jumpstart

Today, nearly all businesses rely on technology, whether in the form of a simple company landing pages or an advanced machine learning algorithm.

However, there are many aspiring business owners who find themselves unable to build their companies, because they don’t have the technical skill needed to create (or supervise the creation of) their product. They’re left with three options:

1. Find a cofounder to build the idea

   Unless you’ve known someone for months (if not years) who is already a capable developer and is equally committed to your vision, finding the right partner can be really tough.
   Technical cofounders are in high demand, and often have their own business ideas that they want to pursue, so convincing one to join your company at the beginning stages will take a lot of work. It’s not impossible, but you’ll need a great deal of luck.

2. Become a developer

   While easy to get started, founders should plan to spend at least a year developing proficiency in software or web development.
   This is a path only worth pursuing if they are willing to spend many months practicing on a few other projects before getting to work on their own.

3. Hire an agency

   This is a popular option but without a baseline knowledge of what it takes to code an idea, there’s a high risk of encountering unexpected problems.
   Even an extensive specification document that details all the features and requirements may not be enough to avoid common miscommunications that occur when founders lacks the experience or knowledge to supervise the project. Ultimately, these breakdowns lead to slipping timelines, unanticipated costs, and most importantly, a subpar product for early users.

Think about it — Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Kevin Systrom, Drew Houston, and many other successful founders all had a base level of technical proficiency. Can you think of any founding teams that didn’t have anyone with technical ability?

You need that proficiency as well & that's why we created Jumpstart.

A technical program tailored for you

dupontstudios’s jumpstart program was created out of our personal experience. Zak wanted to launch a web-based company and tried all the options we mentioned: finding a technical cofounder, learning to develop himself, and hiring contractors and agencies.

It was only when he started working with Alex one-on-one, that he was able to write code and, more importantly, to be able to manage a development team. Because of that experience, Zak was able to launch his company, Swingspace. Our jumpstart program is modeled off this approach to help other founders achieve the same goal.

How it works

We work with individuals or small teams for 6 weeks to do the following:

• Work with them one-on-one to train them in the basics of software development
• Define the business model of their startup
• Build their minimum viable product to test the business model

By the end of the jumpstart program, our clients have a product that they can use to start gaining customers and traction. They have also learned the essential concepts and practices they need to manage their development team (whether continuing with our developers or choosing to build their own) moving forward. Since many founders struggle to get their initial product off the ground, having both an initial product and the necessary foundation of knowledge to shepherd it as it grows is a tremendous advantage.

A Results-Driven Process

Unlike other development agencies, we launch our own companies as well. That’s why we understand that the only result that matters for development is whether you ultimately launched the product you intended. Too often, we have seen hopeful founders try to build something, and never get it working despite investing many months and thousands of dollars into the launch. We’ve designed our program to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

We passionately love helping people launch their ideas. We’ve watched founders transform for the better throughout our program and in turn, come out with projects that we hope will also transform the world.