10kStartup — What It Is and How It Can Help First Time Founders

Spoiler: It’s a team who build your MVP in 30 days for 10k with Altar.io!

First off a little about Altar.io. We are Daniel, Joao, Paolo, and Andre and we are a London and Lisbon based team of second-time founders with plenty of successes and failures on our belts across different segments: Marketplaces, Tourism, Music, Marketing Automation, Procurement Systems, Real Estate (the list goes on..). Each of us started as a Startup CEO, Designer or Developer between the (now far away) years of 2010 to 2012. In total, we’ve had 11 companies created, 2 companies sold at a profit, 4 companies closed, 5 in existence.

In Summer 2015 we got together and founded Altar.io as a development consultancy targeting corporations that are looking for great Product (we call product to the one voice of Brand, UX, UI and functionality). On average our clients benefited from core conversion metrics increase of 134%. Yes, investing in great Product does pay off!

Fast forward to October 2016 we discussed what could be of real value to the dozen first-time founders who approached us in the last 12 months looking to develop their MVP or have us as their CTO.

First timer issues: What do all first-time founders have in common? A shiny idea, a tight budget and a short skill set (no developers or no designers or no sales or no product talent). That’s what we set out to change!

The goal is your idea/startup at your fingertips in 30 days with 10k Startup

So how can we make your MVP real in 4 Weeks?

Process Timeline in 4 weeks

Week 1:

1. We have a conversation with you and we dive deep in your customer problem-solving solution to extract the user top priorities (aka user stories) that will fit in your MVP.
2. We create a simple spec sheet with all the demands of your project and deliver you a Stakeholders Analysis and User Stories.
3. We design the main screens and their UX flows and deliver you UX wireframe and UI mockups.
4. We start the Software Architecture foundations/ API structure

Week 2 and 3:

1. We do all the Frontend and Backend Development within this 2-week sprint

Week 4:

1. We test together and go over all bugs.
2. We deploy Tracking/Metrics

Week 5:

1. Launch day (we bet you will be so happy you will want to launch on Product Hunt too!)

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

How about a super quick Q&A:

Q: So what fits in an MVP?

A: The answer is it depends. We will listen to your vision of MVP. If it is just too big for us we will tell you right away and discuss how we try to help you focus on the main core features to build in order to test the market. Guess you’re already aware of Lean and Agile methodologies to build efficiently for the web.

Q: Is this a one-man developer + cheap template show or a real team?

A: It’s a real team. You will be in touch with one of the product managers who will talk priorities, UVP and strategy with you while then the execution is done the tech pros.

Q: Can I use my own designs?

A: Of course you can. If you have your own design, that means you have already made a deep product study about your future customers. However, we will always take the chance to advise you in case we think you need a revision on the Product study.

Q: Which tech do you code in?

A: The best web and mobile (non-native) frameworks, have a look here for that and more!

How about you and your idea? We would love to know more!

And By The Way,

I’m the Co-Founder of Altar.io - a team of experienced second-time founders & world-class developers and product talents based in London and Lisbon. We help startups and corporates to build great tech products.

If you have a brilliant idea that you want to bring to life — drop me a few lines in a private message and let’s chat!

Thanks for reading,
Andre

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