Usually 4 months is enough to build and launch an MVP. Founders understand what should be released and when, and they can avoid extra unnecessary features.

But what is the best timeframe to launch an idea-stage startup?

Igor Krasnik, CTO and creator, thinks we can cut that time down to weeks 💡

“Probably the founders have great expertise in the area and they believe in something, but it’s not a validated idea for us. And for them 4 months to validate their ideas is overkill. It’s not only time, it’s money.” – Igor.

In 2022 we'll lower the product design and build phase from 4 months to 2 months. For truly high-velocity founders, we can ship prototypes in a few weeks 🚀

Follow along to see how we are going to realise these plans an improve our original offer!

https://youtu.be/X08qzubQ4cE

Does the market need a new Pet-health App?🐱

Marina Mironova, happy owner of 2 dogs, faced a problem — where to store data from vet visits and not forget or lose anything?

So she came up with the idea of creating PetsFriends — a HealthTech App for animals 🐕 that allows pet-parents to store all the data about the health of the pet and, if necessary, share it with vets.

During the idea validation, the Paralect Venture Studio team conducted market research 🔎 and concluded that the initial product idea needs to be revised.

The reasons are the following:

📉 At the market analysis phase, the team found out that competitors failed to reach product-market fit

🙅🏽 During interviews with pet owners and veterinarians, the hypotheses were not confirmed.

Nevertheless, we don’t completely dismiss the idea. There are some cool options on how to pivot it and change the direction. What are they?

Follow along for updates 🔥

6 years ago we launched our unique course for developers — Paralect Startup Summer. More than 70 engineers have graduated from this course, and many now code on product teams at Paralect 💪

This year our courses are moving to a new scale. We welcome students who want to level-up their skills and knowledge in Quality Assurance🔍.

What is the main advantage of this course? The students develop real products from scratch. They communicate with Startup Founders and work together as product teams.

"With an MVP, your main aim is efficiency. When a new feature is built, you understand that right now you need to test its functionality in the most important, positive scenarios. It makes no sense to spend more time perfecting it." – Natalya Pashko

In 2021 together with students and mentors we launched 2 products — Networking App Nudge & Immigration Platform VISXA.

Natalia Puzikova, head of QA, asked 💬 her teammates Natalya Pashko and Elena Konoplyova about their experience in working with strartups from the 1st batch of the Accelerator.

What was it like? Read in the full interview on https://blog.paralect.com/post/quality-accelerated-interview 👀

We've been building digital products for 12 years now. We prioritize technology simplicity, flexibility and speed of delivery — just what's needed for a startup.

But building scalable architecture while moving fast is not easy. You need to separate the business logic from the core architecture, so messy parts won't hurt overall app performance and growth.

To meet these requirements we live-tested a number of cutting-edge technologies on partner products. We've come up with the best solution that fits startups well and scales from the first users to multi-million ARR. Solutions that go in-line with product trends and attract great people to the team.

Today we beta launch Ship — a micro-service full-stack framework used on more than 20 live products by hundreds of engineers.

Technical founders and aspiring CTOs, use Ship to save 100s of hours on building and launch your MVP faster!
👉 ship.paralect.com 🚀

What happens when many talented people work at the same company? Right. Cool merch is designed, sourced and distributed by a DAO 🚀

Paramerch is an in-house brand. It's not just a set of usual clothing and accessories. This brand has a unique concept — it aims to shift to a more sustainable approach by designing simple and practical items.

When creating new items, we follow 3 main principles:

🧵 Sustainable materials
🌈 Diversity
🦄 Local artisans

Literally, Paramerch functions like a DAO — teammates are peers and the Paramerch team is the “DAO Committee”.

Evgeny Chaban, full stack developer, shared the architecture of the project and the stack + automations the team used.

Read the details on https://blog.paralect.com/post/paramerch-dao-delivers-sweet-gear-our-team and enjoy 🔥

NFT, Web 3.0, DAO, Tokenomics…

Sounds like a set of incomprehensible words 🤯? If you've answered "yes", then you urgently need to watch the workshop held by Vladimir Panteleev.

In the video Vova shares his knowledge with the audience, explaining how all these technologies can make our lives better and how we can use them to make amazing products.

Watch the whole video on our YouTube channel ‘Paralect Workshops’ and learn more about Web 3.0 and its value.

#nft #tocenomics #web3 #dao

Konstantin Nesterovich worked at Paralect as a developer, tech lead, and product manager. But a year ago he founded his own company.

Where did it all start? Like many of his colleagues, Kostya studied at a technical University and decided to attend a programming course. He attended several courses, but for some reason did not get the desired results.

