Your Idea Is Just the Beginning

Congratulations! Many people have great ideas that they never pursue for whatever reason. You, however, are different. This awesome idea of yours has lingered long enough in your mind and you’re now ready to bring it to life. For that, I applaud you and look forward to helping you do just that.

Like many of my my previous clients, you’re very eager to get started, but you might not know what next steps to take especially those that relate to tech/coding/software development. The questions below should help you think about not just the technical aspects of your idea, but also the business ones. Since technology exists to achieve business goals, let’s deal with the tech piece second and first handle the more important of the two:

Business

• What’s your idea?
• How did you come up with it?
• Who would use your product/service (“product”)? More specifically, who are your customers or end-users (“users”) and who are your potential customers?
• What pain points do your users have?
• Do you have folks who could test your product? If not, how could could find some people to test your idea and provide meaningful feedback?
• By when would you want the first version of your product to be done?
• Who are two-three competitors of your product? What makes your idea 10x better?

Technology

• What’s the “look and feel” of your product? In other words, do you have sketches of your product/service, be it pencil drawings, wireframes, mockups, non-functional prototypes, etc.?
• What are the use cases or actions that the users of your product can take?
• In terms of design (i.e. user experience design, user interface design, aesthetic design), are there existing products that you would like to emulate?
• Do you want your idea to be turned into a mobile app or a web/online app? Why?
• What’s the most basic version of your idea that can be built, which, of course, delivers its value proposition to its users? In other words, what does your minimum viable product look like?