I've been lurking here for a while, not really got involved yet, but recently took the plunge to turn to self employment and startup life.
I quit my job and moved to a lower rent area so my savings would last a little longer, and decided to turn my long time hobby project into a full-time startup with the help of a friend. Now a little over two months in, the demons are starting to gather and I'm beginning to question my decisions.
The project is an in-browser Canvas based circuit design tool. Allowing users to create electronic circuit schematics and embed them on their blogs/forums/websites. The key feature being that the schematics are 'live' so can be zoomed in/out and are a lot more interactive than a static screenshot.
I came to want to solve this problem after running into it myself last year while trying to design an electronics project with a friend. It was really hard to collaborate and it was equally hard to get people to help out when we had problems, purely because it was hard to share the circuit design with them in a readable form.
We have come quite a long way with this project, its probably a couple of months away from having a minimum viable feature set. (Still lots to do after that of course). It is right now far from polished, and has many rough edges, and is mostly full of test data. But we feel a need to get it out to some eyeballs other than just ours.
So my question is when should you start showing potential evangelists and advisers your application?
I have some people in mind, people who have fairly high profile within the hobbyist communities, and people who have experience with electronics circuit design tools. I have contacted some of them already to see if they would be interested in trying out an alpha release and have had very positive feedback. I'm just afraid to show them the application too early, when its still very much unfinished.
I know the general rule of thumb is to get feedback early and often, but when an application is not even at an MVP stage, does this still apply?
I've been lurking here for a while, not really got involved yet, but recently took the plunge to turn to self employment and startup life.
I quit my job and moved to a lower rent area so my savings would last a little longer, and decided to turn my long time hobby project into a full-time startup with the help of a friend. Now a little over two months in, the demons are starting to gather and I'm beginning to question my decisions.
The project is an in-browser Canvas based circuit design tool. Allowing users to create electronic circuit schematics and embed them on their blogs/forums/websites. The key feature being that the schematics are 'live' so can be zoomed in/out and are a lot more interactive than a static screenshot.
I came to want to solve this problem after running into it myself last year while trying to design an electronics project with a friend. It was really hard to collaborate and it was equally hard to get people to help out when we had problems, purely because it was hard to share the circuit design with them in a readable form.
We have come quite a long way with this project, its probably a couple of months away from having a minimum viable feature set. (Still lots to do after that of course). It is right now far from polished, and has many rough edges, and is mostly full of test data. But we feel a need to get it out to some eyeballs other than just ours.
So my question is when should you start showing potential evangelists and advisers your application?
I have some people in mind, people who have fairly high profile within the hobbyist communities, and people who have experience with electronics circuit design tools. I have contacted some of them already to see if they would be interested in trying out an alpha release and have had very positive feedback. I'm just afraid to show them the application too early, when its still very much unfinished.
I know the general rule of thumb is to get feedback early and often, but when an application is not even at an MVP stage, does this still apply?