How to Build your Startup Idea in 3 Hours

Give or take a few. Depending on how fast you can type.

The web has changed a lot since the early 2000's when only tech experts and wunderkinds could build internet startups. Now we’re in a period where lean startups are the rule not the exception. It’s easier than ever for non-techies to get their feet wet with their ideas and for actual techies to rapidly experiment and create an MVP (a Minimum Viable Product in case you’re not aware) in just a matter of hours. This tutorial is mainly for people who have ideas but don’t know any code, design, or even marketing. Using just IFTTT to power the backend, Tumblr to create a web property, and Twitter to power the social component, you’ll be able to test out whatever idea comes to mind.

What you’ll need:

1. An internet connection (Duh) and a web browser (Double Duh). I’ll be using Google Chrome because of it’s multiple user feature located in the top right corner of the browser, but any browser will do.
2. Time. Not that much is necessary. Building your MVP with this tutorial is really easy and can be done in your spare time. The first time I did this exercise I spent 5 hours total (Including some basic A/B testing and custom domain email setup which I won’t get into) over the course of a week.
3. Your own web domain. This is optional. Let me repeat that again. This is optional. It can be done later on to make your product look more professional, but for now we’ll stick to free services.

Let’s Get This Started

Thinking of your idea. Don’t spend too much time on this. Most ideas nowadays are derivatives of bigger and more successful startup models. The point of this beginner’s framework is to save yourself the time, money, and embarrassment of building a really bad idea or to quickly get a good idea off the ground right away. For this tutorial we’re going to create a Hacker News type service that pulls posts from other services. Your idea can be the Hacker News of whatever. I’m a big music fan so we’ll call this theoretical service Hip Hop Hacker. You should have your own name so that when you’re signing up for services you don’t get the already in use warning.

1. Creating a fresh canvas. Using Google Chrome click the user profile button in the top right corner. A drop down should appear. Click the new user link. Pick a funky avatar, type in a name and click create. This should open up a new browser window. Google Chrome recognizes this as another user and this will allow you to create new accounts for the different services you’ll use to build your prototype. Tabs will become your best friend when doing this.
2. Setting up your communication. Create a new email that you can use to sign up for any services you may need. Lots of businesses use Gmail and it has high brand trust for users so it might be worth it to stick with them for this part. A good example might be hiphophacker@gmail.com.

These next few steps are a little tedious as they’re just you signing up for stuff. However they’re not as tedious as coding or learning to code, building your idea for the next few days, weeks or even months and failing. Time is money you can’t earn back.

1. Setting up your back end. Create a new account with IFTTT using your new email. Next create a Soundcloud account using your new email. Switch over to IFTTT and click create recipe. Click the THIS in light blue. Scroll down the gallery of channels and select Soundcloud. Click activate and then click connect when the popup with your Soundcloud account appears. Select the trigger that says New track from search. Finally type in a general search term and click create trigger, but we’re not done yet. We’re going to quickly set up the web property for your idea and then finish creating the recipe.
2. Setting up your front end. Create a new account with Tumblr using your new email. Create a tumblelog filling out the name and other details. Open your tumblelog in another tab and click the customize button in the top right corner. The side bar will open on the left with a number of options that you can customize later. For now you’ll select the browse themes link, select the drop down that says free themes and then find the one called Quite Big. It looks like a nicer version of Reddit and Hacker News. It’s missing some features like search, likes, comments, etc. There are other themes that have them and will allow you to go wild. For now you won’t have it but if users ask for those features you’ll be able to implement them with a few clicks. Switch back to IFTTT and select the THAT in light blue. Scroll through the channel gallery and select Tumblr. You’re going to activate your Tumblr account like you did for your Soundcloud account. Click next and then select the action titled Create an audio post from a url. Next IFTTT will show you the “code” for the recipe. If you understand data-src from front end javascript frameworks go ahead and make any changes you like. For everyone else click next and then click create recipe.
3. Setting up your social component. Now at this point you’ve got your product concept finished and ready to show to friends, family and fellow enthusiasts. Like the example I have here. However a real startup idea should scale and that’s where Twitter comes in. Using your email that you made for this tutorial create a new Twitter account. During the setup phases search for popular Twitter users that are related to your idea. There’s a really cool feature that Twitter has which recommends users similar Twitter feeds based on who follows said feeds. What ends up happening is that a smart startup can grow their user base by simply following the Twitter accounts of all the companies in the same space and Twitter will eventually recommend you to every single one of their followers. Every single one. Start following and wait for the users to roll in. During this time you should be promoting your service and telling people you know to follow you. Finally go into your Tumblr settings and connect your Twitter account so that you automatically share all your posts to Twitter.
4. Branding your product. Most companies and startups live and die by their ability to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This is where branding and design comes in. Simply download two different high quality pictures from The Pattern Library and upload them to your Twitter background and cover art. For your logo create a free watermarked one using Squarespace Logo, download it and then upload it in the logo section of your Twitter profile. Scale up the logo image a bit so that the watermark is no longer visible. Eventually you’ll need a designer and even an entire design team to set you apart from even the best. For now you’re head and shoulders above the other crap out there.
5. On a side note check your recipe activity log. Be careful about the scope of your pull requests. You may run into the problem of spamming your first few Twitter followers and have to make the Soundcloud search more specific. Also you may have to give the Soundcloud API a little nudge and run your recipe every so often. Thankfully this is the case for only a minority of the IFTTT recipe channels.

There you have it. A basic MVP for a curated music service. At this point most of the “heavy” and “technical” work for your prototype is finished. Now that we’re done let’s breakdown what you’ve learned. You’ve figured out how to create an automated service that allows you to make small tweaks really quickly based on user feedback. You’ve done rudimentary API work and connected together free services that cost you nothing to test out the most basic ideas. With just a little time and effort you’ve already got a basic product, which is something that can consume a startup’s time. Most importantly you’ve created a simple prototype for a tech startup with no coding invovled. At all. Congratulations, you’re now officially a honorary Full Stack Web Ninja Social Growth Product Guru!

Now you can go ahead and try out all the different services that IFTTT connects with and make crazy combinations in a few hours. Try and create recipes to include YouTube and Vimeo content into your product as well. The best part is that it costs no money and just a little patience. While I was creating this tutorial I stumbled across this post about this site. They’ve definitely got the right approach of trying to test out their basic idea and premise without going too far down the rabbit hole. Of course this is only the beginning. Getting to the level of being a real business requires a lot more time, effort and learning on your part. At least now there’s no excuse for you to tryout your startup idea.

This is the same exercise I went through when I wanted to test out my idea for Design Starts, an automated job board for design jobs at startups all over the world. While I didn’t include some of the other steps I did, like setting up a Zapier account for more heavy duty recipes (or Zaps as their called) and creating concurrent recipes for handling different content sources, there’s more than enough for you to go experiment and make a ton of little mistakes in search of a big solution. The amazing thing is that absolutely nothing in this exercise is too difficult that a smart kid couldn’t do it by themselves. Absolutely nothing.

So if you know a young kid that has an idea or anyone who doesn’t have a technical background share this with them and give them a chance to try their hand at this startup thing.

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