What people in the tech industry fail to realize is that with
the knowledge they have, a little extra investment of their
personal time, and practically no investment of their personal
money, they can launch incredible web products – and Twit-
ter, Facebook, and Blogger are just a few successful examples
of this. In the last two years we have worked in the online in-
dustry in the Middle East – and the one thing we would love to
see more of is young entrepreneurs working less for clients and
more for themselves.
Our website, “Mojo on the Web,” is dedicated to promoting
online entrepreneurism and encouraging others to take the risk
to starting their own business – whether just as a hobby or a full
time profession.
The Roadmap to Create a Tech Product
Stage 1: Conceptualize your Product: At this stage you have
nothing more than what sounds like an interesting idea. Put this
idea in a one page brief synopsis to see if you have a consis-
tent scope to the project. In our case with Mojo, we envisioned
creating an industry webzine specifically for online businesses
– ranging from new technologies, business processes, new de-
sign styles and UI concepts. Our target audience was defined as
both web business owners with minimal technical knowledge, as
well as techies working on the web.
Stage 2: Conceptualize your Business: At this stage you should
be taking the original concept and creating a business case for
it. For Mojo, creating financial revenue was only one of our
motivations to implement the project – and hence we had a very
simple business model i.e. simple non intrusive advertising. At
this stage begin to research various ad servers that are available,
create a short list of servers and produce a graphical representa-
tion of clicks to revenue to establish a target number of visitors
per day. Many business models beyond advertising exist for the
web including: subscription services, affiliate programs and the
sale of a physical product.
Stage 3: Design your Product: At this stage we combined the
outputs of the first two stages to create a complete product de-
sign. From a technical perspective, the product design details
are the functional specifications for this product and a complete
prototype of the front end. This is one of the most important
stages of the process – as time spent here will exponentially save
time in the later stages.
Stage 4: Design your System: Imagine that the outcome of this
stage is the blueprints to start building your dream house. In
the case of system design in software, that blueprint will consist
of UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams like use-cases,
sequence diagrams, multi-level flow charts, database diagrams
and, most importantly, making sure the system will be under
control in later stages.
Stage 5: Implement your System: Now it all comes to what kind of
tools will be used, which really depends on budget and time
constraints. In the case of Mojo, we were looking for a web pub-
lishing platform with a powerful backend content management
system (CMS) – and while we had the option to develop from
scratch, WordPress fit our requirements perfectly. If you’re
building your website in your spare time it’s good to focus on
maximizing productivity. Readymade scripts, productivity lan-
guages (such as Ruby on Rails) and platforms such as WordPress
and Joomla are all good routes.
Stage 6: Create your User Interface (UI) Design: This stage is pret-
ty much parallel with developing the backend of your system,
whether you’re going to be using that readymade CMS system
or you’re developing from scratch. Photoshop is the preferred
tool of choice – though Illustrator, Fireworks and Dreamweaver
are all great options.
Stage 7: Integrate: This stage is about combining your design and your
system. Not just that, but in our case we wanted to get our sys-
tem up and running as fast as possible, so we looked up as many
plug-ins as possible that suited our requirements
Test: What I’d really want to stress, is the importance of this
stage. We pushed the limits of our website to make sure it was
clear of unwanted bugs, whether they were coming from third
party plug-ins, inconsistencies in design or triggered from dif-
ferent browsers.
Stage 8: Silent Launch: Not all web products need this stage, but as a
webzine we couldn’t really go live without having some content
up on the site. Hence we ran the site for two months silently
– treating it as if it was live, updating it as if it was live. This had
two specific benefits: we were able to load the website up with
content and we were able to determine the amount of time we
would regularly need to provide the site to keep it maintained.
Launch: Your website launch is now a product launch – and
should be treated in the same way. Create a product launch plan
with a checklist of all the activities that need to be completed
in order to complete a launch. This will include a final project
checklist, ensuring it’s ready for the public, marketing activi-
ties press releases have been made, list of blogs to contact and
support systems in place. The purpose of all of this is to create
enough buzz and hype about your new site so that it takes off
right from the gate.
Stage 9: Iterate: The online world is a world of constant change – which
is why if you decide to stand still you will become obsolete.
Tips for Tech Entrepreneurs
· Plan before you jump: Tech entrepreneurs wiSalman Suhail and Mustafa Fathy discuss their recent experience
launching a website and provide a plan for creating an online business
th great
ideas often get bogged down trying to implement imme-
diately – worried that someone will beat them to the mar-
ket. Take time to think out your ideas before you jump and
you’ll be ready for competition.
· It’s all about cash flow: Cash flow is complicated by late
payment schemes, delivery before payment and bad cus-
tomers. Plan ahead or only a couple of bad months can put
you in hot water.
· Know the limits of your employee contract: Don’t be
fooled into thinking that everything you do belongs to the
company you work for – unless specifically stated in your
contract. The work you do in your spare time as a part-time
entrepreneur is your work and your company has no right
to it.
· Know the difference between a system and a product:
A system is the software that you will develop. This system
becomes a product only once you’ve developed a business
case for it and are willing to treat it as a product.
· Time to market and great ideas mean less then you
think: It’s not the originality of your basic idea that’s neces-
sarily important – but your ability to execute it better than
anyone else. If you’re not the first to the market, you can
learn from the mistakes of others and come out on top.
· Do not underestimate the work you can do yourself: The
best way to lower costs at the early stages of your venture
is to do as much of the work yourself as possible. This may
require you to learn new skills, but don’t hesitate.
This article is a joint article between Mustafa Fathy and Salman Suhail
It was originally published in ICT Magazine, Vol II Issue 10