Then Kostya applied for the Startup Summer and there his career in tech started 🚀. What impressed him there?

1) Teamwork. He understood what a real workflow in the Team looks like.

2) Full development cycle. He dove into Back End, Front End, databases and new technologies.

3) The Culture. He was impressed by the attitude of the mentors towards the students, and this motivated him to work hard and strive.

During the course Konstantin found the most interesting direction for his professional development.

“I realized that I’m fond of close and effective communication with the team rather than of deep engineering. I felt that I prefer to combine both manager’s and developer’s roles.” – Konstantin

Read the whole story and don’t afraid to change your life for the best. Even if it seems very difficult 💡

Great news for early-stage startup Founders 🔥

We've extended the deadline to apply for the Paralect Accelerator until June 1st.

We've already received 2.5x more applications than last year! That's why we decided to expand the deadline to give more founders the opportunity to apply for Batch '22.

❕Please, pay attention, that it won't affect the accelerator timeline and both winning projects will start on time 🚀

To apply for the Paralect Accelerator Program, you need to visit 🔗 accelerator.paralect.com and complete the form. Good luck!

#accelerator #acceleratorprogram #earlystage

Welcome to the new office in Poland! 🎉

The place where our teammates can work, meet each other, have team-buildings, and spend time together. This cozy Hub is located in Warsaw and we're happy to welcome all our Paralect Teammates to this place ✈️

Also, we invite all our partners to visit our new office, get together with the team and have offline meetings 🤝

BTW, if you want to join our team in this cool hub, visit join.paralect.com and apply! We're open to applicants from all over the world 🗺

What does a mentor provide?

A goal, a path, gentle correction — even a confidante when needed. We have a learning environment with no end-point. There's no finish line, only the next level.

So mentorship is an open opportunity for everyone — and simultaneously needed by everyone. Because "growth" or "expertise" is not a a set path, but rather a set of curious choices to explore one's passion.

Thanks to all the mentors who have guided our teammates so far on their way and we're eager to keep this environment of reciprocal learning flowing round our community 🙌

One of the largest conferences in the CEE region — Wolves Summit 2022 — starts next week.

This year, the Summit Team screened over 1,000 startups and chose the top 100 to pitch their ideas. It's a great opportunity for investors to explore 🔍 new promising products to invest it.

What other opportunities will investors find there?

-VC Fundraising. Meetings with senior-level Limited Partners from the VC & PE industry.

- Network expansion. Matchmaking services connect investors with solo LPs and top institutions.

- Roundtables and one-on-one meetings. A great opportunity to discuss the most important issues of private equity and venture capital formation with market professionals.

- VIP Dinner for selected speakers, investors, and LPs.

Want to join? Visit wolvessummit.com 👈🏽

📍Location: Wroclaw, Poland

🗓 Date: May 24-27th

When you watch a video, do you usually think about how much work was done to get us to see it?

📹 A beautiful setting, high-quality sound, a catchy plot — the combination of these elements is the result of the work of a passionate team.

John interviewed Paralect's videographers to find out how our video content is created and what goes behind the scenes.

Vlad & Ilya shared:

- why they changed from freelancing to creating with us

- how the issues and responsibilities are distributed within the team

- how they planned and filmed the video series for the accelerator

- what were the most memorable and most challenging moments about filming in the last few months

Interesting to learn more about our video team's workflow? Watch the full interview on YouTube and enjoy!

Before starting to design and develop a product, we need a clear vision of who it's for and who's going to buy it!

To do this, you have to find the ideal customers, how exactly the target audience will use it, and what alternative solutions they are using now.

To plan go-to-market strategies and achieve product-market fit, you have to:

✔️ Identify persona groups for research. Try not to be one-sided and look at the problem from different angles. Your pain point may differ from other one's.

✔️ Prepare the questions you will use. Learn as much qualitative and quantitative information as possible. And don't forget that you may be talking to a future user of your platform — make a good impression.

✔️ Understand the competitive landscape. What alternative solutions do they use and are there anything they don't like about these products?

✔️ Sum up the research findings. Make a report with the results you've discovered.

✔️ Build an ICP. Segment the audience and build the ICP for each one separately.

✔️ Define buyer personas for the product. It will help you build a set of criteria to find the right decision maker.

Want to know more about all these steps in detail? Read the newest article from Alena and Michael 🙌

Our partner Copysmith published a Chrome extension writers will love — Copysmith for eCommerce. Create and publish web copy better and faster for sites, product pages and advertising.

