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Starting
A Tech
BUSINESS

The businesspersons’s guide to best practice product development.

Learn the practical skills to:
Create better products and deliverables using Design Thinking
Drive steady, definitive improvement using Lean
Master modern strategy management using the Business Model Canvas
Organize and focus in the face of uncertainty using Customer Development
Align product development with the above using Agile… and more

Alex’s Book deploys decades of the best ideas towards a practical, immediately usable recipe for building technology-based business.
-Tom Kosnik, Professor, Stanford University

 

The Non-Technical Guide to Building a Tech Business

Thinking of starting a technology-enabled business? Or maybe you just want to increase your technology mojo so you can do your job better? You do not need to learn programming to participate in the development ot today’s hottest technologies. But there are a few easy-to-grasp foundation concepts that will help you engage with a technical team. We’ll step through the following key items:

Chapter 01: THE IDEA

How do you know if you have an ideea worth pursuing? How do you take it from good to awesome? Your first step is to confront the critical question of whether you want to look back in twenty years at an idea that likely could have been successful, knowing you did nothing.

Chapter 02: THE STRATEGY

How do you know if you have an ideea worth pursuing? How do you take it from good to awesome? Your first step is to confront the critical question of whether you want to look back in twenty years at an idea that likely could have been successful, knowing you did nothing.

Chapter 03: THE PRODUCT

How do you know if you have an ideea worth pursuing? How do you take it from good to awesome? Your first step is to confront the critical question of whether you want to look back in twenty years at an idea that likely could have been successful, knowing you did nothing.

Chapter 04: THE ARCHITECTURE

How do you avoid wasting money on overbuilding? Leverage today’s best technologies? More than ever, successful high-tech products are pack animals. They leverage complementary products to build their own company’s product, rather than constructing the whole thing from scratch.

Chapter 05: THE TEAM

How do you identify the exact talent you need? Qualify that talent? You can avoid the Magpie of Discord by defining roles, including their skill sets and interdependencies, and building and managing your team accordingly.

Chapter 06: GETTING TO BETA

How do you actually make ‘agile’ techniques work for you? How do you prepare? The reality of delivering high-tech systems is more like regular life: To succeed with any kind of reliability, you need realistic, methodical planning and discipline.

Chapter 07: BETA!

How do you prepare for launch to avoid chaos? How do you make sure you keep learning? With many high-tech businesses, running a strong operation is as important as having great technology.

Chapter 08: SCALING THE BUSINESS

How do you tune and scale a successful recipe? You’ll need to master the currents of your market and point the company in a direction it can pursue without lots of rapid twists and turns.

 

Get more details about the book…

 

 

OVERVIEW

The Non-Technical Guide to Building a Tech Business

Thinking of starting a technology-enabled business? Or maybe you just want to increase your technology mojo so you can do your job better? You do not need to learn programming to participate in the development of today’s hottest technologies. But there are a few easy-to-grasp foundation concepts that will help you engage with a technical team. We’ll step through the following key items:

chapters

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

“Alex’s book deploys decades of the best ideas towards a practical, immediately usable recipe for building technology-based businesses. I particularly liked Alex’s list of challenges entrepreneurs face across the life of the venture, with playful names like The Lawn Gnome of Indolence, The Hydra of Operational Readiness, and The Whale of Scale, to name a few. I also liked the case study that Alex used throughout the book showing exactly how to use the tools in each chapter. This is a big book. But don’t be daunted. It dives into the detail that is missing in most other entrepreneurship books to show you how to do it.” —TOM KOSNIK, Professor, Stanford University

“Some books on high tech flirt with the details, but this one goes all the way. Alex shows how attention to a highly manageable set of specifics dramatically increases the effectiveness of a tech venture.”—JAN LINDNER, former CTO, Sierra Online Games (a division of Vivendi)

“Readers of this book will steer clear of many, many bumps on the road to success.” —SCOTT HOFFPAUIR, CTO, BroadSoft

“Starting a Tech Business is both a primer for first-time entrepreneurs and the book experienced execs should keep handy too.” —MARK VOGL, Executive Director, Bay Area Video Coalition

“Starting a Tech Business does a great job of describing all of the important details required to master startups from a Lean perspective. It also includes practical chapters that you won’t find in other Lean Startup books. If you’re doing a startup, you should definitely add this book to your reading list.” – RICH COLLINS, founder of the Lean Startup Circle & software entrepreneur

Starting a tech company is cheaper and easier than ever before. Starting a Tech Business supplies the tools prospective entrepreneurs and managers need to avoid common pitfalls and succeed in the fast-paced world of high-tech business.

