Lean start-ups are like playing a special type of Plinko.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Plinko - see Plinko

In Lean Start-up, the process of building a sustainable business involves two primary types of movement, the test - involving a hypothesis and a testable, actionable metric (Really, the test isn't movement. Instead the action taken as a result of the test is the actual movement. See my post The Anorexic Start-up), and the pivot - a change to a core philosophy about how the product works, who it serves, etc.

Generally, a start-up takes an informed idea - something pre-validated with some level of interest by potential customers and builds an MVP (minimum viable product) to prove that product will build a sustainable business.

The business proves, validates, by testing their MVP against a set of base hypotheses with a set of desired actionable metrics. These base hypotheses are called the leap of faith hypotheses, the ones without which, the product as it is envisioned is doomed to failure.

Should some of those hypotheses prove false, it may be time for an immediate pivot, but that's not the subject of this post.

Once the initial concept is proved viable and their is evidence of some traction, the team begins iterating. During this phase, the team works to improve the product by bringing it more in line with the desired metrics. This is accomplished by creating experiments consisting of a central hypothesis against a set of actionable metrics. E.g. Changing the messaging on page x will result in higher percentage of behavior y. These tests are carefully constructed to ensure the results are verifiable and repeatable - generally by a/b testing.

Eventually these tests start producing diminishing returns. When it becomes clear the ultimate business goal will not be reachable with the given product, it is time for a pivot.

The price is right.

Instead of a ball or round disc, your product is a slinky. It's sitting at the very top of a special Plinko board. That board is design so that instead of pegs, their are platforms just big enough for your slinky to rest on that each pivot around the peg as an axis. When you start iterating, you drop your slinky onto the top platform. It draws out quickly from the start, generating big results. But, as the rear of the slinky starts to compress, so too does your progress towards your goal - a particular metric set at some stage down the Plinko board. Now, for most businesses, you're still not where you want to be and you make the decision to pivot. At this point, the platform rotates, launching your product or decision process in a new direction, allowing you to add value in different ways.

The crux is that YOU are in control of when your platform rotates. If you rotate too soon, you risk losing potential gains, throwing your slinky into a wild swing (banging into other platforms, etc) with no clear path. If you rotate too late, you've let your product stagnate and lose momentum. Just right, and your product moves like, well, a slinky down stairs.

Eventually, you reach your goal.

Or do you?

Most businesses don't end up quite where they imagined they would. On the great Plinko board, there are a lot of different platforms to land on, each a different business model with a different level of success. Remember, your goal is a sustainable business - it just might not be the one you thought.

Recently, entrepreneurial consultant Eric Reis published his book, The Lean Start-up as the culmination of his lean start-up experiences and a summary of the tenets of the lean start-up movement.

Here at Fabric, we've been following our own lean philosophy for years. We advocate Minimum Viable Products (MVP) - I'm still baffled that this is now a “buzz word.” We encourage iterative testable development in small batches. We encourage our clients to change direction when they or their product have hit a wall; in lean, this is called a “pivot.” I like to call repeated pivots “walking”

We're big believers in lean thinking and the lean development framework. Each of its central tenets are both common sense business practices and productive guidelines for building a successful business.

There are dangers lurking in lean.

There is a certain evangelical thread that permeates Eric's book and the Lean community. When I'm faced with evangelism for any system, I immediately grow skeptical. Generally this behavior tends to blind one to the faults in a given system or behavior. This danger lurks in lean development.

Learning for Learning's Sake.

Central to the Lean Start-up belief is that learning is, in and of itself, the goal of building your product. “Our goal in building products is to be able to run experiments that will help us learn how to build a sustainable business” (p201, Reis, The Lean Startup).

Is it really our goal in business to simply learn how to build a business? This message pervades the book; that learning is the ultimate goal. While I appreciate this high minded approach, it is a fundamentally flawed message. Learning is an integral and inseparable component, but a step on the path nonetheless. The goal of your product is to build a sustainable business, not simply to learn how to do so.

