Post-mortem guidelines for Garage48 teams
September 09, 2010
Garage48 allows you to turns cool ideas into working products and services just in 48 hours. Teams are formed organically based on 1 minute pitches. The whole process involves lot of surprises and unpredictable. Many people come to Garage48 to have fun, get something ready, boost their motivation and find new contacts. Some people come for building a real business. What happens after the Garage48? Here are few suggestions and guidelines.
1. Set basic rules for team and project
Arrange a team meeting, be open and ask for every team members to describe their plans and commitment about the project. You can call this team members "commitment agreement". Is there a real business potential or is it just a fun project? Which team members are willing to continue working hard? Who would just like to leave, keeping good memories from the fun weekend? Most probably you need 2-3 key people in order to build an early stage startup project? Set specific numeric goals for the first month. Agree on product roadmap and action items. Do a realistic review after a month, decide what's next?2. Intellectual Property and core team
Idea itself has usually little value. The Garage48 project result belongs to the whole team. If you really feel there is business potential, then form an active and skilled core team, who is really ready to work hard. Drop or buy out those team members, who are not actively involved. Don't hesitate, you will loose focus and valuable time. Take actions, stay polite and move on!3. Time flies - just do it!
First 4-6 weeks is the most critical period after Garage48. If your product does not get passionate followers and decent user base, then most likely you are already failed. Don't take it easy, push hard as you did on Garage48. Then you have a chance to build something great.4. Product strategy: Less is more
48 hours is great challenge to keep the focus. You just can't go wrong, otherwise you wouldn't be ready. Keep that in mind in the future. Don't lose your product focus. Develop only the "must have" features, but do those really well. Get your prototype or product out for the users ASAP. Invite your friends and friends of friends. Listen to your users and do not "over develop". 5. Bootstrap and develop the product!
Your goal is to develop the product and please your users. In today's online world, you mostly need passionate team and a great vision. You don't need big money to prove the concept. So start small, launch and develop your product, listen to your users and mentors. Iterate, several times. If you have proven that your product and business model really works, then you might consider looking for additional financing from Enterprise Estonia, angel investors or VC-sFinally, few results from current Garage48 events:
- Tallinn 2010: A Home renovation website iseehitaja.ee. The team planned an exit within a week from launch. They organized free media campaign and listed their project in Osta.ee auction site and the winning offer was 15,750 EEK (1000 EUR)
- Tartu 2010: Social betting website JoinMyBet.com was bought within the 1st week by an external investor. The deal price has not been publicly disclosed, but we guess it was in range of 1000 EUR.
- Tallinn 2010: Kratid.com formed a company in July and they are actively working on manufacturing process. The team has taken focused weekly development efforts to build their product in bootstrapping mode.
- Tallinn 2010: Cocktailroulette.com team set specific revenue goals for the 1st month. As those goals were not met, team decided to drop the project and move on with new ventures.
As you can see, there are positive and negative scenarios. Hopefully those guidelines give you more insight on how to build your project in order to become successful or drop the project with little potential. If you have questions, contact us for advice info@garage48.org.
Keep up the spirit and we will meet already on the next Garage48 events.
Cheers,
Ragnar and Martin
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Comments: 2
Hope to see the Garage Index soon. A "Crunchbase" of Garage48 projects. To see the deadpool and read about the survivors. Keep it up!
Your concept that products can be imagined, designed and functional within a 48-hour window is brilliant! Gone are the days of months of research, planning, programming, testing, meeting and marketing. In today's world it is "GET IT OUT THERE" or GET OUT OF THE WAY! Brilliant work... BRILLIANT!