Turn Your Idea Into a Product People Want
Expand your impact beyond code.
Most popular startup advice isn’t written for engineers like us.
It comes from non-engineers who don’t understand how we think or how to guide us and leave out crucial steps.
Most accomplished founders cannot reliably replicate their success to share a process you can follow.
Trying to follow their advice may make you think you’re not cut out for the big leagues, or worse, something is wrong with you.
The skills you need (ahem, product management) aren’t well defined and taught in a way you can apply.
A smart, Ivy-ish grad with less tech expertise than you can’t detail how you go from what people say to the specifications for the initial product.
You need a startup blueprint that you can follow
There are skills that were lost in the transition from Waterfall to Agile, drowned out by charlatans offering incomplete advice while seeking clout (Klout?), clicks, and likes.
Just like there are tools, systems & patterns for software development
…there are tools & systems for processing subjective feedback, effectively going from market & customer research to software requirements.
We were like you – hacking on the weekends, pitching ideas, and struggling to rally support. Despite following the ‘Silicon Valley’ playbook, our projects never became full businesses.
By 2017, after 6 years of engineering/technology education and over a decade of building software and startups, we realized popular resources like YC Startup School and Lean Startup lacked, ironically, a lean, efficient process to take an idea to a viable product.
So, we wrote the definitive guide for going from nothing to something in 2017, and have been iterating on our methodology since.
Introducing Blueprint to Build
Attract Ready Buyers
Invest in the Right Ideas
Align for Speed
Validate with Confidence
Secure Buy-in Faster
Blueprint to Build (B2B) is the definitive guide for 0-1 tech product development. With abundantly specific instructions and templates, the B2B frameworks and templates offer practical guidance and implementable instructions from an experienced engineer and startup insider.
Build Less, Do More
Blueprint to Build: Part One
Scoping the System
Save time and money by building a rock-solid foundation for your product. Learn how to map the market, pinpoint the most valuable pain points, and craft a clear, compelling product vision to focus your resources on ideas with real traction.
Go deep and get specific:
- Find customers ready to buy – Identify your Ideal Customer Profile actively looking for a solution, accelerating development and reducing time.
- Build for real customer needs – Apply an actionable model to understand customers’ emotional goals and decision drivers, so your product delivers what truly matters
- Validate with confidence – Use a proven framework for evaluating customer insights to confirm your customer profile hypotheses, so you make informed decisions quickly and avoid costly trial and error
- Leverage what you know – Assess whether your existing knowledge is enough or if targeted learning will fast-track your success
- Make your pitch land – Craft a problem statement that instantly resonates with customers, investors, and collaborators, helping you secure buy-in and resources faster
- Design a stand-out solution – Use a structured brainstorming process to develop a truly unique product, ensuring your lean iterations are built off the right idea from the start
Blueprint to Build: Part Two
Engineering the Experience
Turn your vision into a testable, user-focused product to validate ideas early, and refine your design for understandability – so you can iterate leanly with confidence and minimal rework.
Move Faster:
- Turn vision into prototypes – Follow a proven methodology to quickly move from vision to lightweight prototypes, accelerating your build process.
- Prioritize impactful features – Focus on the key features that validate your initial product direction, ensuring you only invest in the necessary functionality.
- Map features to design – Learn a repeatable process for mapping features to software designs and page layouts, leveraging patterns to guarantee usability.
- Save time & money with testing – Use quick & dirty usability testing to evaluate your prototypes, cutting down on time wondering what will land.
- Iterate faster with engineering insights – Refine your prototypes using a design process crafted by a systems engineer, ensuring faster and more effective iterations.
- Optimize lean iterations – Map out your lean iterations and build on what you’ve learned in Blueprint to Build to speed up product-market fit.
You are already oriented towards customer and user needs. Now, let’s get them your solution faster.
Tailored Advice for Engineers
Reliable & Specific Examples
Frameworks Based on Technical Realities
Feature Creep Prevention
Blueprint to Build is an efficient and effective system only an engineer can design
If moving beyond code to navigate the business side of innovation has been frustrating, I’m glad you’re here. Most 0-1 product development and startup advice isn’t built for engineers like us. I’ve been designing and developing software since 2002 and started my career in SF in 2005, so I’ve seen firsthand why so much of it falls short.
Building a great product isn’t enough, and the “just pitch and raise money” approach rarely works. Most advice comes from non-engineers who don’t understand how we think or how to guide us. Their plans lack the steps to bridge the precision of code with the messy reality of people and markets.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: People (users) and their preferences are not binary 1’s and 0’s, but we can leverage objective frameworks to understand them.
You can launch products people love without wasting time, misjudging pivots, or relying on luck.
The essential non-coding skills – understanding user needs, creating prototypes, and defining what to build (and what not to build) – aren’t taught in school and get lost in the noise.
That’s why I created Blueprint to Build – to give you the tools to lead confidently, design products that truly resonate with users, and turn your ideas into successful businesses.
“I have worked with amazing product people from all over, and even some of the best in the Bay Area. Lindsay is someone I would turn to first. She is great about thinking through the user's perspective, gathering feedback from users and coming up with product solutions.”
Cache MerrillSerial Entrepreneur, Tech Founder
Operate on the Razor’s Edge: Navigate with Precision & Confidence
You can post questions on Reddit, jump in and out of Slack and Discord communities, and bang your head against your desk. Or, you can value your time by leveraging a clear methodology that’s been used by hundreds of startups to turn ideas into products people want.
Scoping the System
$ 325
Part OneBuild a rock-solid foundation for your product. Map the market, pinpoint the most valuable pain points, and craft a clear, compelling product vision to focus your resources on ideas with real traction.
Engineering the Experience
$ 375
Part TwoValidate ideas early with testable, user-focused products – iterate leanly with confidence and minimal rework.
Blueprint to BuildBest Value
$ 650
Part One & TwoFor the experienced and wiser practitioner who values their time and would like to save $50.Scope the system and engineer the experience with the definitive and complete framework to go from idea to viable product.
