As I stepped into the Perkins Coie conference room in downtown Seattle, I felt a sudden rush of self-conscientiousness. I was in the minority in a room with about 85% women. This was Startup Weekend Seattle: Women's Edition, a special Startup Weekend event focused on women in technology and entrepreneurship and I was one of a small number of men at this event. I immediately thought "this must be what it feels like for women who come to the majority of startup events that are predominantly male." I normally have no problem engaging in conversation with entrepreneurs and engineers, but this felt different. My mind flooded with questions. Would I be the annoying guy who came to participate in this women's event? Would I say something stupid and embarrass myself?
Walking through the room, I eased up a bit when I ran into someone I had met in the street only a few minutes prior, where I had helped her get a handle on parking in Seattle. She was a business professor teaching in southern Asia, who had just arrived from a Startup Weekend event in Australia. It was fascinating to hear about her experience teaching outside the United States and her thoughts about entrepreneurship. I moved on, a bit more comfortable with myself, shortly joining a conversation with a pair of women who had been exchanging backgrounds. I tried to learn more about them and told them a bit about myself. And with that, my fears came true - complete disinterest in speaking with me. One of the women excused herself right away and the other was fairly quick to distance herself conversationally. It's funny how this would go nearly unnoticed in the circumstances I'm used to, but how in this situation it felt incredibly acute. Fortunately, I then ran into a friend, Irena Menn, with whom conversation helped me to regain my composure.
Transitioning into the event kickoff, we all took seats as Julie Sandler of Madrona Vetnures and Shauna Causey of Decide.com, introduced us to the event and laid out what to expect from the weekend. Dalia Al Said followed with an inspiring story of her involvement in entrepreneurship in Egypt and how she organized the country's first-ever Startup Weekend. Next came Dawn Lepore, CEO of drugstore.com and one of the top businesswomen in America. These were remarkable speakers and I hope we'll continue to see such exceptional female leaders inspiring us in this way.
After hearing some fantastic pitches, we broke out and formed teams. With discussions ensuing, I quickly noticed that the style of communication and interaction was markedly different from what I was used to. Rather than giving quick bios and jumping into tasks involved in putting the project together, the team and I spent more time getting to know one another through casual conversation. I found it interesting how conscientious I was about this and how deliberately I had to resist the urge to push things forward prematurely.
The team and I shared some incredible experiences and it was really amazing getting to know my five female partners over the course of the weekend. Highlights for me included going out to the Pike Place Market to interview people in our target market, trekking around town for hours looking for a color inkjet printer to make iron-on t-shirts, seeing the pitch deck come together, and really getting to know the others over lunch. The exceptional ladies I worked with included Adriana Moscatelli, Bonnie Mattson, Karmin Mauritz, Hema Natarajan, and Nnenna John. Each was smart, fun to work with, and brought valuable unique skills and experience to the team. And most fortunate for me, they were completely accepting and kind to the "odd man out".
Something that always shines during Startup Weekend events is the mentors, and this was no exception. In fact, I would say the things were really stepped up a notch for this event with lots of leaders and great role models coming out to show their support. Kate Matsudaira made a critical contribution, giving us some early advice as the first mentor we talked to and setting us down the right path from the outset. We also got valuable advice from Janis Machala, Susan Sigl, and Jean Brittingham. And special shout-outs go to Bob Crimmins and Julie Sandler, each of whom spoke with us multiple times throughout the weekend to provide feedback and to help us refine our pitch.
As the weekend wrapped up, Adriana delivered a flawless pitch despite fretting over it during the run-up to our allotted time. As we waited for the results, the team was beaming with anticipation. At that moment, I distinctly recalled my first couple of Startup Weekend events and the uncontrollable excitement right before hearing who the judges had deemed "winners". I had decided to participate in this event to experience the diversity and to meet people who I hadn't had to opportunity to meet at typical startup and tech events. Although we didn't end up placing among the top three, I got so much more out of the weekend, even with the high expectations I had going into it, that I was nothing less than ecstatic. Though my teammates were disappointed with the results, we nonetheless regrouped in a mini-celebration, donning our custom-made t-shirts and sharing hugs before heading home for some much-needed sleep.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Lean Life
With all the thinking I've been doing about the lean methodology, I had a very interesting thought about life.
