Pivots, Processes, Positioning:

Key Decisions In The First 90 Of Building A New Product

Cathy Edwards

What this talk isn’t about:

legal matters

finding a co-founder

hiring a team

getting distribution

non web/mobile companies

A little about me

CTO and co-founder, Chomp

mix of product, engineering and algorithms

mobile background

Australian

@cathye

The 4 rules of early stage product building

Rule 1

Over-Invest In User Research

www.sensible.com

Rule 2

Size The Market

“Mobile app downloads are forecast to soar from 10.7 billion in 2010 to 182.7 billion in

2015, according to a new forecast from International Data Corporation.”

15 billion app downloads on Appleʼs App Store

10 billion app downloads on Googleʼs Android Market

Rule 3

Put Just Enough Process In Place

Minimum viable process

Use version control

Set up commit emails

Donʼt track bugs in email

Have a wiki for documentation

Keywords

Version control: git and github, subversion

Task trackers: Pivotal Tracker, Lighthouse, Fogbugz

Wiki: Google Sites

Rule 4

Know What’s Going On Inside The System

Keywords

Monitoring: nagios

Graphing: munin, cacti, ganglia

Bonus Rule

Just Ship

45 simple rules

1.Over-invest in user research2.Size the market3.Put just enough process in place4.Know whatʼs going on inside the system5.Just ship

Thank you