Draw On Previous Experience and Understanding – The biggest problem is
startups in search of a problem. Chase what you’re passionate about; you’ll
probably already have knowledge in the space.
Have A Hypothesis About How You’re Different – Have a point of view
about your startup. Why is there a special opportunity for this now?
Never Build Without Sketching – Mike says he and Instagram co-founder
Kevin Systrom would go to a cafe with little iPhone design pads where “we’d
build and throw away entire features. You’d waste three or four pieces of
paper, not three weeks of coding.”
Learn In Weeklong Increments – Start with a question: “Will folks want
to share photos on the go? Can we build filters that look good?” Spend the
week investigating, and by Friday have a conclusion and move on.
Validate In Social Situations – “We called this the Bar Exam. If you
can’t explain it to the guy or girl at the bar, you need to simplify.” Don’t
just test with your techy friends.
Know When It’s Time To Move On – “I know ‘pivot’ has become a dirty
word, but if there’s no unanswered questions left, then it’s time to move
on.”
The Wizard Of Oz Techniques For Social Prototyping – You don’t need to
build everything at first. You can be the man behind the curtain. Krieger
says him and Systrom tested an early version of a feature which would notify
you when friends joined the service. Instead of building it out, they
manually sent people notifications “like a human bot” saying ‘your friend
has joined.’ It turned out not to be useful. “We wrote zero lines of Python,
so we had zero lines to throw away.”
Build And Maintain A Constant Stream Of Communication With Your Audience
– Don’t spend months building something without any idea if someone actually
wants it.
