Hi 👋 and thanks for dropping by
You're an aspiring tech founder who's just finished Le Wagon's 9-weeks of intensity and fun (congrats on becoming a Full Stack Developer!). Now you're wondering - what next?. Unlike career switches, the roadmap for starting a business is much less clear... so read on.
Le Wagon does a great job at teaching you how to build products well. You've built at least 2 impressive products from scratch during your course. But it's not an Accelerator and it doesn't teach you what products to build.
The temptation is to dive straight into building your product after the bootcamp, especially as you've already developed something. Instead, you should answer the question 'am I building the right product?'.
What problem are you solving? Have you validated this is a problem? How have you done that?
Code is the most expensive way to validate a product. Remember that and repeat it often. Instead look for quick and dirty ways to validate that this is really 'something people want'.
Here are a few ways to validate you're building the right thing:
- Assumptions Mapping
- Talking to users
- Developing a Concierge MVP / Wizard of Oz MVP
General principles:
- Get in front of a customer as fast as possible
- Get in front of as many customers as possible
- Only code what you need 'now'
- Take a Design Thinking approach
A product is not a business. Now you need to design the business that goes with your product.
Follow these frameworks:
Basically, do this! Although this paragraph is short, this is a long process of discovery.
You'll also need to learn about the business of startups:
- YC Startup School (listen as a Spotify Playlist)
- Antler Academy
- Le Wagon Founders Program
- There are many other equivalent libraries...
Great, you've validated your product, outlined the business and learned about startups. Now you actually want to get building.
Read this 👉 From Demo to MVP 🚀
- Work with others, it's much more fun! You've just graduated with a load of other developers keen to improve their skills after all. Share your project and see if you can get others excited about it. Remember you're just working on a side project until you have users/customers.
If you're just looking for general advice after finishing Le Wagon:
- after-le-wagon by Damien Le Thiec - a great inspiration for this
- general advice - advice on what and how to continue learning
See here 👉 From Demo to MVP 🚀
If you're a fellow alumni or TA of Le Wagon (or just interested!), then please do send a pull request to improve this doc.
The following amazing Le Wagoners contributed enormously to this:
- Milly Dyer (careers)
- Marta Bas (careers)
- James Goforth (product)
- Jamie Reynolds (product)
- Martin Van Aken (dev/product)