Regardless if you believe in the whole Lean Startup idea or not, I think it’s just great business advice for understanding that you should always build upon a solid foundation. You want to be really leery of falling into the trap of building “everything but the kitchen sink” type of approaches. Building upon a solid foundation could also really just be replaced with build half a product, not a half-ass one.

Whatever your idea is you have to remember to make sure you have a strong core idea and product vision so you can adhere to what is truly essential. The easy and fun part is coming up with a laundry list of ideas, features, functionality, etc — the hard part is knowing when to say no. Many startups get killed not because their idea was bad, but in part because of scope creep. In the trenches, adding this little thing, or this small thing may not seem that consequential; however, almost every project manager out there would be peeling their face off. If you calculate an aggressive timeline for whatever it is you already had planned to build, but then add in all 20 of those must-have tweaks where did that time come from?

To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions. – Newton’s third law of physics

If you don’t plan for it, it will affect something else. Maybe that means you just don’t sleep for another 4 days right? — That’s a whole different argument.

Make a visual anti-feature list

I don’t mean this literally. I don’t want you to be sitting there for a month just jotting down useless functionality that your product won’t do. Instead, what I mean is try and segment your project by a timeline and then cross reference that with what it’s not supposed to do. Your team (or you, if you’re a team of one) should have a clearly visible list of what they’re reaching toward, and what is out of scope. It will be a hell of a lot easier to notice how damaging those *little* things were going to be if you have them clearly labeled on a white board listed as Anti-features. Doing this will help by making sure communication is flowing smoothly and everyone isn’t building a MVP that’s really a piece of crap. Of course that list you create is really just a record of tasks that you all know you will eventually/probably need to get too asap; however, the goal is to thoughtfully schedule everything in so you can maximize a proper ROI.

It’s really a simple four-step process

• Strengthen your core idea
• Break down time estimates into smaller & smaller chunks
• Work on core foundation and visually table anti-features
• Get feedback and iterate

For those that aren’t completely familiar, Superman is a fictional character. He’s a humanoid alien that has amazing abilities and powers while he isn’t near pieces of his home planet (that was destroyed). I mention this because Superman was indeed just that, super. He didn’t need a team. There wasn’t a need for someone to be the brains, or the muscle. He didn’t need any crafty inventions. He didn’t need anyone but himself to get the job done. *** sure he had friends that helped some of the time, and granted he was with the justus league.. but, he didn’t need to join them.***

Side note.. I never really cared for Superman. Even as a kid, one of the main things that bothered me was at how he seemed to always be in peril. HE’S SUPERMAN! How can people like Batman who have no abilities: no super speed, no powerful hearing or flight always seem to dodge bullets or other obstacles hurled their way — but not Superman. He was always getting hit by bullets, missiles, and always getting injured. It really irritated me.. but I digress.

I am about to tell you some bad news. You my friend, are not superman! Surprising as it may seem, you’re just human. Maybe a super-awesome human, but a human nonetheless. Us humans have limitations, and we can only do so much by ourselves.

One of the toughest lessons I had to learn while working on a few 1-man-team startups of my own, is that although you could theoretically do it alone you shouldn’t. In theory, lets say you have all the bad ass coding skills, design skills, and lets throw in an MBA too — why not. You would be a bonafide superhero, possibly even better than superman (when it comes to startups) yet it is practically impossible to do everything yourself, so stop trying.

In theory it should work — yet in practice it proves the theory wrong

This took forever to drill into myself. Well, sort-of. Although I was constantly looking for a partner &/or team, I really wasn’t looking hard enough. My thought was simple, “why should I?” I’m a proven designer, I know enough to code projects I want to do, and after years of selling other companies products successfully, I know how to market. So I would put a half-ass effort in looking for a team, but the real lesson is that you can’t force entrepreneurism into people that don’t already have the bug and if that’s what you find yourself doing you should stop. You want people on your team which is at a minimum, half energized as you are.

Going back to you not being superman. Here’s the deal, there isn’t enough time in a day. No matter how much of a machine you are, there simply isn’t enough time, and time is your main enemy as an entrepreneur. You’ll blink and then it’s 3 months later. You might be a great salesman and developer, but you’ll have to pick one to focus on to genuinely be efficient. You should be establishing relationships, networking and doing regular biz-dev, however if you’re busy staying up all day and night actually building the product, who’s to know? You don’t want to haphazardly do anything. Everything and anything you do should have as close to 100% of your attention as possible.

If an entrepreneur develops a product in the forrest and no one knows about it, does it make a sound

There are a plethora of smarter people that also agree that at an absolute minimum, there should be two-three of you. However you decide to break up the roles and responsibilities, you all will should always cover more ground than one person.

