101: Ben Orenstein - How to Build an App in a Week

In this episode Adam talks to Ben Orenstein about the common mistakes people make when working on a new project that prevent them from getting it to the finish line.

Show Notes

Topics include:

• Why deadlines are critical
• Using manual processes to avoid building features entirely
• How launching a stripped down version of your idea can help you build the right thing
• Recognizing when you don't need to solve a problem yet
• Why you shouldn't design your entire UI up front
• How evolutionary design applies to both code and interface design
• Why you should always finish a feature before starting the next one
• Applying this approach to Ben's current project Tuple

Sponsors:

• Rollbar, sign up at https://rollbar.com/fullstackradio and install Rollbar in your app to receive a $100 gift card for Open Collective
• Cloudinary, sign up and get 300,000 images/videos, 10GB of storage and 20GB of monthly bandwidth for free

Links:

• The Art of Product, Ben's podcast
• Tuple, Ben's current project
• "You Should Take a Codecation"
• Trailmix.life, Ben's first codecation SaaS
• Briefs.fm, Ben's second codecation SaaS
• Nomadlist, by Pieter Levels
• Airline List
• Basecamp 6 week cycles
• "How we structure our work and teams at Basecamp"
• "What six weeks of work looks like" (at Basecamp)
• "Making Sense of MVP", by Henrik Kniberg

What is Full Stack Radio?

A podcast for developers interested in building great software products. Every episode, Adam Wathan is joined by a guest to talk about everything from product design and user experience to unit testing and system administration.