Consider that the "runway" a startup has is now defined as the number of build-measure-learn cycles founders can iterate through before having to give up on the company. The faster the iterations, the longer a company's runway. Thus, we are no longer defining a company's runway as time-dependent, but instead as cycle-dependent. This means founders with little time can still have a decent runway. It also means that founders with a lot of time can have very short runways. It all depends on the way in which they address progression.
So what if we stop thinking about life as being defined by time? What if we start thinking in terms of act-assess-learn cycles? Age would no longer matter and what we really care about is the number of times we can accomplish something and learn from it. It seems reasonable to ask what happens to the long, ambitious life goals? Well, just as build-measure-learn doesn't replace a company's vision, act-assess-learn doesn't replace having short and long-term goals. In fact, it makes it more likely that we'll reach our grand goals since we are taking short, measurable steps that result in verifiable progress and help push a flywheel that builds momentum off our experience.
In the act-assess-learn model, maximizing the number of cycles maximizes the length of our lives. What exactly does this mean? It means we have more control over our lives than we did when we measured them purely in units of time. It means we have to focus more on value and less on a ticking clock. It means we maximize the satisfaction we get out of life, satisfaction of course depending on the individual's values.
Consider that the "runway" a startup has is now defined as the number of build-measure-learn cycles founders can iterate through before having to give up on the company. The faster the iterations, the longer a company's runway. Thus, we are no longer defining a company's runway as time-dependent, but instead as cycle-dependent. This means founders with little time can still have a decent runway. It also means that founders with a lot of time can have very short runways. It all depends on the way in which they address progression.
So what if we stop thinking about life as being defined by time? What if we start thinking in terms of act-assess-learn cycles? Age would no longer matter and what we really care about is the number of times we can accomplish something and learn from it. It seems reasonable to ask what happens to the long, ambitious life goals? Well, just as build-measure-learn doesn't replace a company's vision, act-assess-learn doesn't replace having short and long-term goals. In fact, it makes it more likely that we'll reach our grand goals since we are taking short, measurable steps that result in verifiable progress and help push a flywheel that builds momentum off our experience.
In the act-assess-learn model, maximizing the number of cycles maximizes the length of our lives. What exactly does this mean? It means we have more control over our lives than we did when we measured them purely in units of time. It means we have to focus more on value and less on a ticking clock. It means we maximize the satisfaction we get out of life, satisfaction of course depending on the individual's values.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Lean Startup Machine Day 3
Strap yourself in... this is a bumpy one.
Yesterday night, we deployed a website late in the evening to test our hypothesis that experienced developers would sign up for an event where they'd work with startups on weekend-long projects to give both parties a chance to better evaluate one another. We wanted to try to get 20 experienced developers to sign up for the event by 10 am. The site was up and running quickly and we sought ways to promote it. Then came a huge mistake that we won't ever repeat and which we will share with others so they don't repeat it. After a verbal sign-off from someone we thought was associated with a particular brand, we added that brand's logo to our site to entice potential participants to sign up based on brand recognition. Looking back, it's hard to say why didn't further checks our facts before pulling the trigger. We really got caught up in the moment and let it blind us.
As today morning came around, we ramped up our marketing effort. We promoted as much as we could with a goal of hitting our target. In the end, we didn't make the bar and went back to analyze our next move. At this point, we realized that we had skipped a step by not interviewing developers first and finding out what their needs were. So our next hypothesis to test was that developers wanted to learn about and work at startups. But that's not nearly as noteworthy as what happened next.
I believe around 10:30am, we received a cease and desist call from the legal counsel of the company whose logo we had used. We immediately took the site down and started working on an apology to the involved parties. We knew we had messed up and wanted to do our best to undo any potential harm we had done to a brand we love. The right thing to do was to be open, honest, and sincere.
The ironic thing is that we probably would have had success if we had reached out to the company or a similar one through official channels to request a partnership. The test was also invalid since the result was driven by something we didn't have proper authorization to use and that would be difficult to replicate.
Before doing something, ask yourself whether you have checked all the facts appropriately. Use your good judgement and don't let your excitement or eagerness allow you to jump the gun. It's really just common sense.
This was a major failure, but we certainly learned from it. One thing I can assure you is that we will never make this mistake again. Our future judgements will be much better and we will share this experience with others to make sure they can learn from our mistake and won't repeat it.
Our sincerest apologies to everyone involved.
