by Uchechi | Jan 2, 2016 | Blog
Sunday 1/3/16 at 8pmCT
Let’s connect on Twitter: @uchechi_writes
Happy New Year and welcome to 2016! The new year gets me thinking about how to take my tech startup to the next level, and for months we’ve been talking about creating a wedOcracy mobile app.
Since launching in 2013, we’ve relied on the web based application but we’re starting to ask ourselves some serious questions (again) about mobile now that we have some funds to start building.
I believe in mobile first, and it’s a great way to optimize the user experience on desktop or mobile devices. It’s easy to think a mobile app will solve all your startup setbacks and usability issues. But will it really?
As the owners of a web development company, we’ve consulted with startups who’ve come to us believing that their first and foremost need was a mobile app. As often as not we end up working with them to find solutions that bring in more customers, optimize their social media presence and help them grow their business without building the app just yet (and without spending that large amount of cash).
As a founder, you don’t often have the capital to build something only to realize it doesn’t serve your users down the line. Maximizing time and money are essential, and so is knowing when to build your mobile product and when to hold off until you’re ready.
Questions to think about:
- How do you know if your idea needs a mobile app?
- Have you built a startup mobile app before? What was the process like? Did you have the capital to do it?
- Did you wonder if building your startup mobile app was the best choice for your company and product?
- How did you know where to start?
- What lessons did you learn about mobile app development for your startup?
by Uchechi | Dec 17, 2015 | Blog
It’s almost the end of the year, which means that the New Year is around the corner. Over the past year, I’ve hosted the #yeswecode chat and enjoyed learning from so many techies, both experts and newbies.
For the next #yeswecode chat, we’re going to talk about what the last year has been like in your world. What have been your successes? Failures? What lessons have you learned? What progress have you made?
Some questions to think about:
- What’s one thing you’ve achieved that you thought impossible a year ago?
- Did you achieve your tech goals? What were they?
- How were you able to achieve them?
- what were your setbacks? how did you overcome them
- What’s one thing you learned about yourself and/or your work in tech this year?
- What’s on your list for next year? Where do you see yourself by this time next year? What accomplishments do you hope to share with us?
- What should we as a community be thinking about for 2016? What should we be doing as a group?
by Uchechi | Nov 20, 2015 | Blog
For entrepreneurs, hustling is a way of life. Some of us have gotten to the point in our careers where our side hustle has become our full time gig, while others are still holding down another job full time while working towards a bigger entrepreneurial goal.
Welcome to Hybrid-Entrepreneurship: it’s all about working a full time job while building a business part-time. The philosophy is that you’re going to leverage your job in a way that helps you in your business but will also help you at your job.
During the next #yeswecode chat, we’ll discuss hybrid-entrepreneurship and how to transition from your full time dreams to running and owning your own business.
Join us!
Some questions to think about:
- Is it worth our time to pursue hybrid entrepreneurship?
- What are the benefits/challenges?
- What are some alternatives?
- On Shark Tank they are fond of pointing out the diff between a real biz and a hobby. Responses?
- Has anyone here been successful at it? Pls share your success stories?
- How did you finally make the transition from hybrid entrepreneur to full time entrepreneur?
- What lessons have you learned along the way?
- What advice would you give to others who want to make their side hustle into their full time entrepreneurial gig?
by Uchechi | Nov 5, 2015 | Blog
#YesWeCode Chat 31: How To Share Your Creative & Professional Self on Social Media
Sunday 11/8/15 at 8pmCT
Follow me on Twitter @uchechi_writes
Blending two career paths and/or interests online can be tricky. My husband and I both know several musicians/coders and I constantly see fellow entrepreneurs sharing their creativity on social media. As a poet, startup founder and entrepreneur, I’ve discovered that it has a lot to do with what your goals are on social media. Are you sharing one part of yourself for you career and the other is just fun? Do you want to grow and monetize both selves? Knowing your audience is important, but so is figuring out how you can engage, inform, learn, inspire, educate?
If you’re interested in maximizing what what you get out of social media sharing, while also giving yourself freedom to explore your creativity, this is a chat topic you’ll want to join.
During the next #yeswecode chat, we’ll explore this topic because and I look forward to learning from other entrepreneurs and creatives.
I’ve chosen to focus on doing these things and letting go of the rest. This is you, and it’s an important part of you. People want to share that, especially if they can learn something for their own lives.
Questions To Think About:
1. Should we have to be one dimensional online? We aren’t in real life?
2. How can we bring together all the essential parts of our work?
3. Do we have to create separate social accounts for all the different parts of ourselves?
4. Can we just be “creatives” and what does that even mean?
5. What are ways you’ve integrated the two? What’s worked? What hasn’t worked?
See you there!
by Uchechi | Oct 22, 2015 | Blog
#YesWeCode Chat 30
Topic: How To Go From Startup Idea To MVP
Sunday October 25th at 8pm CT
Connect with me @uchechi_writes
Going from your startup idea to MVP can be challenging, especially if you’re not quite sure how to validate your idea.
Over the last year, I’ve spoken to several startup entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping their product development, and want to know how to do so in a way that maximizes the time and money they do have. How do you know if there’s a need for your product? What counts as market validation? What are some low cost ways to test the market? These are all important questions you should ask yourself to help you get to your MVP. Often times, entrepreneurs don’t always know how to go about doing this effectively, and end up wasting a lot of time and resources.
I think it’s time we used the #yeswecode chat as a platform to help you figure this out and to help you get there with as little stress as possible.
During the chat, here are some questions to think about:
1. What does it meant to validate your idea?
2. Do you think you have to have lots of startup capital to do this?
3. If you’re a founder, how did you go about getting to your MVP?
4. Are there ways to use social media to help us get to our MVP?
5. For non technical founders, what has been the biggest hurdle you’ve had to overcome?
6. With varying ideas of what it means to “validate” your idea, how do we find a plan of action that gets us there with very little waste of time and/or money?
Missed the last #yeswecode chat and want to catch up before the next one? We discussed how to create more opportunity for all in tech.
See it here: http://buff.ly/1LmapNU
New to the #yeswecode chat? Check out these guidelines to help you make the most of it!
See you Sunday!
