Fantastic: Start-up Concept

MangoDB, Express, Angular 2, NodeJS, LESS

Fantastic was a start-up concept that I prototyped. The web app allowed users to pre-order merchandise and movie tickets in the months leading up to a film's release or a show's season premiere. 

Although the idea never made it passed alpha testing, I used it to learn the ropes of Angular 2 and the MEAN stack. It was also my first experience in a product role; I scoped out features, mined user analytics, and interacted with potential customers.

1. Responsibilities: (I developed the concept with another person. He was in charge of business development; I was in charge of product and technology)

  1. Sole engineer; built out web app MVP from scratch, managed instances etc.
  2. Sole product manager; Interacted with online communities to hone features, run alphas, and set milestones. I also built out all our pitch decks (I love keynote).

2. Takeaways:

  1. I learned a ton about prototyping quickly and setting measurable goals
    • As a small team it was incredibly important to keep prototype complexity to a minimum. At the beginning of the project, I was coding out features–we quickly shifted towards mock-ups and interactive wireframes. Once the features were set, we invested the time in coding a functioning alpha.
    • The ability to quickly build prototypes made it easy to set smaller goals and test business assumptions. A major uncertainty we faced was determining the value that a group perk added to a fan's individual purchase. With quick prototypes, we were able to hone in on better language, designs, and price points.
  2. I developed a better sense of a good market / customer as well as a deeper understanding of all the stake holders required to create a product
    • The main reason we stopped working on Fantastic was that it was impossible to get manufactures on board to create the merchandise. When creating the MVP, we focused on the consumer experience since we figured the merchandise would come if there was consumer demand. Unfortunately the manufacturers & licensing deals became a problem that we didn't have the connections or firepower to settle. Learning to analyze the required buy-in to a product / business model is one of the most important lesson that I took from this project.

Business Card Design

While the above business card is not essential to understanding the project, I designed it myself and I love how it came out. We hired a designer for the actual web app design, although I added some small typographic and layout edits.