Yesterday night, we deployed a website late in the evening to test our hypothesis that experienced developers would sign up for an event where they'd work with startups on weekend-long projects to give both parties a chance to better evaluate one another. We wanted to try to get 20 experienced developers to sign up for the event by 10 am. The site was up and running quickly and we sought ways to promote it. Then came a huge mistake that we won't ever repeat and which we will share with others so they don't repeat it. After a verbal sign-off from someone we thought was associated with a particular brand, we added that brand's logo to our site to entice potential participants to sign up based on brand recognition. Looking back, it's hard to say why didn't further checks our facts before pulling the trigger. We really got caught up in the moment and let it blind us.
As today morning came around, we ramped up our marketing effort. We promoted as much as we could with a goal of hitting our target. In the end, we didn't make the bar and went back to analyze our next move. At this point, we realized that we had skipped a step by not interviewing developers first and finding out what their needs were. So our next hypothesis to test was that developers wanted to learn about and work at startups. But that's not nearly as noteworthy as what happened next.
I believe around 10:30am, we received a cease and desist call from the legal counsel of the company whose logo we had used. We immediately took the site down and started working on an apology to the involved parties. We knew we had messed up and wanted to do our best to undo any potential harm we had done to a brand we love. The right thing to do was to be open, honest, and sincere.
The ironic thing is that we probably would have had success if we had reached out to the company or a similar one through official channels to request a partnership. The test was also invalid since the result was driven by something we didn't have proper authorization to use and that would be difficult to replicate.
Before doing something, ask yourself whether you have checked all the facts appropriately. Use your good judgement and don't let your excitement or eagerness allow you to jump the gun. It's really just common sense.
This was a major failure, but we certainly learned from it. One thing I can assure you is that we will never make this mistake again. Our future judgements will be much better and we will share this experience with others to make sure they can learn from our mistake and won't repeat it.
Our sincerest apologies to everyone involved.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Lean Startup Machine Day 2
Day 2 of Learn Startup Machine was another learning-packed day. Seriously, the mentorship is just outstanding. My team got an early start reviewing our learning hypothesis canvas (I really need to find a picture to link too...), our riskiest assumption, our validation metric, etc. After that, we immediately went to work making phone calls and doing a few in-person interviews with startups who hire software developers.
In our interviews, we tried to keep the conversations high-level so the interviewee could surface the issues that were really important to them. We generally started by asking whether they had ever made a hiring decision that they regretted later. It was really interesting to see the diversity of responses here. We really thought this would be a sure-fire "yes" all around. However, we got a lot of negative responses early on. A number of folks responded that they had never regretted a hire and demonstrated that they had extremely tight filters. Our criteria for passing validation was that 6 of 10 hiring managers had to indicate that culture was a top problem in hiring. We ended up with 11 interviews and 4 negatives, so the assumption was validated, but barely.
Although our assumption had been validated, we had to make adjustments to our hypothesis since we started with a very vague notion of what we were after and after our interviews, we had a ton of information. In the commonalities among the many interviews, we found that startups hiring technical talent have trouble ensuring that the candidates that fill their pipelines are high quality. We modified our canvas, got some feedback, and started on our next experiment. I can't share the next experiment yet because it would ruin it. However, I'll post more info later.
Before wrapping up, I have to say that I've been really pleased with the talks. Adam Berk is the lead on running everything and has been doing a stupendous job. He's given us a ton of feedback and kept the 9 teams on track. John Sechrest, who everybody loves, has also been around the entire time giving great advice at every opportunity. Patrick Vlaskovitz, Clint Nelson, Irina Menn, Bob Crimmins, and Charlie Kindel all gave really informative talks and spent time mentoring. All these folks supporting Lean Startup Machine are what makes Seattle an awesome place to start a company and they all have my deep appreciation for their commitment to the community.
Tomorrow is the last day and I'm eager to get to it! But first some much needed sleep...
In our interviews, we tried to keep the conversations high-level so the interviewee could surface the issues that were really important to them. We generally started by asking whether they had ever made a hiring decision that they regretted later. It was really interesting to see the diversity of responses here. We really thought this would be a sure-fire "yes" all around. However, we got a lot of negative responses early on. A number of folks responded that they had never regretted a hire and demonstrated that they had extremely tight filters. Our criteria for passing validation was that 6 of 10 hiring managers had to indicate that culture was a top problem in hiring. We ended up with 11 interviews and 4 negatives, so the assumption was validated, but barely.
