Andrey Khavryuchenko himself

Epiphany - Customer Discovery steps

After having bunch of discussions at #sctest, #pykyiv and privately, I decided to post a distilled version of Customer Discovery steps by The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Blank

Here it is. Just execute it:

Customer Discovery

State Hypotheses

• Product Hypothesis
  • features
  • benefits
  • intellectual property
  • dependency analysis
  • product delivery schedule
  • total cost of ownership/adoption
• Customer & Problem Hypothesis
  • types of customers
  • customer problems
  • a day in the life of your customers
  • organizational map and customer influence map
  • ROI justification
  • minimum feature set
• Distribution & Pricing Hypothesis
• Demand Creation Hypothesis
  • creating customer demand
  • influencers
• Market Type Hypothesis
  • market type
  • market map (p. 56)
• Competitive Hypothesis

Test “Problem” Hypothesis

• Friendly First Contacts
  • list of 50 potential customers
  • get a referral
  • create a reference story
  • get 5-10 meetings
• “Problem” Presentation
• Customer Understanding
• Market Knowledge

Test “Product” Hypothesis

• First Reality Check
• “Product” Presentation
• Yet More Customer Visits
• Second Reality Check
• 1st Advisory Board

Verify

• Verify the Problem
• Verify the Product
• Verify the Business Model
• Iterate or Exit

Posted in Business, Startuplet, Startups | Comments

Computational chemistry in Python - action plan

My favourite scripting language is Python and there are quite few interesting projects done:

• PyMol - molecular visualization system on an open source foundation
• MMTK is an Open Source program library for molecular simulation applications.
• PyQuante is an open-source suite of programs for developing quantum chemistry methods.
• cclib is an open source library, written in Python, for parsing and interpreting the results of computational chemistry packages.

PyQuante and MMTK are most suitable for the start of method framework.

Action plan:

1. Bootstrap PyQuante. It works out of the box, but some of its tests do not pass - have to check this out.
2. Do the same for MMTK.
3. Implement at least some gradients and force constants functionality for PyQuante and make sure geometry of simple molecules optimize to something reasonable
4. Dissect popular and not-so-popular QCh software packages to work within the framework above.
5. Compile a basis set and a control set of molecules to control and optimize precision of different modeling methods
6. Sum up, review and work out a new plan.

Posted in Python, Science | Comments

Time for computational chemistry

Lately there wasn’t much things to write about.

When you scale your business, there are plenty of lessons and observations. But theren’t that much you’d really like to tell the world about, and even less you can because of various NDA and confidentiality issues.

Nevertheless, looks finally (knock-knock-knock) 42 Coffee Cups can run successfuly without my 24×7 attention and I can devote my time to other interests that waited for too long.

Once of them is computational chemistry.

I’ve done some scientific work using computational chemistry modeling in 1990-1997 and still believe that it is the necessary element of nearly every future technology in health, energy, chemistry, IT, food, etc for the next 50+ yrs.

So what I see needs to be done for the Tool to appear…

1. Robust modeling methods to be used of various scales
   • ab initio methods with high precision for small systems,
   • semiempirics for systems around 1K atoms and more,
   • MM approximations for systems with 10K-100K+ atoms
   • continuous body approximations for larger systems
2. Interfaces between methods listed above, so I can start model on macro level and drill down in most interesting features to discover what happens on atomic level
3. Strong feedback from experimental methods:
   • compute what could be measured, preferably immediately
   • measure what could be computed
4. Visualization, analytics and search systems to harvest the data, both computed and experimental

I still do not know how this should be enveloped for business purposes - I’m too far in software and away from product development cycles in large companies. Guess this would sort out on go.

The cornerstone is the modeling method and scripting glue, so that what I’d start with.

Posted in Science | Comments

Changed comments engine

Tired fighting comment spam and blocking useful discussions. Thus switched from native WP comments to disqus.

The only drawback I see is that disqus failed to import old comments properly.

Posted in Software Development | Comments

python coverage fails with ‘invalid syntax’ - solution

If you get

class 'coverage.CoverageException'>: Couldn't parse '<filename>'
as Python source: 'invalid syntax' at line 1

just make sure that your file has correct line endings. I’ve spent some time guessing until converted dos line ends to unix ones.

Posted in Python | Comments

Django CouchDb adapter 0.1 released

Although found couple not-so-minor bugs at last moment (as usual), django couchdb adapter is functional enough to support most of standard django admin.

Project trac: http://trac.khavr.com/project/django-couchdb/

Repository: http://github.com/42/42-django-couchdb/

Posted in Software Development | Comments

Lean startup twitdump

Who to follow on twitter if you’re interested in lean startups:

• #leanstartup tag
• @ericries
• @sgblank

Posted in Software Development | Comments

Launched 42 Coffee Cups

Finally we’ve launched our software development service under 42 Coffee Cups brand.

• Q. Why 42?

• A. Because that’s the answer!

• Q. Why Coffee Cups?

• A. Because developers are beings that transform hot coffee into a successful software

Feel free to ask your question

Visit our team site at http://42coffeecups.com and follow us on twitter at @42cc

Posted in Software Development | Comments

UI sketching and prototyping tools

Now reviewing tools and services to quickly sketch and prototype user interfaces.

I’ve been advised to check balsamiq mockups. What puts me off is:

• either a desktop version or a limited list of tools it could integrate into; no trac integration
• steep price tag, esp for an non-desktop version
• nearly free-hand drawing, I’d like to have something closer to an html

There is also a twiddla, which offers an excellent teamwork service. Perhaps I’ll advise my team to use it to perform quick sketch sessions with clients.

Yet again it offers just a widgetized free-hand drawing. That means I hardly can integrate it in the development process, only into a communication.

On the other hand, there’s a simple grid-based css generator at http://960.gs/ Nice as a component, but too simplistic as a service

Something like this editor would be an ideal fit, but they seem to target it only for their own service..

What I’ve missed?

Posted in Software Development | Comments

Client or service to summarize twitter updates?

Does anyone know a twitter client or a service that would summarize the twits of people I’m following?

Ideally it would allow me to follow a subset in a real time and give a summary of all other peoples, preferably grouped by topic they’ve touched…

Anyone?

Posted in Software Development | Comments