you own “Apps” at no extra cost. I was very excited with what I was able to accomplish is such a short time. Now it was time to assess the value of my few hours of work. As I used my “Apps”, I identified some missing data, which prompted some changes in Podio. Within a few minutes, I was already using the “upgraded” App. As I grew excited about the progress, I started to wish I could connect my Podio Apps to other parts of my “business”.
Then I came across Zapier. Zapier is a start-up which claims to “Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Apps — Zapier connects the web apps you use to easily move your data and automate tedious tasks”. And boy, it did deliver on its promise. Within a few minutes and without a single line of code, I had my business related emails feeding data to my Podio Apps, and data from my Podio Apps feeding my Twitter account. The Zapier interface was very friendly and should be easy for most people to use. As I had questions about Zapier, their support team was quick to reply and clarify my doubts. The amount of time and mistakes I avoided by using Zapier was well worth the time I invested to learn it.
After one week, I had build a concept, extended its capabilities to social media, and mobile applications, tested the overall user experience and adjusted it many times. With this approach, I was able to cover, at a high level, the social, mobile, and cloud aspects of SMAC.
And for the techies out there familiar with Agile software development practices, the process described above, ascribes to what we like call the agile entrepreneurship powered by Podio and Zapier.
