Будни биолога. BrainDiscurso and BrainSelecta proj-s: Hurdles and surprises, present and anticipated
Actually this text appeared as my homework for one of the classes I take, but it is just a perfect fit for my career blog, so I decided to share it (:
Изначально этот текст появился как домашняя работа по одному из моих курсов, но его содержание идеально вписывается в концепцию моего блога, так что решила поделиться.
BrainDiscurso.
One of the most difficult things appeared was the fact that sometimes it is hard to keep up with both business idea development and actual project work, i.e. prototype creation and so on. Probably it is a question of time, but I consider it more to be the question of a team. I realized why so many engineers hire CEO when they launch a startup instead of becoming a CEO themselves. It is very important notation that when creating a team one should consider not only which technical skills will be needed but also who will solve business and management questions. We tried to solve this problem by inviting third member into our team to work mainly in this field.
Also, I learned that it is important to discuss not only hard topics, but also topics you are sure of. For example, for me it was clear that we could offer our product to online English-teaching companies. But when I was explaining this to a person already having a startup, she came up with a brilliant question: why second, third and so on company will want to buy a license for a software which is already bought by their competitors? Yes, we offer unique solution, and the company that will buy it first will receive profit, but what about others? This made me actually to turn my focus to a market where we can spread many copies of our product without creation limits for next buyer (i.e. schools which can just install and use it).
BrainSelecta.
The biggest surprise was that our idea worked, actually. We started it just for fun, but our beta-testers liked it! This is actually drove us to continue work, to develop idea, to implement new solutions. The best thing I learned is that it is better to ask users about what they want instead of wandering in some world of imagination and thinking about what they might want.
Here also the question of skills and a team appeared. First, since we made a really big step forward, it became hard to us two to cope with all work we need, but fortunately third member of a team joined. But again, questions of management remained. This was the project, actually, where I first tried to delegate management function. And it worked! I found a girl who really liked this work, like creating Ganth-charts, keeping up with what is done and what is not and so on.
The main hurdle we experience now (and anticipate it to remain in the future) is the balance between preciseness of a system and individual inquiries. For example, we can offer assistance for a choice whether to go to a university or start working, but we are unable now to assist a choice which university to pick up, because there are so many possible options. We try to solve it by using first) user feedback, i.e. which options they need to be present at our website and second) techniques that can be applied to any choice no matter how unique it is (like offering common criteria evaluation.
Изначально этот текст появился как домашняя работа по одному из моих курсов, но его содержание идеально вписывается в концепцию моего блога, так что решила поделиться.
BrainDiscurso.
One of the most difficult things appeared was the fact that sometimes it is hard to keep up with both business idea development and actual project work, i.e. prototype creation and so on. Probably it is a question of time, but I consider it more to be the question of a team. I realized why so many engineers hire CEO when they launch a startup instead of becoming a CEO themselves. It is very important notation that when creating a team one should consider not only which technical skills will be needed but also who will solve business and management questions. We tried to solve this problem by inviting third member into our team to work mainly in this field.
Also, I learned that it is important to discuss not only hard topics, but also topics you are sure of. For example, for me it was clear that we could offer our product to online English-teaching companies. But when I was explaining this to a person already having a startup, she came up with a brilliant question: why second, third and so on company will want to buy a license for a software which is already bought by their competitors? Yes, we offer unique solution, and the company that will buy it first will receive profit, but what about others? This made me actually to turn my focus to a market where we can spread many copies of our product without creation limits for next buyer (i.e. schools which can just install and use it).
BrainSelecta.
The biggest surprise was that our idea worked, actually. We started it just for fun, but our beta-testers liked it! This is actually drove us to continue work, to develop idea, to implement new solutions. The best thing I learned is that it is better to ask users about what they want instead of wandering in some world of imagination and thinking about what they might want.
Here also the question of skills and a team appeared. First, since we made a really big step forward, it became hard to us two to cope with all work we need, but fortunately third member of a team joined. But again, questions of management remained. This was the project, actually, where I first tried to delegate management function. And it worked! I found a girl who really liked this work, like creating Ganth-charts, keeping up with what is done and what is not and so on.
The main hurdle we experience now (and anticipate it to remain in the future) is the balance between preciseness of a system and individual inquiries. For example, we can offer assistance for a choice whether to go to a university or start working, but we are unable now to assist a choice which university to pick up, because there are so many possible options. We try to solve it by using first) user feedback, i.e. which options they need to be present at our website and second) techniques that can be applied to any choice no matter how unique it is (like offering common criteria evaluation.