When’s The Right Time To Show Your Prototype? Brian Gladstein @briangladstein

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@briangladstein •  EVP, Technology Marketing, GYKAntler

•  Specialist in Advocate & Loyalty Marketing

•  2-time entrepreneur

•  Lean Startup Challenge Boston

•  Business Model Generation Meetup

•  Startup Coach

•  Launched dozens of products

•  Stanford MBA, MIT Computer Science

So When’s The Right Time?

Sometimes It’s Too Early To Share An Idea

Prototype circa March 2008 Too early?

Sometimes It’s Too Late

Prototype circa August 2009

Too late?

The idea is born

The concept comes together

The kinks get worked out

The prototype gets useful

The Lifecycle of a Prototype

A prototype is not the thing you are making.

It’s a vehicle to discover why customers want to hire you.

Product-Focused

Customer-Focused

Some of The Wrong Reasons •  Need a pat on the back

•  Want to amaze people

•  Show off tech or design

•  The “a-ha” moment

Don’t Think ‘When’…

•  Prove you can build it

•  Attract a team

•  Attract investors

•  Validate market

•  Get beta customers

•  Scope the project

•  Vet out competition

•  Solidify requirements

… Think ‘Why’

So When’s The Right Time?

When you are far enough

along to take a meaningful

action.

So When’s The Right Time?

When you are far enough

along to take a meaningful

action.

But not so far that you can’t start over.

“Remove any feature, process, or

effort that does not contribute directly to

the learning you seek.”

Eric Ries

The Lean Startup

“Remove any feature, process, or

effort that does not contribute directly to

the learning you seek.”

Eric Ries

The Lean Startup

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Guerilla Fashion Show @maki8383

Create prototypes to answer questions

Hypothesis

Prototype

Data

Desired answer

Question

Experiment

BEWARE…

Avoid perfectionism

Don’t over-simplify

Don’t over-engineer

Hear. Really hear.

Keep users focused on *your* goals

Dispose of properly when its job is done

Guide To Effective Prototyping Step 1: Create a hypothesis & develop an experiment

Step 2: Design the prototype to carry out the experiment

Step 3: Learn from the experiment

Step 4: Save only what you need and throw out the rest

THANK YOU!

Brian Gladstein briang@gykantler.com @briangladstein @GYKAntler