cyberlaxamana

by Matthew Thurmond Don’t spend months learning to code or looking for a technical co-founder. My interviews with Harvard Business School entrepreneurs and outsourcing industry experts reveal a new playbook for early-stage ventures that replaces the “shut the door and learn to code” ethos with an “outsource early and hire late” strategy. A handful of web-based tools and services are enabling this shift and savvy entrepreneurs are using them to quickly and cheaply bring minimum viable products (MVP) to market. The 5 steps below describe an easier way to create MVPs: 1) Mock it up First things first. What, specifically, do you want to build? If it’s a website, skim similar sites and draw up the main pages with your desired logo. After a few iterations on paper, you should have a general outline. Now use Balsamiq to do a more formal mock-up. The end result will be a shareable pdf that looks like a pencil sketch. 2) Design the graphics & specs Now you want to add color and interactivi...

by Stirling Cox The idea of a product that would enable commuters in a given city to access information on the location of their buses, has been occupying my thoughts since the summer of last year. With a background in Banking and Consulting, what had been bashed into my head through various training programs and countless deals and projects is that you need to be 100% sure of your facts before opening your mouth. As such I was convinced that it was only through significant primary research and presentation that I would ever be able to prove the viability of my idea and start a business. I spent much time during the end of the summer and fall term of EC year researching number of commuters, their habits, Smartphone proliferation, looking at different markets that product could be applied to, producing possible revenue models in Excel, preparing financial statements and fancy PowerPoint slides explaining the business. Years of “bad” entrepreneurial practice had me convinced that I neede...