Stage 2 – MVP:
If you’ve got this far – you showed the dedication needed to take your startup forwards. This is where you transform from a-someone-with-an-idea to an entrepreneur. Congratulations!
Now we can meet and start working on your project: you may want to try and find a tech co-founder, you may want to outsource the development, or maybe you plan to ‘go extreme’ and learn how to code it yourself.
The first thing you should keep in mind is that you are developing an MVP – a minimal viable product, and not a full-featured product. The purpose of the MVP is to make sure your solution solves the problem you identified, to prove that there’s a market for it, and even to attract investors. It may later on be used as the core of your app and we will add features on top of it, or it may be a mere learning tool we will replace altogether when we are done. Either way, at this stage it has to be very simple, affordable, and… well… minimal but viable.
My part in this stage:
|
✪
| We will decide on metrics we want to measure, to make sure your goals are met.
|
| ✪
|
I will suggest adaptations if your document contains too many features or too few features in a way that prevents or complicates measuring your metrics. The main objective will be to develop something you can afford and will give you as much value as possible.
|
| ✪
|
I will go over your specification document and translate it into a technical document, so the developers will understand what every button does, what they should store in the database, and what statistics should be available for you to measure the metrics. I will also plan the database architecture.
|
| ✪
|
We will discuss the different options and technologies you can use and where to get the right developers for your needs.
|
| ✪
|
I will empower your tech co-founder - if you plan to work with a tech co-founder, we will make sure they have the right skill set and teach them the skills they are lacking. If they don’t have previous experience as a CTO, I will mentor them and help them become one.
|
| ✪
|
You will send the technical document, including the wireframes, to a designer of your choosing (if you need recommendations, I will give you some).
|
| ✪
|
I will give the designer a few pointers, depending on the type of app you are planning to build.
|
| ✪
|
We will make sure you find the right people to develop your MVP – either your own developer or a contracting company or a freelance developer. I will do the technical part of the interview, while you will do the non-technical part. If you have no experience in interviewing – don’t worry, I can give you some advice on this too.
|
| ✪
|
I will brief the developers we found (or you already have) on the technical stuff, go over the technical document with them, and make sure they understood everything.
|
| ✪
|
I will also ask them to give an estimate on how long each part of the app will take to develop, and we will agree on a schedule you are happy with.
|
| ✪
|
I will be in touch with the technical team on a weekly basis while they develop your MVP – spending around 10-20 minutes to make sure everything goes according to plan. If they have any questions or issues, I will answer or involve you in the process.
|
| ✪
|
After talking to them, I will give you a report and explain technical issues if needed. You will be in control of the process throughout.
|
| ✪
|
At the end of the process I will go over the code they sent, as well as the MVP itself, and make sure it is up to the standards we agreed on and has all the features. I will also go over the technical specifications document and make sure the architecture matches.
|
| ✪
|
If needed, I will find the right servers to host your server-side code on, help apply to app stores, and will install everything needed. I will make sure you are part of these processes and have at least a general understanding of what was done.
|
At the end of 3-6 months, you should have a working MVP you are happy with and which suits your requirements.After reading this process, some people will say: “I can do all this without an experienced CTO”. This is when I’ll remind them of the humility I was talking about earlier. Becoming a CTO takes years of learning and gaining experience, and this is why companies compensate them well.
To demonstrate this, try answering these questions without looking them up on Google:
|
✪
|
What is better for your mobile app – a real native development or cross-platform solutions?
|
| ✪
|
Should your technology have a back-end? What technology will you use?
|
| ✪
|
Will you be using a relational database or a NoSQL one?
|
| ✪
|
Should you be using Lazy Load for your app? What are the pros and cons of this method?
|
| ✪
|
Should you write your own authentication mechanism, use an existing one, or use an authentication service?
|
It is true that you can look up everything online, but how do you know what to look up in the first place? The ones above are just a few of the questions that will need to be answered when planning your project – I will present the relevant ones to you, explain what they mean, and help you make the right decision. It’s important to say that I’m not here to make decisions for you, but to give you enough information so you can make them yourself.
I also get people saying: “we’d love to hire your services, but we don’t know if we can afford them”. The sad truth is, if you can’t afford them, you probably won’t be able to afford anything else. An experienced CTO is there to make sure you’re not wasting money on the wrong developers or the wrong features, that your software doesn’t crash after you launched a campaign and you start attracting clients, that you can add features without having to develop the whole software from scratch. So, in the long run (and many time even in the short one), they save you a lot more.
Another replay I sometimes get is “Maybe I should hire my own experienced CTO”, and I’ll say that if you can afford one and still get everything else done – do it. The normal salaries range from around £90k-£110k and more, though I will argue the amount of work they will need to do in the first year or two will not take more than 5-10 monthly hours in the first year or two.