Kevin Dewalt's experiences as a DC tech entrepreneur

The DC Lean Startup Circle hosted Eric Ries and Dave McClure Friday night for an entertaining talk about entrepreneurship with local startups.

Reaching out to prospective customers to gauge interest for your starup idea is a skill that takes practice. Some tips from my experiences.

Start-up success depends on rapidly figuring out what customers will actually buy, a process that often requires quickly hacking solutions and other bad software practices for the enterprise. Unfortunately most of us get our tech skills from the enterprise – an environment where cutting corners usually causes more long-term problems than benefits. As a profession we need better practices for lean startups

A lean startup approach is a commitment to entrepreneurial mindset, a recognition that the worst enemy of startups is the illusion of knowledge about what a market wants. In other words, a lean startup entrepreneur needs to accept and try to overcome the limitations of her mind

In my last startup we used Microsoft Visio for Customer Development activities. Some tactics for using it effectively.