January 6th, 2011 
Ryan Starting a company has its share of unanticipated costs that can significantly drive up the investment required to get to market. No matter how good you are at projections there are bound to be a host of options to choose from to make the product or experience better. At Let’s Gift It, we operate in line with 37 Signals approach beautifully articulated in their e-book Getting Real.
Before launch, we wanted to include some sort of audio/visual representation of who we were, what the app does, and how our customers can use it. I turned to Google to benchmark time and cost of producing a product demonstration. Thousands of dollars and tens of hours was not a commitment we were willing to make. There are far better uses of time and money, in our opinion, at this stage.
So…what did we do? We did what I think any young, scrappy, hustling company would do. We deferred to the free (even though its not free anymore at $5/publish) option of creating a Minimum Viable Video (MVV) by producing our own ‘Office Group Gift’ example at Xtranormal.
I love to fish. My friend and former colleague at Right Media, Tom Swenson, sent me the first Xtranormal video I ever saw. A five minute, beautifully scripted plea/explanation from husband to wife about the benefits of following the Striped Bass migration from Maine to North Carolina in pursuit of the elusive 50 pounder can be found here. I was hooked (literally).
We decided to use Xtranormal to create our version of the product overview which fit nicely on our then ‘under construction’ How It Works page. Sure, we will eventually spend more time on a professionally voiced over flash, screen-capture or animated version, but that is not necessary at this point. We did what any good startup should do:
1. Identify what you need
2. Identify cost/time vs. benefit
3. Strip out what you don’t really need
4. Find a comparable, cheaper solution
5. Implement
6. Get back to work
Here is the byproduct and it cost us $0.
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