Although our assumption had been validated, we had to make adjustments to our hypothesis since we started with a very vague notion of what we were after and after our interviews, we had a ton of information. In the commonalities among the many interviews, we found that startups hiring technical talent have trouble ensuring that the candidates that fill their pipelines are high quality. We modified our canvas, got some feedback, and started on our next experiment. I can't share the next experiment yet because it would ruin it. However, I'll post more info later.
Before wrapping up, I have to say that I've been really pleased with the talks. Adam Berk is the lead on running everything and has been doing a stupendous job. He's given us a ton of feedback and kept the 9 teams on track. John Sechrest, who everybody loves, has also been around the entire time giving great advice at every opportunity. Patrick Vlaskovitz, Clint Nelson, Irina Menn, Bob Crimmins, and Charlie Kindel all gave really informative talks and spent time mentoring. All these folks supporting Lean Startup Machine are what makes Seattle an awesome place to start a company and they all have my deep appreciation for their commitment to the community.
Tomorrow is the last day and I'm eager to get to it! But first some much needed sleep...
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Lean Startup Machine Day 1
I might just be addicted to hackathons. It seems I may have a bent towards building businesses over the course of a weekend. The latest is Lean Startup Machine, which focuses on early-stage customer development. Basically, I wasn't planning on going until Justin Wilcox, the brilliant guy behind the Customer Dev Labs blog convinced me. After the first night, I can say I am incredibly glad I am attending.
Earlier on I had thought Lean Startup Machine was going to be similar to Startup Weekend, which I've attended several times. However, I've found it to be quite different and a whole new learning experience. First, there's more structure. This is a huge value. We are given a framework to guide us and experienced mentors actively engage with us when we get stuck. The mentor-to-participant ratio is quite high, which is really fantastic. Second, it focuses on earlier stages of the process of customer development. The process is generally aided by the "Validated Learning Canvas", a great tool for honing in on key assumptions and testing them. Third... well, I could go one, but that's enough for now. Check out the website for more info.
So the night started out with some networking, which was fun since I met a number of new people and connected with a bunch of people I know from Seattle's startup scene. Shortly after an intro to the weekend, we jumped into pitches. I had planned to pitch since I will never be satisfied with my public speaking skills, but I hadn't put a lot of thought into what I wanted to go after. In the end, I decided to pitch a problem that really frustrates me - the fact that it's impossible to know what it's like to work with someone until you've worked with them.
To my surprise, this idea was picked as one of 5 that teams would form around for the weekend (there were also 4 pre-formed teams from the recent Angel Hack event). Actually, it was the problem that was picked since I really just presented the problem and didn't try to identify a solution. Then team formation kicked off and I was really excited when Justin and a good friend, Anupam, wanted to team up to work on this. Two new friends, Jim and Anthony, also joined. We had also had Arun Kumar, founder and CEO of Kerika and an avid member of TiE, join us, but after being told that there was a strict 5-person limit on team size, Arun generously volunteered to switch to a smaller team.
We spent the remainder of our time ramping up for our initial tests using the Validated Learning Canvas and even got in a few interviews with folks around the room. This team works really well together and I'm looking forward to learning and working with them throughout the weekend! I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of this awesome group!
Earlier on I had thought Lean Startup Machine was going to be similar to Startup Weekend, which I've attended several times. However, I've found it to be quite different and a whole new learning experience. First, there's more structure. This is a huge value. We are given a framework to guide us and experienced mentors actively engage with us when we get stuck. The mentor-to-participant ratio is quite high, which is really fantastic. Second, it focuses on earlier stages of the process of customer development. The process is generally aided by the "Validated Learning Canvas", a great tool for honing in on key assumptions and testing them. Third... well, I could go one, but that's enough for now. Check out the website for more info.
So the night started out with some networking, which was fun since I met a number of new people and connected with a bunch of people I know from Seattle's startup scene. Shortly after an intro to the weekend, we jumped into pitches. I had planned to pitch since I will never be satisfied with my public speaking skills, but I hadn't put a lot of thought into what I wanted to go after. In the end, I decided to pitch a problem that really frustrates me - the fact that it's impossible to know what it's like to work with someone until you've worked with them.
To my surprise, this idea was picked as one of 5 that teams would form around for the weekend (there were also 4 pre-formed teams from the recent Angel Hack event). Actually, it was the problem that was picked since I really just presented the problem and didn't try to identify a solution. Then team formation kicked off and I was really excited when Justin and a good friend, Anupam, wanted to team up to work on this. Two new friends, Jim and Anthony, also joined. We had also had Arun Kumar, founder and CEO of Kerika and an avid member of TiE, join us, but after being told that there was a strict 5-person limit on team size, Arun generously volunteered to switch to a smaller team.