This is really for the workaholics out there. Even as many of you read this, your probably scoffing and saying to yourself “not me.. I can and will do it by myself!” Maybe so, and if you do I will congratulate you and shake my head in disappointment at the same time. As mentioned before you need to have vision. If you could see yourself making it on your own, imagine what you could have done if there were two, three or more of you. The idea is to learn to think and do things smarter, not harder.

That concept of workeing smarter challenges the workaholics (like myself — I’m not innocent in this either). You/we really need to take a break every now and then. Coming from me this point is almost void, however I will say that I have a very strict system and if you know you have strong work ethic you should too. When you align yourself with a great person or team, you don’t feel as guilty when you actually get some sleep. You won’t need to think there’s not enough progress going into an idea when you take a day off and hang out with friends and family. I get it.

I used to work day and night, going weeks without any real recreation and breaks. Then I met my beautiful and intelligent wife. I immediately realized that I couldn’t keep the same insane work schedule and pursue her at the same time so I had to become much more wiser in the use of my time. In half the time, I would learn to accomplish the same thing. There’s something said about having a finish-line. People tend to push harder when there is a clear defined goal rather than just aimlessly doing something.

Keep this in mind, and really take note of what your doing with all those hours your ‘working’. People tend to get caught up in glorifying how little sleep they got, and how many hours they’ve been working but you don’t have to do that. You can have it all. It is actually quite possible to still have a strong work ethic, or be a workaholic, and still have some down time.

A true testament to maturity and great leadership is a simple fact of understanding that you don’t have to have absolute control over everything and every situation and every little minute detail. Trying to do everything yourself is the exact opposite of this philosophy. If you believe that you have to be in control of every detail in your idea, concept or business you are actually setting yourself up for failure. If you were to dissect many of the great minds of powerful and successful leaders you would see that they thoroughly understood this. They will surround themselves with highly intelligent people — people more knowledgable in specific fields and expertise than themselves. It’s ok to have help, it doesn’t show weakness on yourself, instead it shows a true attestation of knowledge and understanding. Surrounding yourself with intelligent people doesn’t guarantee success, but it will damn sure increase your chances of beating the odds.

As for myself, I want to thank the TripLingo team. We’re an amazing group of individuals ( @onwardly, @w0lver, @prpatel, @iamjamesmartin, @keKatie ); however, as a team we are a serious force to be reckoned with!

So….  you may not be Superman, but who really wants to be that pompous douchebag?

Above is the video of my presentation and slidedeck for the Appcelerator CodeStrong event this year. This presentation will give an overview of some of the many accepted methods of creating a great User Experience on mobile devices. While developing an application for a mobile device, we recognize many of the ‘physical’ differences, ie. a smaller visual real estate, size of text and buttons, etc but we should be cognizant of creating a great experience too.

Designing for mobile devices brings some unique situations and challenges, it requires a strategic approach for the User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) composition.

This presentation will talk about current trends, challenges, tips to take advantage of while working with Titanium.

Application development is no small task. To do it well, companies typically start with a long and meticulous planning process for its development. Even using an “agile & lean” approach, a successful launch often follows a trajectory of build, test, have a beta release so you can conduct usability reviews, correct bug fixes and then wrap-up features.

Not TripLingo.

From our first days we had ambitious plans. In just two days Jesse (our CEO) had us convinced that we could not only take on any and all current language learning companies, but do so with a fresh approach and a better product. During this hurried introduction, he presented to us his
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I do.

Absolutely disgusting & filthy hands.

As an entrepreneur we need to have cat-like reflexes, being able to pivot and make quick decisions with the most minute information if any at all; We need to know everything — marketing, sales, design, development concepts, business finance…. everything.

Sure, you could take out $$$,$$$,$$$.$$ in loans to pay for a more traditional education in every single field possible that will help you make decisions. Or, you can just get your hands dirty and get to work.

When I was younger, my brother and I used to go to some of the houses and buildings my father worked on and help out. For each task my father would explain what we were to do while he simultaneously demonstrated the process, then tell us to get to it. Sure he could have gave us a more thorough explanation, walked through each step with us and guided us through the beginning. Nonetheless, he would always finish with “sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty and figure it out.”

As a father he was doing his duty, teaching us to be men. Simple lessons like this was let us know that everything isn’t going to be handed to us, and sometimes you have to figure it out on your own. You may waste some material at first, as it’s expected. But you will learn and get better. As a bonus you will also have a much stronger sense of accomplishment because of your intimate connection with the process.

Personal lessons like the aforementioned contributed to me becoming the person I am today. Taking this in mind, your first project/business doesn’t have to be your dream idea, but you should do something. One of the many things I keep repeating when I talk to people who want to follow their entrepreneurial dreams is to stop waiting for everything to be perfect. Just shut up and do it.