I'll venture to guess Reis wants you to build a sustainable business, and that learning is what gets you there. However, that's not how the message is framed. Instead, it seems he's battling bad start-up behavior so strongly, that his message is a little right (or left) of center in an attempt to bring people back to the fold of good business practice. Ironically, this behavior is something he addresses specifically in his book in regards to individual developers and teams.

The book contains one other example of a mis-framed idea - that the experiment is 'movement.' In this context, movement is defined as progress towards your goal. If you assume learning is your goal, then indeed, any experiment that results in learning is progress and hence movement. But, since learning by itself isn't our goal, that it is movement doesn't necessarily follow. Remember, our goal is to build a sustainable business, not to learn. Instead, think of your informed, validated decisions that result from the experiment as movement.

Perhaps I'm splitting hairs. This is, after all, potentially just an issue of semantics. But, there is a simple way to validate: test it. Go up to your potential clients - in our case start-ups and businesses with new products - and ask them if they are in business to learn or to build a successful business. I've done this. Unless your respondent is already a lean evangelist, their answer is universally to build a successful business. Now, follow up by telling that same client they're wrong, that they are in the business of learning. When the client gives you that look - you know, the “you're crazy, did I really hire you” look, you'll have your answer. Of course, don't do this with clients you want to keep… mis-framing scares your clients for no reason.

While it's true that every decision made about a product should be a validated one, the central goal of our business is not to learn. That goal is reserved for academia. Instead, our goal is to build a sustainable business. What we learn along the way is crucial to informing our path to that goal. But we must be careful not to frame learning as the goal itself. Else you risk alienating potential clients who aren't initiated, or falling into the trap of learning for learning's sake.

Remember, we want a lean business, not an anorexic one.

Every day, we answer questions about how we work - our process. While our process has been adopted from our work with start ups, it's a process that has been proven to work with all kinds of digital projects - from small websites to major apps built for global brands.

At Fabric, we use a process that mirrors the “Lean Product Development” methodology. There are several core concepts at the center of this methodology that frames everything we do:

• Identify the hypothesis or assumptions that the client has made about their customers needs, desires, and wants - this is part of our definition work
• Design a test of the most critical (leap of faith) assumptions and execute tests with the least amount of waste possible (Minimum Viable Product)
• Enter into Build, Measure, Learn loops where the goal always is to learn if assumptions are correct by actually putting the product in front of real customers
• Get the first version of the product in front of customers as fast as possible

So, how is this approach different than what we've seen used at most agencies?

• First, most digital agencies spend months in the lab before they put the first version of a product in front of customers
• Second, most of the agencies we've worked with have built their assumptions of what their customers want entirely without actually testing their digital product with real users

(An important note: I'm not saying that they don't perform research or hold focus groups during early stages of product development. I'm saying that most agencies we know spend too much time and too much of your money working in their shop on tons of features that they do not know users want or will use. After 12 weeks, they launch the app or the website with 90% of the budget spent and then realize that users don't use most of the features they built).

What we do is quite different. Fabric sets aside the (often long) feature list in RFP's from clients and identifies the specific assumptions and the core hypothesis that the project is supposed to test. After we define exactly what we want to learn, we enter into a short (as short as possible) loop:

Build > Measure > Learn (return to build)

For each loop, we build the minimum of what we have to build: wireframes, designs, HTML, of dynamic product/forms - to TEST with customers. Only when we have data - either direct customer feedback or metrics do we move forward into the next loop.

Every process, every task, every bit of code we do is entirely focused on learning. We should never design or code anything that does not allow us to learn something. This means we have to always have to clearly define what we want to learn before we build.

While most digital agencies will push you into this linear workflow. (Hey, we used to do that too.)

