After our meeting on 6/6/2009, Partner 1 and I exchanged a lot of email about what we should do next. It was decided that we should write a prototype and that our prototype should be (a) informal (not written in one programming language versus another for the sake of getting the job done) and (b) illustrative of what we were trying to accomplish to the point that we’d agree our concept would work in practice, but hardly complete in terms of what we’d sell.
(Partner 1 and Partner 2 also met with a sales guy at this point and he was into the idea of selling for us, but obviously with no product to sell it was all arbitrary at this point.)
I got down to work in reviewing lots of programming notes and Partner 1 started to build his test environment. He let Partner 2 in on what we were up to. I didn’t hear anything back from Partner 2 but Partner 1 and I kept going, until…
Partner 1 called me one afternoon to express that he was installing his test systems only to discover a bug that totally corrupted his system such that he’d have to start over. Uggh, okay. This happens, I guess. Anyhow, we exchanged a few more productive emails about what the prototype should do and what the product(s) should look like. There were a couple of scope changes but I was still comfortable with that we were trying to accomplish at this point. And I was motivated.
It occurred to me that during our chats that writing a prototype for the platform that we were developing the prototype, and in a programming language not native to the platform where we were doing the implementation, was far tougher than just writing a prototype in a native language supported by the platform. To those who don’t get the gist of what I’m saying here, I can sum up as follows: right tool for the job.
I ran this change in language by Partner 1 and he basically said, “if you feel that’s what’s right, do it.” I did some more studying about how we’d implement our prototype in this language while Partner 1 got his test system going again. About a week passed, and I’d not heard from either Partner 1 or Partner 2.
I waited a few more days and started to develop Prototype 1. It proved how much less work it took to do the development work with the right tool and I had a working prototype in less than two days. I was highly encouraged by this development and decided to ping Partner 1 about his status. Still nothing, test system not built, no testing done on his end. I was concerned, although not annoyed, that no test system had been built/rebuilt in almost a week. I figured it was a matter of time.
A couple days later Partner 1 started to ask questions about the manual process of solving the task at hand. I was delighted by this as it meant that Partner 1 was back on track again, and once he learned how terrible the manual process of solving the task at hand was, it’d be a matter of time before he’d jump in and start coding or testing Prototype 1. Partner 1 ended up getting the manual process solved (just like I had months before ever mentioning the business plan to Partner 1) and agreed that I was on to something with wanting to make this process easier with our software.
Partner 1 also let me know that it might be several weeks before Partner 2 could commit as her company was potentially going to be going through an acquisition of its own and she may have a stake in that. Plus she has four children at home so she could not uproot without an exit plan with her existing employer.
I’m fine with waiting at this point since there’s still so much to do with prototyping and Partner 1 still hadn’t reviewed the code that I’d sent him. Plus, I’d anticipated we’d be meeting with a graphic artist and a lawyer soon (RE: incorporating) so time would probably not be lost.
