How Much Of My Idea Do I Build?
NOTE: No affiliate links here. Just good information.
One common misunderstanding about building something is that you have to make the entire concept right from the start. Don’t.
In Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson, they tell the story about when they launched Basecamp. When they wanted to launch, they didn’t have a system for charging credit cards. So, they created a 30 day free trial, and that gave them 30 days to figure out how to charge. Not everything needs to be sorted out before you launch.
All you need is a Minimum Viable Product. Eric Ries coined the phrase, and it essentially means that you need to build the most inexpensive minimum set of features to communicate the idea and get someone to pay for it. If it solves the problem you are trying to solve, and other people have the same problem, you will get paid for it.
It needs to work, and it needs to be good. But there are so many ways to make sure that is the case. There are frameworks for building products online that give you a system for creating your product. You do not need to come up with everything from scratch. You might check out Bootstrap by Twitter orFoundation by Zurb. Both are excellent front end frameworks for building products. I love Foundation. When you combine these tools with frameworks like Django, you have a complete web app solution.
Honestly, it might be a simple spreadsheet and maybe some Google forms. I would encourage you to ask the question if I had to launch 8 hours from now, how would I do it? What can I get together that would serve my customers and help me test the idea?
No matter what you want to launch, that is not what you will end with even six months from now. If you are doing it right, you will never stop innovating your idea. The more you interact with customers and get feedback, the more you will want to change what you are doing.
A year from now, you might have something that you don’t even recognize. And that is the point. So test early and test often. Get something in front of people as soon as you can so that you can figure out if you’re headed in the right direction.
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This is the from the archive of an ongoing series called Making Things That Matter. Each week I will send you an email with another step in the process of building products and launching ideas. Signup here to join the conversation.