1: THE IDEA

Confront the Lawn Gnome of Indolence to Crystallize Your Idea

Even when you have an idea that’s been percolating, making the decision to go after it isn’t easy. The Lawn Gnome of Indolence stands in the same place every day because he prefers to do nothing. Your first step is to confront the critical question of whether you want to look back in twenty years at an idea that likely could have been successful, knowing you did nothing.

To crystallize your idea, you’ll need to get outside your comfort zone and take the leap of faith that you have an idea worth pursuing. That said, you don’t need to upend your whole life just on blind faith.

This chapter describes techniques to formulate and then quickly and effectively test a new product idea/tech business idea. We look at an example company, Enable Quiz*, and how they can achieve innovation through design thinking. We then perform several tests on the Enable Quiz’s product ideas, identifying assumptions that are critical to its success, and determining what it will take to support those assumptions with validated learning. We’ll close by reviewing different ways you can fund a new business, tightening the linkage between learnings and earning.

This chapter answers the following six questions:

  1. How do you identify a good idea?
  2. How do you reality test a good idea?
  3. How do you define your idea’s footprint?
  4. What platforms are available for launching your tech business?
  5. What are the pros and cons of moonlighters? How do you manage them?
  6. What should you look for in an early beta customer?

* Enable Quiz is a synthetic company based on startup lessons learned across several companies

With your idea fully articulated through the application of design thinking and customer development, you’re ready to move on to planning the iterations you’ll link together on your path to success- see Chapter 2.

2: THE STRATEGY

Saddle the Racehorse of Blind Progress and Avoid Achieving Failure.

Next, you have to saddle the Racehorse of Blind Progress. The Racehorse of Blind Progress charges ahead in the face of evidence it’s headed in the wrong direction. In a startup tech business (whether that’s in a new or existing company), hard work and traditional business planning methods aren’t enough. You’re operating in an environment of uncertainty. You must lay out the business assumptions you need to test and methodically work toward validating them or (and this is the critical part) you must quickly change course if they’re proving invalid.

What does the lean startup business plan look like? This chapter lays out frameworks you can use to structure and reality test your strategy, including practical ways to organize and track your business planning. We’ll also link your work in adjacent chapters to help you create persona based marketing and sales, as well as product design.

This chapter answers the following seven questions:

  1. How do the strategy and tactics for a startup differ from those of an established company?
  2. How do you organize your marketing mix?
  3. How do you reality test your company strategy?
  4. How do catalysts drive change in high-tech, and how do you identify the ones that are relevant to your venture?
  5. How can you use iterative management techniques to manage through uncertainty?
  6. How do you understand and organize around your key profit drivers?
  7. The business model canvas explained- what is it and how do you use it?

With your understanding and work on applying today’s best practices for planning and managing a startup, you’re ready to dive in and design your product for successful implementation- see Chapter 3.

3: THE PRODUCT

Pin the Butterfly of Incoherence to Nail Your Product Design

How do you describe an airplane to someone who’s never seen one? Even a simple product has hundreds if not thousands of facets. The Butterfly of Incoherence flits from one thing to another, failing to provide a coherent product description to the implementation team. Lean product development requires that you have strong direction and organization in your product design. The good news is that a reliable formula exists for creating a good product design.

In this chapter, we review the key steps involved in creating a great product design, and explain what such a design should include. We also explain the Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework, including model view controller examples, which will provide you an important shared concept you can use in working with your development team.

