Moving Beyond the Minimum Viable Product
In my last post, I showed you the low-cost, fast way that I set out Boiled Architecture’s electronic shingle. It took a couple of weeks and a few hundred dollars.
In the agile startup world, this would have been called our Minimum Viable Product. It’s not pretty, but it’s functional and can begin making some money.
So we have a few people, a name, and a basic website. We even have one paying customer. It’s funny how these things can be both huge milestones and tiny baby steps.
Now it’s time to build on our momentum. That’s why we’re currently working on making a much prettier website. (Architects are expected to have pretty websites.)
Also, after the business cards arrived from Vistaprint I decided they looked downright awful. I ordered some new ones from MOO Cards.
My big vision is an architecture firm in which everyone has real ownership, respects each other, makes a good living, works reasonable hours, and enjoys our projects, which are similarly collaborative, respectful, and enjoyable.
We’re a long way from there just yet. The challenge is balancing the need to grow and reach toward this goal with the need to survive in the meantime.
I’m currently working on an Owner’s Guide to beginning IPD projects, with the intention of turning it into a series of seminars. This will help to advance IPD in the industry, and will also help me get our firm’s name in front of potential clients. I’m also preparing an IPD seminar for a private healthcare company.
These are medium and long-term investments in our growth, but they certainly don’t help us in the short-term.
Projects take a long time to come to fruition. To survive the short-term, we need to attach ourselves to projects which are already under way. That’s why I’m now contacting architecture firms to offer peer review services and general contracting firms to offer collaboration facilitation services (connecting the architects/engineers with the subs in meaningful pre-con services that result in better construction BIM models and therefore money savings for the GC).
Will this tactic work? We shall see…
