Disciplined Entrepreneurship Startup Tactics

TACTIC 10Engineering: Transitioning from Product Design to Development

Before onboarding a CTO or engineer, entrepreneurs can build out a preliminary product themselves and use it to generate additional customer feedback.

After validating your market, designing your product, and then testing it, it is time to proceed with an initial build. As a software engineer, I have unfortunately started with this tactic and bypassed the previous nine more than once, only to build a product searching for a business model instead of a business that offers a product. For hardware products there may be additional steps necessary, such as material selection, manufacturing identification, regulatory review, and so on, that need to be completed before or concurrently with this tactic.

Although the most technical of the tactics, day 0 engineering does not necessarily mean writing code or soldering circuit boards. As you transition from a product design to a fully developed product, you won't necessarily need to create the final product that will scale or sit on the shelves at big-box retailers. Instead, remember that you are building your Minimum Viable Business Product (MVBP).

In This Tactic, You Will:

• Determine how you will source technical talent if you do not already have it on your team.
• Build the minimum viable business product using the approach that requires the least amount of technology ...