Iterative product development at a deep-tech early stage startup

Challenge

Our experts worked with the engineering team of Colossyan in their early days to build the first MVP and secure their Seed fund. The founder team was preparing for a Seed investment and they had to show the potential investors a minimum viable product. Colossyan worked in the deep-tech AI space where the development of sophisticated AI algorithms can take years, but obviously, the team didn't had runway for that long, so they needed a new development plan focusing on a functional MVP for attracting investors.

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Objectives

1. Define a functional MVP that impresses investors and early adapters, but can be developed fast (within 1-3 months).
2. Overview the development of the MVP, work with the engineers to ship the product in time.
3. Organize the work of the engineering team, introduce good practices, follow agile principles, if needed hire extra staff.

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Solution‍

Zoltan from Boosterlab along with the founder team of Colossyan defined an MVP that relied on cutting-edge open source AI technology and that fulfilled early user expectations. Zoltan hired two extra developers to assist with the product and within the span of 3 months the team shipped the first MVP of Colossyan. The MVP was functional, it focused on a single functionality (creating AI videos from a single image + user text input) and used cleveer solutions to improve results, make them look more professional and signal to investors and potential buyers. The iterative development first focused on the algorithm, then on a minimalistic web application (only essentials, no pricing, no login, no fancy things). At the end, the MVP was shipped in time and the team spent less than 10k USD developing it and successfully raised a 1M USD Seed round from investors in the following months.

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