We spent the remainder of our time ramping up for our initial tests using the Validated Learning Canvas and even got in a few interviews with folks around the room. This team works really well together and I'm looking forward to learning and working with them throughout the weekend! I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of this awesome group!
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Startup Weekend Seattle Day 3
Today was the final day of Startup Weekend and we dove right in, furiously researching our competition and doing market sizing analysis. The site was coming together very nicely and much of the day was spent working out bugs. Because the site was so far along, we had time to get some feedback from a designer on another team, which helped improve the look.
Since we had to prepare for pitches we ended up spending a lot of time putting the pitch deck together. This was a major challenge. Everyone had a different idea of what it should look like and the truth was that there were too many cooks in the kitchen. As the deck went back and forth and became more and more discontinuous, I became more and more frustrated with the direction things were going. Finally, I took a step back and said just one of us needs to own the deck and the others should be constrained to only giving feedback. The owner would be in charge of deciding whether and how to integrate feedback and would have the option of leaving it out. I didn't care whether this person would be me or someone else. I just wanted us to have the right information and to present a consistent story that flowed well. Cy took the lead on this and the rest of us continued working on gathering supporting data to include as well as giving feedback as the various slides came together.
I had a pleasant surprise about halfway through the day when I was talking with someone from another team. The team had started out building "a network for the 1%" and had pivoted into the exact idea I had pitched on the first night. I was glad to see someone working on this problem.
As pitches and judging kicked off, things got started with a great pitch from a 6-year-old for washable stickers. It's amazing how confident he was. When I was that age, I was incredibly shy. I still am, to be honest, but have gradually developed my confidence over time. I was super impressed and excited to see this future superstar entrepreneur.
Our pitch went great. The anti-climatic conclusion is that we didn't place in the top three. However, we did get great feedback from the judges afterwards. They liked the idea, but felt that there were technical challenges that were critical to the success of the business that we didn't solve. They admitted that it probably wouldn't have been possible to have solved them in the course of a weekend, but that's just how judging these kinds of things goes. Something else they felt came up short was that others had attempted to do what we were doing in the past and had failed. They felt we hadn't made a big enough leap to have a shot at escaping the same fate.
All in all, another great weekend of learning! While I'm sure I'll attend more Startup Weekends in the future, I'm really itching to do something over a longer duration where I can get more depth of experience and see the project through to growth or termination.
Since we had to prepare for pitches we ended up spending a lot of time putting the pitch deck together. This was a major challenge. Everyone had a different idea of what it should look like and the truth was that there were too many cooks in the kitchen. As the deck went back and forth and became more and more discontinuous, I became more and more frustrated with the direction things were going. Finally, I took a step back and said just one of us needs to own the deck and the others should be constrained to only giving feedback. The owner would be in charge of deciding whether and how to integrate feedback and would have the option of leaving it out. I didn't care whether this person would be me or someone else. I just wanted us to have the right information and to present a consistent story that flowed well. Cy took the lead on this and the rest of us continued working on gathering supporting data to include as well as giving feedback as the various slides came together.
I had a pleasant surprise about halfway through the day when I was talking with someone from another team. The team had started out building "a network for the 1%" and had pivoted into the exact idea I had pitched on the first night. I was glad to see someone working on this problem.
As pitches and judging kicked off, things got started with a great pitch from a 6-year-old for washable stickers. It's amazing how confident he was. When I was that age, I was incredibly shy. I still am, to be honest, but have gradually developed my confidence over time. I was super impressed and excited to see this future superstar entrepreneur.
Our pitch went great. The anti-climatic conclusion is that we didn't place in the top three. However, we did get great feedback from the judges afterwards. They liked the idea, but felt that there were technical challenges that were critical to the success of the business that we didn't solve. They admitted that it probably wouldn't have been possible to have solved them in the course of a weekend, but that's just how judging these kinds of things goes. Something else they felt came up short was that others had attempted to do what we were doing in the past and had failed. They felt we hadn't made a big enough leap to have a shot at escaping the same fate.
All in all, another great weekend of learning! While I'm sure I'll attend more Startup Weekends in the future, I'm really itching to do something over a longer duration where I can get more depth of experience and see the project through to growth or termination.
