Forrester's Stephanie Balaouras writes: According to Forrester’s recent survey of 2,803 IT decision-makers, improving their business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) capabilities is the No. 1 priority for SMBs and the second highest priority for enterprises for the next 12 months. The scope of BC/DR programs is growing also; mature... Continue reading

In this phase of the project I'm on the phone or meeting with potential users and partners most of the day. When I'm not doing that I'm reading books and sites on crisis management and disaster insurance. My goal is to have a firm, documented understanding of a first market... Continue reading

Most of the feeback from the crowd was about pre-sales through insurance companies and preparation tools so that when a crisis occurs the war room is already set up. Tonight I start as a "founder" in the Founder Institute, so I can only assume that the company, product, and pitch... Continue reading

IdeaKick Seattle (code name: microMAVIN) was fun and helpful interesting. The variety of startups in Seattle is large and Justin and Myron did a great job wrangling everyone through the process. Twelve of us pitched ideas and received feedback in eight minute time slots, so the breakneck speed kept everyone... Continue reading

I really love paper prototype day, when I get to learn just how many aspects of my lovely design are Just Plain Wrong. It's painful like ripping off a three day old bandaid but afterward I know so much more about where the project is headed. Here's my relatively small... Continue reading

For demos and design trials I often rough out designs in HTML with no backing server or one which uses fake data. To give you a look into the early, rough part of the demo creation process, here is today's sketch: On the top left you see a couple of... Continue reading

This week I'm participating in two pitch meetups, IdeaKick Seattle and Founder Institute Ideation Bootcamp: Seattle. The basic premise of both is to get a bunch of startup folks like VCs and founders together to listen to each others' pitches and then give feedback. Lots of people like me are... Continue reading

My primary goals right now are: 1. Attract a fantastic CEO/co-founder 2. Create an investor pitch and demo My pomodoros have been spent nailing down the exact problem the product solves and getting to know the people who have that problem. All other decisions cascade down from there, so it's... Continue reading

Hello and welcome to Instant Blog, the place for production notes and company news from the Instant War Room team. Well, "team" may be a bit of an exaggeration, given that this is a brand new project and I'm currently looking for a co-founder/CEO to compliment my CTO nature. I'll... Continue reading