Phase 1: Define
Phase 2: User Experience
Phase 3: Design
Phase 4: Develop
Phase 5: Test/QA
Phase 6: Deploy

Fabric's teams will go through these steps in fast motion. We compress work into numerous cycles with intent to learn in each cycle. Each cycle of learning should be days not weeks.

Why do we do this?

Because we've found that it is the best way to build outstanding products, websites, and apps that customers will actually use and LOVE.

What's your opinion on this process? Do you think this is the right track for your company?

For the past year, we've spent most of our time focusing on a new path - a new strategy - for Fabric.

Today, we announce (officially!) that we are 100% committed to helping entrepreneurs, brands, and media build new digital products and drive key usage metrics for those products.

So why would a Startup or brand work with Fabric and not just hire it's own team?

It's fairly simple. Most startups or brands that come to have two key challenges:

• They have limited cash and need to bring a new product to market (for testing or raising Seed capital)
• They need an experienced product/technical team with a proven process for Alpha/BETA builds

What we offer is a faster and less costly route to market for those who do not have their full teams in place. We are focused on the first 6 months of the product cycle - taking a product from zero to 100,000 users. Fabric's teams and process is focused on driving key usage metrics from fast learning and rapid product iteration.

At the product development level, we bring:

• Product focused design and engineering teams (2)
• Rapid Product Iteration Process (Lean Startup)
• Advice from experienced entrepreneurs and product designers
• Experience of success and failure
• Large existing code base and tools to speed up development

We know that the most challenging aspect of bringing a new product to market is to get initial traction and drive usage. Therefore, in addition to our Rapid Iterative Product Development Process we also offer go-to-market services for new products and Startups:

• Initial user-acquisition support
• Marketing and social media programs and teams
• Advice and support on core metrics and processes for measuring what matters
• Access to deep network of potential launch partners in most verticals

If you have a new Internet/mobile consumer or SaaS product, we want to talk to you. Right now, the product we build sits within social, mobile, geo-location, and SaaS, but we're open to any project that is utility based and/or is attempting to solve a real problem. Call us!

We are growing fast and looking for a UX/UI in LA. You'll be part of a small team working on web/mobile products for start-ups. You will be involved in all areas of the interactive development process. Your responsibilities will include working directly with clients on brainstorming, ideation, research, creating wireframes, producing complete screens, writing UX specifications, and leading our visual designers through execution. This is a full-time position.
More about you:

• Your experience has taught you that understanding the audience, the market, and the project framework is critical to delivering stand-out work. You're amazing at taking an idea and developing it into something truly special. You know UX and UI inside out and you know when to follow rules and when to break them.
• For years, you've been working in the interactive industry learning and appreciating the value of team work. You can run a project by yourself, but you'd rather collaborate. You communicate as if your life depends on it.
• On past projects, you've been challenged and found ways to deliver quality on time and on budget. You've managed relationships with clients and team members and they have loved working with you.
• You've failed a few times. It's part of the process. You keep pushing and changing and taking it all in stride. You love what you do. You're an advocate for quality and you're uncomfortable when you see work that is not up to your high standards.
• You get along with everyone. It's one of your key strengths. You can speak developer and designer and you know how to translate hard to understand language so that clients instantly get it.

Important experience you have:

• Proven experience working web and mobile products or social networking sites, preferably large-scale, dynamically driven ones.
• Proven experience defining, developing, and documenting UX design and interaction requirements/specifications
• Familiarity with HTML/DHTML, CSS, Javascript and other web technologies and their inherent strengths and limitations as they relate to UX development
• Experience developing UI and interaction pattern libraries is a huge plus.
• A strong portfolio that demonstrates advanced skills in user experience design

If you're looking to switch from advertising/marketing UI work to useful products and have endless passion to bring every day we might be the place for you!

Apply by Resume and 3 URL's to e-mail.

