Oliver Kraus

A CTO’s View of the Startup Process

A guide for non-tech founders

Stage 1 – Pre-MVP:

You should:

✪	Write down the idea and compose a basic pitch - a nice little story of how your idea and its implementation (let’s say an app) will change the world and what features it will include. Tell it to friends and family and document their reaction. Process the feedback you receive: add ideas that you thought were good and pitch it again, to other people.
✪	Create a list of every page your app will have, and remember to include menus, login, registration, and statistic pages. If you plan a mobile app and a web app, do the same for both.
✪	Create a basic specifications document - Take the list you created and make each page a headline. Under each headline start specifying what elements the page will contain – each button, text field, graph, picture and label.
✪	Create wireframes – go over the specification document and create wireframes of all the pages you specified. You can use Mockflow, Pencil, Balsamiq, Sketch and many other tools. Wireframes are a visual representation of the pages – every button, text field, and other object. You will sometimes see things in the document don’t make sense visually and change them in the wireframe. Don’t forget to also change it in the document. You can hire a UX (user experience) designer to do the wireframes, which will make your first version more user friendly, but remember you have things down the line that are 10 times more important at this stage, so do so only if you have huge sums to spend on the project.
✪	Pitch your idea to as many people as possible, this time while showing them the wireframes. Check if they understand what the app does and which buttons they should press to use different functions.
✪	Get some funding - You will need several thousand pounds to plan your app, to develop it, to do some marketing to get users and show your idea can really have value in real life. I’m not a business adviser or a funding consultant, but people I worked with testify that investors don’t tend to invest in startups that are in such an early stage, and if they do – they will ask for a large equity share. Many people use their own resources or look for early-stage incubators (that will also take large equity stake).

My part in this stage:

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Answering questions via email - if you have any questions while you are in this stage, feel free to email me and ask – I will try my best to help. Keep in mind that there’s a good chance you will need a business adviser more than a CTO. In this case, I will be able to point you the right way too.

➠	Go to the next chapter

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