We all have ideas. We all wonder if there’s an app that does this and website that does that. The furthest most people get is thinking about them. The furthest a lot get, is talking about them. And the furthest a tiny proportion get, is actually doing anything about them at all.
The truth is, we’re not that far away from turning ideas into something. We’re just lacking the technical skills…
I’m not going to lie, I’m one of those people who comes up with silly (and not so silly) ideas and talks about them. However, on a few, I’ve taken action made some progress. I invented the Veglo Commuter X4, rear bike light. How? With £50 I bought 4 fibre optic dog collars, a bright bike light and stuck them to my backpack. That was my minimum viable product (MVP), if you will. Enough to test its core principals with real customers. Much to my amazement, the product has done really well, with distribution in 11 countries. The key learning here is taking full advantage of your MVP, defining the customer pain and proving the customer segment before going to the next level.
It’s the same with building a web application. In fact, it’s easier because you can do the whole thing from a laptop — you just need the technical skills. I learnt the hard way when putting a software into action…a contact storage application.
I learnt the hard way. £6,000 later…
After making mockups on Balsamiq (a free wireframe editor), presentations to various focus groups and potential users, I had enough evidence the problem and pain was worth solving. I even had investors ready. This part was free. But getting real users is a different story in tech.
The whole process took four months and £6,000; mockups, research, meetings, finding the right developer, discussing and iterating until arriving at an MVP. Great! I have a working MVP of my product. Admittedly it looks awful, but it works and I can test it with real users in presentation circumstances, certainly not business circumstances though. It needed a lot more work.
What have I actually learned about the core product?
Nothing! I’ve spent £6,000 and I know absolutely nothing about developing a web application. I personally can’t make any changes or improvements myself. I don’t have the skills. I don’t even have the knowledge to communicate with developers or designers either.
Show me a line of code and I couldn’t tell you one thing about it.
With my Veglo experiences, the cheap man pays twice. So I chose a top London developer, hence £6,000.
At £500 a day, it becomes unthinkable to start making changes and improvements. The design needs serious work. This model is totally unsustainable. I cannot progress from my current MVP without spending loads of money for each iteration.
This is a classic startup move. It usually leads to losing focus on the product and forcing you to spend the next 6 months raising finance because you’ve already spent north of £15,000 on many versions of your MVP. It’s a “too late to turn back” situation.
Startups can wait, but learning to code can’t
So now what? How do I make changes? What if the market isn’t big enough and this fails?
There’s an obvious answer to all this stress. You’ve got to learn to code. In my current situation I’d have to spend £6,000 prototyping every idea I have.
The real 21st century skill is to be an autonomous person who can execute their ideas. I want to help others be creative. Be able to act when they come up with ideas. I don’t want to spend my life relying on others and working at their pace and price.
Le Wagon Coding School
So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and launch Le Wagon coding school in London. I want to bring technical skills to creative people, help them avoid making the same mistakes I did and hopefully feel the freedom of being your own boss.
For £6,000 you can learn to code in 9 weeks and produce a complete working model of your web application by the end of the programme.
And the joy is you can do it again and again, with idea after idea, for free. Coding skills are a must have for this new economy, where “Software is eating the world”. It’s not a complete coincidence that coding is now part of the school curriculum. It’s a fact, software is the present and the future.
Those 2 months will be the best investment you can make for your future in tech, I’m not saying it, Le Wagon’s 500 alumni are. Invest in yourself. It’s the best place to start.
