This week the teams had the pleasure of hearing words of wisdom from Brad Montgomery and Cliff McKinney (interviewed on Jumpstart Radio). The pair founded Work For Pie, an online community for software developers that unlike Monster.com, does not require a resume. Instead, the site assigns a numerical score for each developers based on the quality of their work.
As with most unique startups, the creation of Work For Pie was not a smooth one. “One thing we learned,” stressed Mr. McKinney,” was that your MVP (minimum viable product) is smaller than you think.” His philosophy and experience reinforced a point that Dr. Michael Burcham made to the teams earlier Tuesday morning – that any idea, from a decent one to a fantastic one, is worth very little alone. The force multiplier is in the execution. A fantastic idea with a weak execution will fail as a business, and vice versa.
“My initial product vision for Work For Pie is nothing like what you see now. We had to fail first.”
Can you think of strong ideas that faltered under poor execution, or vice versa? Sound off below in the comments.
Posted on July 13, 2012
Categories: Blog
Tags: Brad Montgomery, Cliff McKinney, Work For Pie