Continued from: Start-up Series (Part I): What we do for the start-up entrepreneurs that hire us

Last time, we talked a bit about what we do for entrepreneurs that come to us with an idea for a consumer web or mobile start-up. Today, we’ll quickly go through the process we use to get to BETA.

First, it’s important to remember that there are usually two challenges that most startups face when they start building their BETA.

1. Somewhat blurred product vision
2. Limited capital

Having blurred product vision is pretty common. This comes in many shapes and forms. For instance, we often see a fairly decent vision, but a long list of features. Parts of the product may have been worked out, but other key parts, such as the user experience is full of holes. This is OK. It is often the reason why entrepreneurs come to us in the first place.

Having limited capital is a given. Sometimes though, there are also limited resources available as an entrepreneur may not have the time available to put 100% into the startup and often is not familiar with the large work load that comes with starting something from ground up. This is where our process comes in handy.

The basic steps are:

1. Entrepreneur provides all documents to Fabric for review
2. Q&A session with entire team – including product leads, design, experience, marketing, and tech
3. Fabric will produce a high-level estimate (Scope of Work)
4. Entrepreneur Funds Project
5. Definition: Detailed definition is developed for the first release of the product
6. User Experience Design: Wireframes and Functional Specifications
7. UI Design: Making it look great!
8. AJAX (or Flash is you are crazy)
9. Development: Database and Programming
10. Hooking to 3rd parties (most web startups are full of API hooks)
11. Admin Tools and such
12. Deliver website or application on Staging Server
13. Testing & QA
14. Deliver Alpha or BETA website/app to Production Server
15. Deployment: Tell everyone you know about your amazing product!

This is the quick and dirty work flow. In some cases, we have to work hard on concept development while other times it's more a matter of focusing on key user experience challenges. There are two rules we always follow:

Keep it simple and focus on the one thing you have to get right for users

Get your BETA up fast!

Once the BETA is up, we start working on the Product / Market fit, which is really just all about user feedback loops and product iterations. In our experience, this is really the hard part, but it's also the fun part. There's nothing as exciting as getting real people to give you feedback on your invention!

Next time, we’ll look at what kind of documentation we are looking for when we start working with you (hint: it’s not your business plan).

Start-up Series (Part III): Where is your business plan?

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?