This Week’s Project. - 004

So much for weekly, ey?

I’ve been spending my summer working on some larger projects, ones without specific clients at the end of them. It’s the first time I’ve done this and I won’t lie, it feels a bit risky. To keep it on track and avoid distractions I’m trying to think of myself as the end client.

One of those projects has shown quite a bit of promise and has had some interest already from people I’ve shown it to, always positive. Serendipity then saw an email land in my inbox about a new cohort beginning at Tech Seeds, a local startup accelerator.

Do I have a product or a startup?

I recently took part in an All Access Pass Tourism and 5G Accelerator organised by Sunderland Software City and it was a great experience, I took an idea from a sketch right the way through to a live demo of a web-based AR display experience. I’m not sure I’d have completed that project if it hadn’t been for the support and deadlines I committed to in that program. If there’s one thing that motivates me, it’s the possibility of letting other people down. But I got a working demo over the line, even if it wasn’t quite up to the quality standards I was after.

In the month after that project across June and July, traditionally quiet months in the advertising industry, I went back to my idea list and picked one to work on while the inbox was having a break. It went together quickly and I managed to produce a demo which seemed to garner quite a bit of enthusiasm from people I showed it to.

So I have a mystery tech product and an invite to a startup accelerator. Could a product be a startup?

I’ve been floating around the edges of the tech startup world for a while, but as I’ve started to drift more towards development and spent less time on art and design direction I’ve been getting increasingly interested in committing to a larger project.

I’ve always had ideas of products I wanted to use that didn’t exist and apps that I wish existed but before the advent of working with AI, there just wasn’t going to be a way for me to get over that technical gap without a significant outlay to hire a developer for a project that might not make any money. My way into all this has been a lot more AR projects with AI handling the code side of things and me the direction, it’s become a really natural (if frustrating at times) way of working. I’m learning more about the technical side of things, with a partner that has endless patience for dumb questions while I have the end product and design in mind to help define in detail what it is I want to build. Don’t call it vibe-coding, call it…. Something else please. That term sucks.

Lean Canvas

So the startup program, Tech Seeds, is run by a local guy called Mark Gardner, who’s been involved in many startups over the years and is focused around bringing in people with real experience in the startup world to work alongside us. That program set up appealed to me as hearing from people with real-life experience is just so much more valuable than being lectured at. Our first session was around Lean Canvas and defining our businesses on a single page. Not an exercise I’ve ever encountered before. I found it to be a really valuable first step, getting a business idea down on paper. Defining things clearly is great for focusing on what you actually need to be doing.

Check out the image above for what a Lean Canvas looks like.

There are 5 more weeks of this, during which we’ll have a crash course in product development, marketing, finance and funding. I’m not a natural at this side of a business, my skill lies in product, but I’m genuinely excited to learn from people who’ve done this before and been successful. Learning new things is the best.

Have a great week,

Liam

✌🏼

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💡 This Week’s Idea

Trading your time for money is not scalable.

I’ve seen this observation in a lot of places, but I think I first encountered it in the Tim Ferriss book The 4-Hour Work Week. It’s been coming back to me a lot this week as I think about how wise it is for me to be spending my time on building products rather than working on campaigns.

Let’s hope it’s a popular idea for a reason.

🎵 This Week’s Soundtrack

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NTS on Youtube. Or just NTS in general.

I’ve been going through all of the NTS mixes on YouTube as I’ve been working this week. NTS is a primarily online radio station and they have absolutely top-tier taste. One of their formats is specific genre mixes and I recently discovered they’ve started making these available on YouTube. So liven up what you listen to, why not give them a spin this week?

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