The document provides advice for those starting to build products, suggesting to fail fast but be persistent, that business plans are a waste of time but failing to plan is planning to fail, and to talk to customers. It notes that individual pieces of advice can be confusing and that you can't succeed with just one-liners. The document recommends validating ideas by shipping rather than seeking validation, and gives an example of how to simplify what you want to validate through paper prototyping before coding or designing.

1. What I wish I knew when I started building
products
Presentation for Summer of Startups 2013

2. ”Fail Fast”

3. ”Be Persistent”

4. ”Business Plans are a waste of time”

5. ”Failing to plan is planning to fail”

6. ”Talk to your customers”

7. ”If I had asked my customers what they wanted,
they would have said a faster horse”

8. Not bad advice individually, but confusing

9. You can’t succeed just with one liners

10. Don’t seek validation to ship

11. Validate by shipping

12. ”Build, test, confirm or disprove” means
nothing.

13. Ex: Confirmation bias

14. (credits: Matt Gilgenbach, GDC Talk)
Ex:

15. Simplify what you want to validate

16. Hands on example: Paper prototyping

17. You don’t need to code or design before you
simplify.

18. Have a nice Summer!
Ramine Darabiha
Raminibar.com
@Raminibar
Feel free to bug me on Skype or Linkedin