Many companies invent new products and develop features that they think and hope their customers will use and pay for…and very often, they’re wrong.

After spending months building and perfecting their ideas, only a few of their customers end up using them…that’s a lot of wasted of time, money, and resources.

Not validating  your feature ideas and functionality with your customers BEFORE you code them is probably the most costly mistake you can making.

When you don’t validate and jump straight into coding, you’ll end up building a lot of unnecessary features and functionalities that customers won’t end up using… resulting in a lot of wasted development.

In fact, the cost of not validating has a CASCADING EFFECT.

First, in the development stage, and then, in the sales and marketing stage.

You will spend extra time and money at every stage…possibly for features and functionalities that no one will ever use.

The number one reason why products and features fail to be adopted is not because they couldn’t be built, but because no one wanted them in the first place.

Validation of ideas is VERY necessary and it is not about asking your customers if they like the idea and if they will use it….it’s about listening, learning, and discovering and understanding your customers’ pain points so well ,that you can tailor your solutions to directly solve their needs and pain points, which will result in them much more likely not only to use your products but also to pay for them.

Before you spend a fortune executing your ideas, you should validate and refine them AS you get feedback from your potential customers

It’s not enough to have a good idea. Your idea must solve a painkiller problem.

In this training series, you’ll learn the step-by-step blueprint for how to talk to customers so you can identify Painkiller ideas and the entire framework for conducting customer development or problem interviews….including sample interview and pre-interview questions, sample emails, how to set up the interview schedule, and lots of other tips and tricks.

In module 1, you will have learned how to validate your idea in an iterative process of HYPOTHESES, TEST, LEARN, REVISE.

Now you’re ready to come up with a possible solution, by building a click-through prototype without writing any code! And then refine that solution with customers.

Prototyping is an essential step in the product development process.

Why?

Because prototypes are easier, faster, and cheaper to create than writing code and because they are easy to create, you can use them to uncover potential usability issues and to quickly test multiple solutions with your customers before you implement any specific solution.

Just guessing what solution will resonate with your customers will always result in re-writing code. 

Coding is expensive, re-coding is even more expensive.

In this training series, you’ll learn the entire step-by-step process for creating interactive prototypes, an ideation framework to help you and your team generate ideas, resources for where to find inspiration for your prototypes.

You will also learn the framework for conducting solution interviews, so you can refine your prototypes.

Once you have validated the interactive prototype, you are ready to define, build, and deploy a minimal viable version of the prototype.

The first step to help us define and build a product efficiently is to create Technical Specifications.

Lot’s of entrepreneurs ask me: can’t I just hand over a prototype to developers? Isn’t that enough?

My answer is absolutely not…that’s a recipe for disaster!

A LOT of implementation details are missing from prototypes, and if details are missing it will increase miscommunications and result in costly mistakes and time and budget overruns.

Technical specifications allow you to clearly define and outline your application requirements and your expectations so your technical team will know exactly what needs to be built and how you want them to built it.

Without technical specifications, there are always going to be mistakes, misunderstandings, and miscommunications between you and your developers and even between the developers themselves because everyone will not be on the same page.

In this training series, you’ll learn the different types of technical specifications to provide your developers so they understand exactly what needs to be built and how to build it.

In module 3, you will have learned how to create Technical Specifications to reduce miscommunications with developers.

Now it’s time to pick the right technology solutions to build your MVP.

As a non-technical founder you rely on your tech people to make technology decisions and software recommendations.

But how do you know if what’s being recommended is the best choice?

The only way to know that your tech gurus are guiding you in the right direction is by becoming tech literate!

When you know the “tech jargon”, you’ll be able to
*Better communicate and understand developers

* Ask the right questions and understand why certain technical decisions are being made

* Fully participate in the discussions and not just blindly trust your tech people

Most developers just want to write custom code but very often it is not necessary.

In this training series, you’ll learn a lot of tech jargon and a high level overview of lots of technology tools that will help cut the development time of your application.

In module 4, you will have learned the right tools & technologies that could be used to build the MVP.

Now, you’re going to learn how to determine a budget for the project and then how to determine what your MVP or MVF should be, based on your cost and time constraints.

When it comes to pricing and budgeting, very often entrepreneurs are at the mercy of developers.

There is a huge cost associated with not understanding the estimation process, not knowing and understanding developer’s best practices, and not having cost control mechanisms in place.

If you have no clue what things should cost and are relying on your tech team to estimate things without you understanding the details and knowing developer best practices, I guarantee you are spending more money than you need to. 

Traditionally, you, the entrepreneur, would tell developers what needs to be built and developers would then “estimate” how much it’s going to cost to build it.

And because you don’t understand whether that’s an acceptable cost, you accept the estimate and then figure out how to pay for it.

But let me tell you, you can have the same project estimated to cost $10K and $50K and both estimates could be completely legitimate.  That’s because the details of what and how you build something matters a lot.

If you are following the traditional model of estimation of “tell me how much this is going to cost”, you are almost always building more than you need to and therefore spending more than you need to.

Once you understand what affects development costs, you can actually work within a set budget and determine what and how things should be built based on your cost and time constraints.

In this training series, you’ll learn all the things that affect the cost of development and how to use that information to pick and choose what to build based on your cost and time constraints.

You will also learn the process for how to break up a large project into an MVP, and an agile estimation process that you can use to estimate the cost of the MVP.

In module 5, you will have learned how to determine a budget for the project and what your MVP should be.

Now you’re going to learn how to hire A-player developers that fit into your company culture and if you decided to outsource or off-shore the development, how to ensure that you don’t lose your money.

Having a great idea is not enough.

Whether you’re looking to build an in-house team, an outsourced or off-shore development team, or any combination of that…you must be able to build a great team to execute your idea otherwise you most likely will not be successful.

