A Startup Story - Geekcamp Presentation

A Startup StoryArun Thampi @iamclovin

Co-Founder of Gameplanhttp://gameplanapp.com

The Gameplan Story So Far

• April 1 - Begin Work

• June 1 - First Public Demo at Echelon 2010

• July 5 - Free Public Preview goes live

• July 17 - Tournaments private beta goes live

• July 28 - Tournaments public beta goes live

• Sept 1 - Paid Plans Launched

Code LOC: 5210

Test LOC: 12500

Code-To-Test Ratio: 1:2.4

Disclaimer

• Need not apply to a startup building the next Google, Facebook, Twitter or Wego.

• But then again it’s not supposed to.

• If you follow advice wholesale without thinking about what it means to you, you are doing it wrong.

Buzzword Soup

BDD

TDDScalability

NoSQLAgile

Scrum

Pair Programming

BULLSHIT

Common Sense Driven Development

The Only Acronym You Need

Your Startup’s Aim

No Yes

Great Code Traction

Great Test Coverage Happy Users

Prettiest Website Profit

An architecture to challenge Google Happy Investors / Owners

Gameplan’s Working Philosophy

• Top-Down Approach

• Think in terms of URLs, links, forms and flow

• JIT Building

• Feedback Loops

• Pair Programming (whenever we can)

Start Off with a Feature(We use Cucumber)

The ViewURLs, Links and Forms

Controller Test Controller Code Model Test Model Code

Feedback Loop

Pair Programming

• A piece of the puzzle

• Getting Stuck

• Riding through bad days (the World Cup wasn’t too helpful)

• Distractions

• We are pragmatic about it

• Nine-to-Six working hours to avoid burnout

Getting Traction, Users, Profits and HustlingProduct & Engineering

The Startup Story

STARTUP ==

ASSUMPTIONS

Test Assumption

Modify Assumption & Repeat Great!

Make Assumption

Failure Success

var value_of_idea;

value_of_idea == 0;// => true

JFDI

Dry Testing is dead simple

• Create Landing Page

• Google Ads

• Hacker News

• Forums

• Twitter

Don’t take advice too seriously

• Including mine

• Use as a starting point and make your own path

• Nobody can teach you to live your life

• Nobody can teach you to run your startup

Thank You