We're looking for a passionate web/mobile app developer with 3+ years of experience and PHP in particular. Straight out of school with raw talent is fine. We are looking for an independent thinker, problem solver, and curious mind. You must be a strong team player looking for a challenge. We offer a casual work environment, flexible hours, nice people, and interesting projects. (We work with start-ups in the areas of geo-location, real-time-web, SaaS, mobile lifestyle, and data aggregation.)

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with design team to find optimal technology solutions
• Assist in delivering accurate project documentation and development specifications
• Design database schemas and databases
• Write clean and structured PHP code
• Work closely with QA Lead through testing/QA phases

Required Skills

• PHP 5
• PostGreSQL/MySQL
• HTML, CSS, XML

Additional preferred qualifications

• Zend Framework
• HTML5
• JavaScript
• Facebook Connect / API’s
• iOS/Android SDK
• Server Tech (BSD/UNIX)

Come on! Call or e-mail us.

Someone just asked me what I'm focused on right now. Answer: I'm mostly focused on social (graph) and geo-location on the consumer side. On app/product, I'm looking at innovation and disruption in transportation, education, health/wellness, and mobile transactions. I think The Locker Project from SF based Singly is interesting. I look at semantic web stuff that impacts transaction, commerce, and mobile/local. Advertisers have a lot of challenges ahead and tool companies that help buyers and sellers connect will have a bright future. There's just so much going on right now - it feels like 1999… but very different in that the opportunities and business models are real, the platforms and networks are established, and we've already told everyone what we will do when you let us (thank you TIVO, Netflix, and Google).

Are you awake?

Entrepreneur? Looking to make a difference? At Fabric, we're looking to solve problems and build useful digital products for people like you. We've shredded our marketing services and now we're 100% focused on product development. It's time we get together, don't you think?

We can help you with…

• Product/Market Fit: Minimum viable product builds for start-ups tackling problems in target verticals (web/mobile Alpha/BETA apps)
• Product development: Pivots and user acquisition strategy and execution
• Creative product and technology support: concept, design, and development services for brands and agencies that have incomplete teams or expertise

Let's do this!

Right now, we're working with several clients who are asking: Should we do a native (iOS or Android) mobile app or a mobile web app in HTML5?

Naturally, you'll always have to consider the business objectives such as experience, speed, and hardware feature advantages of native, but often the final decision comes down to budget. Curiously, we've found that a large portion of iPhone apps could have just been done in HTML5 and reach would have doubled. (I suppose iOS developers made the decision to go with what they know.) There are of course frameworks such as Appcelerator that allows native development and deployment to iOS, Android, and Blackberry, but such frameworks have natural limitations and may not work for your needs or turn out to be too expensive still.

For those of you on the fence, we found this to be a good primer on HTML5 vs Native mobile development. It gives you a fair idea of what the cost vs benefits are and it's a good framework for thinking about your priorities when making this choice.

Happy weekend!

Creative agencies such as advertising and design firms must deliver high-quality sites and apps on aggressive schedules for big brand clients. Unfortunately, agency teams often have limited technical expertise and few engineering resources. Agencies are driven by creative. They have amazing creative, art, and design teams. However, they seldom have deep technology experience and they often lack depth in software development. Driven primarily by creative marketing people, agencies seldom have creative technologists on staff and they struggle with technical documentation, process, and software development discipline.

This is why Fabric are the preferred development partner for agencies when they need to deliver social sites and apps for major brands. We add layers of expertise, skills, and proven execution ability to agencies in need. We've done it for Carmichael Lynch, David & Goliath, and even for interactive agencies such as Rocket XL.

We help agencies with technical expertise, writing functional specifications and UX documentation. We offer integrated development teams and our battle-tested process to deliver large scale social sites, complex API integrations and data aggregation solutions. Custom CMS builds or complete transition or integration of CMS solutions such as Silverstripe, Wordpress, and OneSite.

But most of all, the main reasons agencies hire Fabric is to make sure that important projects are delivered with top quality, on-time, and on-budget. Agencies smile. Clients are happy. That's what you want, right?