This is entry #3 to my startup diary. I haven’t written in several weeks. The MBA had some projects to be finished, a day in the Raval, and IESE Meets the Valley took some time too. However I have found some time to spend on my start-up and again made some progress. I did two things; 1) visited a meetup from Barcelona Startups and 2) did some coding.On Saturday May 19th I attended a meetup that brought together founders, techies and investors. The setup of the meeting is one I really like and also once used myself. All the techies / investors line-up on one side of the room. Then the attendees with ideas go meet them and do 4 minute speed dates. As an entrepreneur this gives you the chance to share your idea and find either a “techie” or an investor. However personally, for me the biggest value is not in finding partners, it is the sharing of the idea and the feedback I get.
2-Page Push-ups
The entrepreneurs are required to bring a 2-page executive summary of their idea to the meetup. They use this 2-pager to present their idea and sometimes give it out. Putting your idea in 2 pages alone requires a lot of thinking. The document itself might not seem a lot of work, it is only 2 pages. However, I went through a lot of versions before the event. Also during the discussions I noticed that I used different versions, tag-lines and explanations to communicate my idea. People give suggestions and contacts. I had 6 speed dates and left the event with a lot of ideas and feedback. But I also realized how much I need the prototype.
Non-Coder help
Also during these last couple weeks I have tried to find time to code parts of my prototype. I am getting closer to an invite-only prototype. I learned that the difficulty in coding (on my level 😉 is not so much the syntax, a lot of that can be googled. However the complexity of the logic is more challenging. You need to go through loops, if-else statements and conditions. This is where I received a lot of help from a non-coder. Every time I had a problem I would draw it and we would go through the logic. Usually that would solve the problem. So if you’re developing: get non-coder help!
The progress
So now for the more detailed (technical) progress. Keep in mind that I am not a coder but an MBA student and so if you’re a coder reading this you might not be super impressed. The application I am working on consists of a collection of items displayed in a certain way. I promise that in due time I will upload a video or something, or send a beta invite to anyone interested.
- Fixed a big graphical problem to representation that required conditional margins based on children elements;
- Created an update script that crawls the database to update all items based on the relationships they have with others;
- Finished the delete script; If an item is deleted, all related ones are deleted as well and others are updated;
- Finished the add script; If an item is added, others are updated based on the new information;
- Created a 2-page exec summary.
Next weeks I will have less time… I am trying to get an MVP ready before I go to the Valley but have exams coming up as well 🙁
