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Benefits for the Top Writers 2013 class include:Top Writers Fleece JacketIn addition to the 2013 Top Writers icon that will appear on your profile, this year's Top Writers will receive a special Quora Top Writer 2013 Fleece Jacket from L.L. Bean.(Photo Courtesy of Anjali Khurana)Top Writers Email Address & FeedbackWe will be expanding the use of our our [email protected] email alias to facilitate feedback from Top Writers. Through this channel, Top Writers can expect responses within 24-48 hours from Quora.If you have questions about our Top Writers program, please visit any number of this FAQs below:More to ComeWe'll be announcing more stuff involving Top Writers in the coming year, including Open House dates so people can visit the office in Mountain View.

First of all, congrats on going down this path. Starting companies is a great way of life. It will be a wild ride with high highs, low lows, but never a dull moment as a cubicle slave.Some advice:TeamThe most important part of the equation is you and your co-founder. You need to spend time bonding, make sure you are compatible, and make a promise to each other that you will stick with this project regardless of where it may lead. Not only will you go through lots of drama and trauma along the way, but you may end up working on something completely different than where you started. Your commitment is to each other, not to the particular idea you have right now. I'd also recommend agreeing that you are 50/50 co-founders and partners..it is just simpler that way. You are two people about to jump into a boat together and launch into the stormy seas not know which continent you will end up on.FlexibilityThe next step is to take a step back and realize this idea may not make sense. You may get down the path of validating it and realize it won't fly. You may find an even better idea along the way. Or you may launch it, have it fail, then move into an adjacent space. A startup is a "random walk" where you usually finish in a very different place than you started, with multiple twists and turns and pivots along the way.Because this usually happens, be ready for it. But more importantly, I read in your question an attitude that you believe you know *this* is the idea and you will start a company to make *this* idea work. It is unlikely that any particular idea is the right one, and if you approach this project stubbornly insisting that it is, you may miss vital feedback that would get you onto a better track. Most successful companies discovered the "right" idea as a byproduct of pursuing the "first" idea.Required readingOK, got that? Next order of business: you and your co-founder must read Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank. If there were such a thing as a license to practice entrepreneurship, this would be first on the reading list. Lean Startup by Eric Ries is also very good, and I'm sure the new Steve Blank Startup Owner's Manual book will become a classic. Do nothing else until you read these books. You'll cut years of wasted time off of your career.I hesitate to try to summarize them because I fear it may keep you from reading them, but the core idea is that too many startups confuse product development with "customer development," which is a methodology to validate whether your idea is something that people would actually use, pay for, and whether you will be able to reach those customers profitably. Building the product is rarely the problem. Knowing if the product is worth building always is.Example: it sounds like you are going to vet your idea with people you already know and respect. Mistake. Vet it with potential customers who you don't know. Your friends will all say, "yeah, I guess I would use that" just to be nice. None of them will. You need to find a bunch of people you don't know who are all smack in the middle of your target market. And you should not "sell" your idea to them. You need to show it to them, sit back, listen, and have them beg you to please build it since oh my god they need this so much. If you have to "sell" the idea at this stage, you are setting yourself up for months of trying to push a string.Also, why are you writing code? If you don't know if the idea will work, why would you go down the path of implementing it (other than just mockups to facilitate feedback sessions)?(Again, read the books..they walk through great methodologies on how to validate an idea, and they describe most of the classic pitfalls that first-time entrepreneurs go through).LaunchDon't think about "launch" in the marketing sense. But do think about getting a minimal viable product (MVP) in front of customers early, once you have validated the idea. You'll get lots of feedback (mostly criticism) and new ideas, then you can enter a period of lots of testing, tinkering and iterations.Do not worry about your idea going viral: it won't. You may as well worry about whether you own enough wheelbarrows to get all of your new money to the bank. Oh, to have such problems.Thousands of sites are launched every year, and virtually none go viral. Even the largest success stories you can think of (Twitter, Pinterest) went through many months of low traffic before exploding. And you are not one of those. If you find yourself in that situation, you will be able to raise money and grow you team and stay ahead of it.FundingIt will be hard for you to raise money from professional angels without experience and/or traction. You may be able to raise a little from friends and family, but I'd also caution you not to get too caught up with fundraising right now. You really do not want to assume your idea is valid and you just need money to execute it. You need to assume your idea is not valid, then do the homework necessary to validate it.Get absolutely as far as you can with validation and your MVP before bringing in investors. This means you and your co-founder will need to work practically for free (remember that part about your being committed partners?) You can bring on other co-founders and early employees who may be able to do the same thing. You can try outsourcing (very difficult). Whatever you do, it will be messy and hard.ThenIf you do manage to get a product that seems to be working and funding, then you'll enter a whole series of new challenges building the company, but don't worry about those yet.Congratulations for going down this path. It will be a blast.

Sprint Reviews should be open to anyone and everyone who wishes to attend them; it's part of the "open" nature of Scrum that everyone should be invited to see what the teams have done, and to provide feedback at the meeting or after the meeting to the team and/or PO. It's rarely "enough" to just have the PO present, as other stakeholders and users will have feedback, questions, and comments that the PO may assume are answered already.Now, I will say that a young Agile team is probably not prepared for having anyone and everyone at the table - there are times when having the CEO in the room during a review will make things a little more stressful than necessary. For this reason, as a PO/PM, I tend to invite people to reviews whom I think will (1) engage with the review actively, and (2) will provide valuable feedback to the teams and to myself with regard to what's been done. Once the team is comfortable in that atmosphere, I'll start to open it up, sometimes with greater active facilitation, to other people in the company.