Startuping #1. The Prototype Is the Easy Part

The Prototype Is the Easy Part

I’m not sure if we can consider ourselves a true startup.

If we accept the most popular definition—the one where two or three young college classmates work tirelessly to build a decent prototype and attract capital to get the wheel rolling—then we are not.

When we created eEvidence we weren’t that young (I was around forty), I never studied with my co-founders, and, to be honest, we never managed to convince external investors to finance what we do (it’s probably my fault).

We’ve been in business since 1997, focused on cloud security services to protect email communications. But in 2011, a single question changed our course:

Would it be possible to generate robust digital evidence of the content and delivery of any email… without the other party knowing?

In less than a year, the entire company was already focused on that project. eEvidence.com was born.

When Code Flows

The eEvid project would not have been possible without the deep understanding we had acquired about how email works. We had the knowledge, the team, a scalable data center infrastructure, and a clear idea of the technical method.

The result: a solid foundation on which to build.

Once the theory was resolved, creating the first prototype was a piece of cake.

From the first line of code to the first functional send, no more than two weeks passed. And it worked. It was great.

We tested the tool with some of our trusted clients. The response was enthusiastic: many immediately understood the value of the service, and some contributed suggestions that ended up being essential in the first commercial design.

Getting that kind of validation is as promising as getting investment: it proves that what you build solves something real. And with that, we moved from the initial prototype to the “final prototype.”

The Real Bottleneck: Going Global

We were ready to launch before the end of 2012… or at least that’s what we thought.

We had opted for a freemium model (I’ll talk about that in another installment), but the most important resource was not yet ready: the ability to operate globally.

Going out into the world meant more than opening the service to the public. We had to ensure that any user, in any country, could register, use, pay, and receive support without friction. That meant creating internal workflows, automated billing, support, and information systems.

It took us a few more weeks than expected, but on January 16, 2012, we officially went to market (go live). Interestingly, the day I turned 45. Less than 48 hours later, we sent our first invoice to a premium client.

That was the moment when eEvidence stopped being a prototype and became a real business. That point of product to market fit that every entrepreneur aspires to.

Was the Prototype the Key?

Was the prototype the key to success? In our case, no.

We knew that what we had “on paper” worked technically. What we weren’t so clear about was whether there was a real and sufficiently broad need in the market that our product would solve. That answer was given to us by our first beta clients.

The initial programming work was the foundation, yes, but it’s like building a perfect engine: the real challenge is designing the roads, building the gas station network, and establishing the ability to collect tolls. Only then do you discover if people really need to make the trip.

Building a prototype is just the beginning. Making it work in the real world—for real users, with real needs—is where the real adventure begins.