This chapter answers the following nine questions:

  1. What are the best ways to contain product development costs?
  2. What does it mean to be a designer?
  3. Where does good design come from?
  4. How can simple stories become the basis for a great design?
  5. What is the MVC framework? How is the model view controller explained in practical terms?
  6. How do you organize the design of a Model?
  7. How do you organize the design of a View?
  8. How do you organize the design of a Controller?
  9. How does the practice of good design dovetail with lean, iterative management?

Since this chapter offers more technical depth than the previous ones, don’t be put off if you find yourselfneeding to reread sections of it. Also, don’t hesitate to move on to the rest of the material since it’s not necessary to understand all of the chapter’s details to grasp what follows. Once you have your initial ideas and foundation concepts for product design, you’re ready to work out a product-maximizing architecture- see Chapter 4.

4: THE ARCHITECTURE

Unravel the Python of Monolithic Architecture to Refine Your Technology Footprint

Once you’ve designed your product, you need to figure out how to build it. The Python of Monolithic Architecture is a dangerous creature, strangling businesses with overly complex and expensive product implementations. More than ever, successful high-tech products are pack animals. They leverage complementary products to build their own company’s product, rather than constructing the whole thing from scratch. If you build a social game as a stand-alone product on your own website and your competitor builds a similar game on Facebook, who do you think will win more users?

Working from the product design we created in the last chapter, we’ll walk through a best practice architecture using the Enable Quiz example. The trick to formulating a winning product architecture is to build as few of the necessary building blocks as possible.

Once you’ve defined your architecture, you’re often left with a few options on technology tool sets. We’ll review key drivers and traits of today’s leading technologies.

This chapter answers the following eight questions:

  1. What is Industrial Revolution 2.0, and why does it matter?
  2. How do you identify the functional blocks in your architecture?
  3. What are the options for integrating those functional blocks?
  4. How does all this apply to Enable Quiz, our example web application?
  5. What criteria should you use in selecting piece parts for your architecture?
  6. What is open source, and why isn’t it a free lunch?
  7. What’s a programming language, and what are its pros and cons?
  8. What are the pros and cons of the following:
    • Java
    • PHP
    • Ruby
    • .NET

Like Chapter 3 (the product chapter), Chapter 4 has a fair amount of detail. If your technology system is discrete, you may not need to understand all the detail in this chapter. Once you feel you have what you need on architecture, we’ll move on  to how you get the right resources in place to build and operate your product- see Chapter 5.

5: THE TEAM

Dodge the Magpie of Discord to Maintain a Collaborative Work Environment

Once we know what we want to build and how to build it, the most critical item is identifying and aligning the human resources we need. When your team is put together incorrectly, it’s impossible to ignore constant squawking from the Magpie of Discord. You can avoid the Magpie of Discord by defining roles, including their skill sets and interdependencies, and building and managing your team accordingly.

We’ll discuss differences in background, perspective, and personality between engineers and businesspeople. We’ll go through key job roles that Enable Quiz (and most any tech business) needs to fill. As preparation for interviewing potential new hires, we’ll review different personality types common among engineers and how to identify them in an interviewee using selected interview questions. Instead of hiring individual employees or contractors, you may also be considering third-party firms to take on parts of the project. We’ll cover an evaluation framework for third-party development firms. The chapter closes with an overview of the pros and cons of offshoring, and whether offshoring is the right thing for your company.
This chapter answers the following seven questions:

  1. What are stereotypical disconnects between engineers and businesspeople? How can you avoid them?
  2. What key roles and required skill sets are common to most tech businesses?
  3. What are some of the most prevalent personality types among engineers and how do they function in a team?
  4. How do you evaluate new technical hires?
  5. How do you evaluate third-party firms or contractors?
  6. How do you motivate the technical team?
  7. What are the pros and cons of offshoring? How do you determine if and when it’s a good fit?

Once you’ve understood what you want with your team, we’ll review the ‘agile’ approach to product development and how you can get the most out of it in your environment- see Chapter 6.

