p1

docs/project/p1.md

@@ -2,38 +2,46 @@
 
 ## Learning Goals
 
-- Make initial decisions on a team process, and reflect on your experience with the process
-- Define version control and development best practices within the context of a group assignment
+- Practice hypothesis testing and the MVP loop
+- Refine your product idea
 
 ## Project Context
 
 You and your team will be spending the rest of the semester building a product prototype for your startup. 
-This assignment is intended to help you build some viable---and not waste your time.
+This assignment is intended to help you build something viable (that I hope will become the basis for a real company someday).
 
-## Main Deliverables
+**Please read the assignment in its entirety before starting**. As you move through parts 1 and 2 and refine your ideas/pivot, keep in mind the legal/regulatory/technical questions from part 3. In other words, *try to make sure you're working on something legal and feasible even as your idea changes*. 
+
+## Deliverables
 
 These deliverables should be somewhat familiar from homeworks one and two. Now, you're doing them "for real," trying to hone in on the product you and your group will be producing for the rest of the semester.
 
 ### 1. Initial value proposition/product description
 
+#### Turn-in instructions
+
+Please answer the following questions:
+1. What is the big idea of your startup? What problem are you solving? What is your solution? What makes your solution special and distinguishes it from the competition? (1-2 paragraphs)
+2. What is/are the value proposition(s) for your product? (1-2 sentences)
+
 ### 2. Viability analysis: do people want it?
 
-In these excercises, you'll collect some initial viability data, and make
+In these exercises, you'll collect some initial viability data, and make
 a plan for collecting more as you build out your prototype. 
 
 #### 2a. Measure/demonstrate that people want your product *before building anything*
 
-Recall the unbiased discovery you did during HW1. You're going to collect more data this time, **from a broad range of members of your target demographic**. If your target demographic is gymgoers, for example, you should talk to at least a few non-student gymgoers. This will help you determine who your target demographic actually is.
+Recall the unbiased discovery you did during HW1. You're going to collect more data this time, from a broad range of members of your target demographic. If your target demographic is gymgoers, for example, you should talk to at least a few non-student gymgoers. This will help you determine who your target demographic actually is (and thus refine your value prop).
 
-You will have **twenty or more** discovery conversations across your group. These conversations should give you valuable data about the problem you're trying to solve; if you haven't been forced to refine your idea, at least slightly, over the course of these conversations, you are likely doing something wrong.
+You will have **twenty or more** discovery conversations across your group, **with each team member conducting at least two conversations**). These conversations should give you valuable data about the problem you're trying to solve; if you haven't been forced to refine your idea, at least slightly, over the course of these conversations, you are likely doing something wrong.
 
-##### Turn-in instructions (1-2 pages + notes)
+##### Turn-in instructions
 
-Please upload on Gradescope:
+Please turn in:
 1. Your notes, demonstrating that every group member participated in at least two interviews.
-2. The five most useful questions you asked.
-3. The five most useful pieces of concrete data you collected.
-4. An updated version of your value proposition/product description, informed by your discovery. Describe what changed and why.
+2. The five most useful questions you asked. (1 paragraph)
+3. The five most useful pieces of concrete data you collected. (1 paragraph)
+4. An updated version of your value proposition/product description (question 1), informed by your discovery. Describe what changed and why. (3+ paragraphs)
 
 #### 2b. Measure/demonstrate that people want your product after building something *minimal*
 
@@ -53,20 +61,20 @@ Choose at least one data-gathering approach for your startup and describe:
 2. What you built (with a link or pictures if relevant; for a smokescreen MVP, for example, please link to the MVP webpage or demo).
 3. How you gathered feedback (e.g., for your smokescreen MVP, where did you circulate the link?). 
 4. What you learned from the feedback (e.g., did a thousand people view your webpage, while only one signed up for the list? What does that tell you?)
-5. An updated version of your value proposition/product description, informed by your data gathering. Describe what changed and why. 
+5. An updated version of your value proposition/product description (question 1), informed by your data gathering. Describe what changed and why. 
 
 #### 2c. Prototype plan: how little can you build and still get valuable feedback?
 
 As you're refining your idea, it's important to figure out what you're going to build (and possibly start building!). For this piece of the milestone, you'll sketch out (a) your first two MVP milestones and (b) how you will get feedback on these milestones from real users.
 
-#### Milestone one (1-2 pages)
+#### Milestone one (1-2 pages) turn in instructions
 
 1. Describe, at a high level, the feature you are building.
 2. Why is it the right feature to build?
 3. How will you use this feature to collect data about your what your users want?
 4. Describe what you will build in a reasonably low-level technical detail (e.g., what frameworks will you use, what API endpoints will you expose, what UI components will you create, etc).
 
-#### Milestone two (1-2 pages)
+#### Milestone two (1-2 pages) turn in instructions
 
 1. Describe, at a high level, the feature you are building.
 2. Why is it the right feature to build?
@@ -75,17 +83,41 @@ As you're refining your idea, it's important to figure out what you're going to
 
 ### 3. Viability analysis: are there reasons not to build it? Can you build it? (1-2 pages total)
 
-#### 3a. Legal risk 
+Answering these questions will help you avoid attempting the impossible; please upload your answers for each.
+
+#### 3a. Legal risk (1+ paragraph) turn in instructions 
+
+Describe the legal risks associated with your product. *The majority of the work of this question should be research.*
 
-#### 3b. Regulatory risk
+#### 3b. Regulatory risk (1+ paragraph) turn in instructions
 
-#### 3c. Competitor risk 
+Describe the regulatory risks associated with your product. *The majority of the work of this question should be research.*
 
-#### 3d. Technical risk
+#### 3c. Competitor risk (3+ paragraph) turn in instructions
 
-#### 3e. This-is-a-semester-long-course risk
+Describe your product's competitive landscape, including its three closest competitors. What do these products do? How is your product different?
+
+#### 3d. Technical risk (3+ paragraph) turn in instructions
+
+**Desribe, in a relatively fine-grained level of technical detail, what you are planning to build.**
+What tools/frameworks/libraries are you planning to use for:
+- The frontend
+- The infrastructure
+- The database
+- Other technical core features. For example, if your product uses computer vision, what library are you planning to use?
+
+**Explain why your group has the background to build these features**. For example, if you're building devtools for ML data processing, please outline your experience with ML and data processing. 
+
+#### 3e. This-is-a-semester-long-course risk (1+ paragraph) turn in instructions
 
 **Please justify why it is possible to build a prototype product over the course of this semester-long class.** As one anti-example, fabricating new chips for ML workloads is certainly an exciting thing to do, but it's also something you can't do over the next couple months. Avoid such endeavors.
 
 ### 4. Viability analysis: could it make money?
 
+#### Turn-in instructions
+
+Please turn in answers to the following questions:
+1. What evidence do you have that people are willing to pay for your product? (2 paragraphs)
+2. What is your monetization plan? (1+ paragraph)
+3. What is your projected revenue across the first 10 users of your application? 50? One thousand? (1-2 paragraphs)
+4. What is the value of similar competitors? (1-3 paragraphs)