Copysmith for eCommerce is the industry's leading AI copywriting platform. It helps users:

👉🏽 write detailed + captivating descriptions of products for eCommerce platforms

👉🏽 rewrite and optimize existing product listings and content instantly

👉🏽 сreate catchy ads and emails that engage the audience.

How to use it? Find "Copysmith for eCommerce" in the Chrome Web Store and add the extension to your browser. Happy writing!

Being a startup founder is very hard work. Entrepreneurs need to dive into lots of areas: engineering, business development, accounting, marketing, fundraising and much more.

Even if with a strong founder team, making a product the next Unicorn 🦄 takes focused time and effort — and lots of it!

Our CTO Igor Krasnik has years of experience working with startups at any stage — from pre-seed to unicorn exits. He shares the main recommendations startup founders should abide by to avoid many mistakes in scaling businesses:

1) Be transparent with your team

2) Teach entrepreneurship in any team member

3) Introduce an analytical and growth mindset in your team

4) Strive for simplicity in everything you build in your startup

Following all these principles simultaneously will help founders succeed faster.

▶️ Watch the whole video to learn about each of these points in detail.

Sergei Stralenia worked as a developer for more than 6 years. But he always noticed that he was very eager to work not only with tech but with people as well.

"I think any developer experiences this — when you stop making features and start working with people. And I've discovered that I like working with people more than doing some technical stuff." – Sergei.

This year Sergei changed his position — now he is a Developer Success Lead. He shares knowledge with the teammates and helps them grow their skills.

One of his main ideas is to improve mentorship processes at Paralect and motivate the tech team not only to learn, but also to teach.

"My final goal is to see how the person grows, develops, and becomes better than I am."

Registration for the Paralect Accelerator '22 is closed!

We set out with goal of 150 startup applications for this year, and we made it above and beyond with 177 🥳

Aspiring founders from all over the world submitted their startup ideas in different domains.

Today, more than 10 startup founders have already received invitations to the interview 📧

We are still in the process of checking all the applications — after the final check we will send the responses to every founder.

We are grateful for everyone who has trusted us and applied for the Accelerator Program 🚀

Stay in touch! We will announce the winners on June 15th 🏆

"The most essential part is to ask your users the right questions — think twice or three or four times about the questions you're gonna ask." – Lyubov Dementyuk

This week's guest has been a co-founder at a few startups, helps lead us as Managing Director at Paralect and most recently joined Founder Institute Bali as a mentor!

That's a lot! So we tried to get through the highlights and most valuable experiences along her path so far, including:

⚖️ How to prioritize features for new products

📞 Talking to users and making the most of these interviews

🌏 Life as a digital nomad in Bali + the startup scene there

🚀 Her vision of the future of Paralect Global

"When you think from the perspective of partnership — that you are working with the company, not in the company. I always pay attention to the idea. What do people do here, why — do they believe in this? Are they ambitious? And I pay attention to the team. And for me these two things matched perfectly at Paralect."

Ready to design a new product and start usability testing with your solution?

Then you're probably facing decisions about navigation design — among other factors!

"User experience is paramount when it comes to interface design. Users should be able to find what they need quickly and easily, without feeling frustrated or confused.

But how can you ensure that your navigation meets these needs?" – Alina Kazlova, Designer on the Copysmith product team.

This week's post breaks down the impact of using Header or Sidebar navigation in your product design.

There's no right answer for every product, so take these factors into consideration and design an app your users navigate with joy 🚀

What are the most convenient and user-friendly content platforms, where you learn from writers all over the world? 🤔

There are a ton, but we've been long-time fans of Medium.

A broad range of topics and an easy, minimal design for both readers and writers.

BTW, on Medium you can find our channel as well. If you are interested in all the stages of product building, launching, and scaling — then our posts are for you.

Just visit medium.com/particles-by-paralect , click the button "Follow" ✅ and ... hey presto! Fresh and insightful articles will appear in your feed.

If you publish on Medium as well, just leave the link to your channel in comments below. Let's share knowledge within the Startup Community 🤝

Although Product Managers and Designers have different approaches — PdM focuses on understanding the problem from business PoV and UX focuses on qualitative and quantitative user research — they work best together throughout the product discovery and design stage.

Both work hard to create a successful product through in-depth research and thought processes 🔍

"PdMs and Designers may believe they have utterly unrelated roles today, but this is a big misperception. Nevertheless, as the two roles emerge in an agile environment, there is a significant amount of overlap between the roles of a PdM and a Designer." – Michael Lapidus.

Our Business Analysts Michael Lapidus and Antonina Pyatigor described the collaborative workflow we use at Paralect and shared a list of artifacts on where input from both sides is crucial.

Read it in the newest article 👈🏼