Not being able to hire great developers that fit into your company culture is by far the most draining and catastrophic mistake a startup can experience.

Every person in a startup is essential and when one is not performing to their full capacity, it creates delays and often times results in the decrease of the entire team’s morale, diminishing everyone’s productivity potential.

And if you are relying on a single developer to do all of the coding for your startup and they are not performing as expected, the results are even more catastrophic, because the developer possess all of the technical knowledge about your application and if they decide to leave or hold you hostage, you might be out of business.

In this training series, you’ll learn my 7 step hiring process that you can use to hire technical people, even as a non-technical person.

You will also learn the framework for creating a culture for your startup and tips and techniques for working with outsourced and offshore development teams.

In module 6, you will have learned how to hire A-player developers that fit into your company culture.

Now you’re ready to learn how to design your MVP.

The design & User Experience can make or break your application.

If you fail to grab a user’s attention and keep them coming back to your app because it’s intuitive and easy to use, your product might not survive for very long.

Consumers now expect a polished and professional look and feel from any application that they use and on top of that, they expect the app to be intuitive and easy to use.

In this training series, you’ll learn the entire design process, how to hire and work with designers effectively, and the best way to hand off designs to developers.

In module 7, you will have learned how to get a great design for your MVP.

Now you’re going to put it all together and learn how manage the coding of your MVP using Agile Project management.

Good project management is absolutely essential because it provides transparency throughout the project so you can detect earlier when things are headed in the wrong direction.

There are two types of project management methodologies, Waterfall & Agile.

In a waterfall project management you make a big plan upfront and then execute it in a liner fashion, hoping there won’t be any changes in the plan.

Agile project management requires us to break the code delivery timeline into shorter periods which are at most 2 weeks.

It allows us to break up a large and unmanageable projects and split them into smaller, more manageable chunks that can be completed quickly…daily, weekly, or within two weeks maximum.

Imagine that!  Working Code every two weeks! 

The magic of agile project management is that if you discover that something is not working how it was intended to, then at least you caught it early…and you can now make the necessary corrections…the mistake didn’t cost you too much time or money and you can get back on track fast.

Coding can be expensive. Re-coding is even more expensive.

In this training series, you’ll learn the different agile project management processes that exist and what agile project management process I think is most appropriate for lean startups.

You’ll learn all the implementation details and you can just copy the exact process or easily adjust it to your preferences and team structure.

You’ll also learn a lot of other techniques and processes to help you deploy code more efficiently.

In module 8, you will have learned how to minimize development mistakes by implementing an Agile Project Management process.

Now you’re going to learn hosting options, security, and scaling techniques so you’re prepared for growth.

The cost of downtime is huge for most businesses. Whether downtime is due to unstable server infrastructure or security breaches, in addition to the actual monetary cost, there is a cost of losing any new users who are met with an error and who probably will never come back.

At the same time, as a lean startup, you don’t want to scale too quickly to ensure that you’re not spending more than you need to.

So many entrepreneurs that I speak to want their apps to scale to thousands of users BEFORE they launch. And they spend thousands of dollars on infrastructure and “extra” coding to ensure that their app can support those users right out of the gate.

It’s wasteful to scale to thousands of users when you don’t have any users or only 100 users and might not get to thousands of active users for another 6 months or even a year.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a plan for scaling.

I’m saying you should have a plan but you just shouldn’t execute that plan until it’s time.

Based on my experience, the areas in your app that you think will need to scale are probably not going to be the areas that will need to scale first…and will result in misplaced effort even for the systems that you know will need to scale.

In this training series, you’ll learn a lot of infrastructure tech jargon, again, in a language that you’ll understand.

You will also learn strategies and tactics for monitoring and anticipating growth, so you don’t waste money scaling too early, but are prepared when growth happens.

In module 9, you will have learned hosting options, security, and scaling techniques so you’re prepared for growth.

Now that you’re product is launched and is in your hands of your customers, you will learn how to test the MVP with actual users using your product.

This is where you will implement all kinds of analytics and start collecting user behavior data and you’re continuing to learn what products and features are actually being used, what features and functionalities are resonating with users and what’s not.

All of these data points will allow you to use data to confidently make improvements to your product.

Data-driven decision-making to improving your product is transformational. Instead of guessing what exact features to focus on to to get more users to use your product, you will have data that will inform you on what next functionality that you should be testing and implementing…preventing you from spending a lot of resources building the wrong things.

In this training series, you’ll learn what type of performance metrics exist and are measurable….what they mean, and the tools you can use to collect and track the metrics.

Do you know every single technology that you currently use in your business and why it was picked?

Have had your developers create accounts for you on different technology platforms?

Do you know the login information for those accounts and have it document somewhere?

Is there someone who is a little too indispensable at your company?

Where would you be if they walked off and where would you be if they got run over by the proverbial bus?

In this training series, you’ll learn the exact steps for documenting knowledge and creating systems in your company to ensure that everyone’s knowledge and perspectives are accessible to everyone else which will make your business less dependent on your employees and reduce the chances of being held “hostage”.

(Value: $149) Included with your TechSpeak tuition.

This bonus is part the Ask A CTO Coaching Program that I also sell separately.

I will be live with you every two weeks where you can ask questions and get feedback and support. I’m going to be on this journey with you.

You can ask your questions in advance and they will be all recorded if you’re not there live with me.

(Value: $194) Included with your TechSpeak tuition.

You will also have access to a slack community where you will be able to connect with other entrepreneurs going through the TechSpeak program and I’m in there all the time answering questions to make sure you’re not stuck.

This is where you can hire me work with you and review any of your plans, your developer's plans, or anything else. The cost for that to my students is $250/hr vs $300/hr to everyone else and there are no retainer minimums.  You can book a session for as little as an hour.