Startup Weekend Seattle Day 2
Today I got a shotgun lesson in surveying potential customers. Last startup weekend, my team and I blasted friends and family with requests for survey responses. This resulted in around 40 responses. My goal this time around was to increase the number of responses by a significant amount, do a better job validating the assumptions in our business model, and avoid spamming friends.
To start out, we took a close look at the various elements of our business model and identified the key assumptions that enabled the business. Based on these, we clarified what we wanted to learn from our study, came up with a set of questions, and created a Google Form to capture the information. As we went back over our initial set of questions, we felt they were too complicated and that the amount of mental energy spent answering them would cause participants to disengage before completing the survey.
After modifying the surveys, we got feedback from the Startup Weekend mentors. We spent some one-on-one time with them walking through the survey and looking for feedback on the questions that were being asked. Interestingly, it was difficult to get this kind of feedback because we found that once someone started reading through the survey, they'd jump into responding to it and it took significant focus to keep the conversation on track and ferret out opinions of the positives and negatives about the questions and structure of the survey itself.
Here's a big lesson we learned. Every mentor we spoke with gave different opinions, frequently with advice that was contradictory to what other mentors had advised. It seems so simple and obvious to say that everyone has a unique opinion, but it's different to actually experience receiving contrary suggestions from smart, experienced practitioners who are trying to help you. As has been said many times elsewhere, it's important to apply the right advice to the right situation and to make one's own decisions. Aside from our own revisions, we additionally revised our survey 3 times based on mentor feedback. After the third time, we took a step back and realized that we had just been churning without making much real progress. What is really important is to understand the feedback mentors are offering and the reasoning behind it. This knowledge can then be applied to the task at hand.
After this realization, we tweaked the survey one last time, and were satisfied that it would help gather the knowledge we sought. Once finally ready, we sent the survey out using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. This was highly effective and at about 5 cents per question, we filled our initial round of 100 responses in about 30 minutes. At this speed, we realized that we had overpaid, but all-in-all it wasn't too expensive anyways. We sought an additional 100 responses and tried pricing them at about 3 cents per question. This worked as well, but took somewhere between 6x and 8x the amount of time to get the same number of responses.
While all of this survey-related learning was going on, two teammates did an amazing job hacking together a prototype through the course of the day using Twitter Bootstrap and CodeIgniter. They actually got a functional site up an running before we wrapped up for the night.
With all our feedback and a functional prototype, things are looking promising!
To start out, we took a close look at the various elements of our business model and identified the key assumptions that enabled the business. Based on these, we clarified what we wanted to learn from our study, came up with a set of questions, and created a Google Form to capture the information. As we went back over our initial set of questions, we felt they were too complicated and that the amount of mental energy spent answering them would cause participants to disengage before completing the survey.
After modifying the surveys, we got feedback from the Startup Weekend mentors. We spent some one-on-one time with them walking through the survey and looking for feedback on the questions that were being asked. Interestingly, it was difficult to get this kind of feedback because we found that once someone started reading through the survey, they'd jump into responding to it and it took significant focus to keep the conversation on track and ferret out opinions of the positives and negatives about the questions and structure of the survey itself.
Here's a big lesson we learned. Every mentor we spoke with gave different opinions, frequently with advice that was contradictory to what other mentors had advised. It seems so simple and obvious to say that everyone has a unique opinion, but it's different to actually experience receiving contrary suggestions from smart, experienced practitioners who are trying to help you. As has been said many times elsewhere, it's important to apply the right advice to the right situation and to make one's own decisions. Aside from our own revisions, we additionally revised our survey 3 times based on mentor feedback. After the third time, we took a step back and realized that we had just been churning without making much real progress. What is really important is to understand the feedback mentors are offering and the reasoning behind it. This knowledge can then be applied to the task at hand.
After this realization, we tweaked the survey one last time, and were satisfied that it would help gather the knowledge we sought. Once finally ready, we sent the survey out using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. This was highly effective and at about 5 cents per question, we filled our initial round of 100 responses in about 30 minutes. At this speed, we realized that we had overpaid, but all-in-all it wasn't too expensive anyways. We sought an additional 100 responses and tried pricing them at about 3 cents per question. This worked as well, but took somewhere between 6x and 8x the amount of time to get the same number of responses.
While all of this survey-related learning was going on, two teammates did an amazing job hacking together a prototype through the course of the day using Twitter Bootstrap and CodeIgniter. They actually got a functional site up an running before we wrapped up for the night.
With all our feedback and a functional prototype, things are looking promising!
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