6: GETTING TO BETA

Discipline the Chihuahua of Unruly Development to Deliver Your Product on Time

Now that we’re ready to build our technology system, we have to confront the Chihuahua of Unruly Development. The Chihuahua runs to and fro, spends a few moments on whatever catches its eye, then moves on. The mythology of high-tech has a genius nerd staying up all night drinking Coca-Cola and the next morning launching a new website to wild acclaim and instant success. The reality of delivering high-tech systems is more like regular life: To succeed with any kind of reliability, you need realistic, methodical planning and discipline.

We’ll review the agile project management framework- it’s history, how it’s different than older “predictive” techniques, and the practicalities of making it work in a startup. Enable Quiz will be developing its system in adaptive, four-week “iterations,” and we’ll review the content of each iteration. We’ll also review successful approaches in critical areas like documentation, systems administration, and quality assurance.
This chapter answers the following seven questions:

  1. What is agile and how do you make it work?
  2. How do you know if it’s working?
  3. What is rapid prototyping? Why is a rapid prototyping model essential for the other practices we’ve reviewed?
  4. How do you organize your system development into discrete iterations?
  5. What are the critical success factors for getting your system to beta?
  6. What are the critical success factors to go from beta to release?

With these agile project management techniques in hand, you’re ready to start developing and look at how you prepare yourself for product launch- see Chapter 7.

7: BETA!

Slay the Hydra of Operational Readiness to Get Your Product Online

Beta is a controlled release of your product to a select set of customers. At this point, you confront an adversary that’s done in more than one technology-enabled business: The Hydra of Operational Readiness. Slice off one head from the Hydra and two appear in its place. Without a formulaic approach to slaying the Hydra, your hard work is unlikely to deliver much in the way of results. With many high-tech businesses, running a strong operation is as important as having great technology. Strong operations start with processes that link the company’s strategic objectives to employees’ daily work.

We’ll describe how to link your strategic objectives to processes you can apply across the organization. Only mbad process design is incompatible with creativity, dynamism, and learning. Good process design will free your organization from lots of wasted time and frustration.

Once you get serious about support, it’s important to classify customer complaints for better early warning on widespread issues. The chapter closes with guidelines on how to categorize and handle customer requests for new features and functionality.

This chapter answers the following four questions:

  1. What is business process design, and how should you use it?
  2. How do you define a process?
  3. How do you create a process inventory?
  4. How do you prepare for rapid response and learning during beta?

Once you’re readied yourself for contact with the market, you’re ready to think about how to tune and scale your validated model- see Chapter 8.

8: SCALING THE BUSINESS

Ride the Whale of Scale to Conquer Your Market

Your final trial is riding the Whale of Scale to conquer your market. To date, your organization has been small and dynamic. Every customer win was a cause for celebration. Riding the Whale of Scale means determining what works and preparing to replicate it on a large scale. You’ll need to master the currents of your market and point the company in a direction it can pursue without lots of rapid twists and turns.

The first step here is understanding your customer ‘‘funnel’’ and finding ways to identify what’s successful and replicate it. We’ll look at how to dissect the key components of the funnel along the lines of a tried and true sales framework that’s over 100 years old. We’ll look at the role of partnerships, and how you can use them to scale the business. Your existing customer segments may not be what will propel you into the mainstream to achieve the ‘‘hockey stick’’ sales curve tech startups covet. We’ll look at the technology adoption lifecycle and how to understand your customer acquisition in that context. Then, we’ll look at how to evaluate customers’ requests for product enhancements. We’ll close with a few litmus tests you can use to assess how well you’ve positioned the company to scale.
This chapter answers the following nine questions:

  1. How do you know if your launch is succeeding?
  2. How do you make it succeed?
  3. How do you identify worthwhile partnerships and make them successful?
  4. Why is focus important, and what does that mean?
  5. How will your customer profiles change as you move into the mainstream market, and what does that mean for your operation?
  6. What is a ‘‘whole product,’’ and how do you define yours?
  7. How do you monitor customer input and issues?
  8. What are post-mortems, and how do you use them effectively?
  9. What are common pitfalls founders encounter as they scale the business?