Before I heard the concept of MVP or the Lean Development idea, I followed similar principals because of my own lessons learned. Sure building a successful business is about smart planing, and mapping everything out. But if you’re a developer and you never actually done anything outside of your school projects yet you have ‘great ideas’ it doesn’t matter.

Sure I could have read about some of the many lessons learned from various people, but some lessons are things you don’t & won’t read about because individually they’re small and almost seemingly insignificant. However, ironically as a whole those tid-bits of information is the actual chemical makeup of ‘past knowledge’ that we carry as we continue to grow.

Regardless of your field. If your a designer, developer, business person or into social-media marketing there isn’t any reason to be sitting on your butt. The point is to do something. Almost anything is better than nothing.

It’s said that submersing yourself into a foreign culture is one of the best ways to learn a new language. Part of the reason is because when you are all in and feet-first it forces your sink our swim mentality and you easily learn as you go. Do that with an idea of yours. Go as far as you can. Dive in head first and grab books, sign up for meetups and get your hands dirty!

So, over the last couple months I have been overwhelmingly busy (as if that’s anything new) working on a new product that we just launched on May 5th! The app/company is called TripLingo, and the main purpose is to help people learn a particular, albeit customized, phrase list of a foreign language. One of the main separators from us & companies like Rosetta Stone is our Slang Slider™ that teaches you various different ways to say the same phrase ie. the Formal way, Casual, Slang & Crazy. We haven’t been building this in secret either, as we have posted plenty of updates ..  along ..  the way.

Jesse Maddox (@Onwardly) a great new friend, Co-Founder & CEO of the company has also created a post that talks about everyone on the team, and how amazing we all are!

I’m simply just overdue on creating a proper post.

There’s no question to all of our excitement to have actually deliver this product from start to finish in a few months; and a damn good product if i do say so myself! But whats also amazing is the overwhelming support from family, friends, colleagues in the industry & press. It seems that everyone is really happy with the results, and I’m excited to blow everyones minds over and over again with the future updates.

If you haven’t seen the app, above are some of the current (as we’ve gone through at-least 20 design changes) final UI screens.  I’d love to get some feedback from you guys! ( & of course, I’d love for you to buy the app as well).

Let us know what some of your thoughts are. Part of my main responsibility on the team is the UI & UX design for the app, so I would most definitely want/need to know what are some of your use case scenarios. When you’re using the app, and if you think something is off, please let me know. Or, if you would also just like to let us know that you love it you’re more than welcome to submit that feedback as well. I took a few different approaches with the concept, and am proud to say that it has a roughly 90% customized interface. This created a bit more work on our end, however I believe it creates an amazing feel which is paired with amazing visuals & rich data.

Bar none I am ecstatic about this team, this product & its future. So, go buy the app and have fun on your travels!

People who know me personally frequently joke about a few of my habits, most of them good; however one is my obsession with wireframing. I find that this process is severely overlooked by many people. While some are claiming not to have any artistic talent to maximize the process, and many others flat-out skip this step and immediately begin jumping into design &/or development, they are missing the core concept. Wireframing isn’t about creating pretty pictures, or creating profuse amounts which are all specifically detailed to the point it’s interfering with productivity. Instead, it is about visualizing your product. It’s always amazing how we can mentally conceptualize something and not see any flaws, but when we start to outline core pieces we may see the hairline cracks that would have went unnoticed until you’re already knee deep into building the idea. Or maybe not flaws, but even the ease of explaining patterns, and expected functionality. It’s easier to spend 2 minutes sketching a concept on a napkin, than trying to explain the idea to someone; as they say “an image is worth a thousand words”.

Personally, I always have a pocket sized moleskine in my back-pocket (negating the behest of my wife), I have a few sketch apps on my iPad, multiple full sized molskine’s I carry in companion with my laptop, a whiteboard at my office & home office, and the awesome Cling On Static Writeboard sheets that I carry to have instant whiteboard access for meetings outside my office. ABW (Always Be Wireframin’!).

Sure, this may be somewhat idée fixe, nonetheless this process and a constant state of readiness for me to brain-dump ideas allows myself to be as efficient, productive and tactical in my decisions. Evolution through constant iteration is a great way to stay innovative.

Whether or not you think you may want VC (venture capital) financing for your start-up or not, you should subscribe to VentureHacks feeds. They’re consistently supplying insightful and in-depth information for the all encompassing entrepreneur.

This particular Audio slide is a free taste of their audio interview/discussion amongst themselves regarding many suggestions many start-up founders should take to ensure a successful marriage. The full version is only $9 and I believe it to be well worth the money for those who are still dating.