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The other option, and probably most common, is to have someone or several folks dedicated to “product management.”  That probably makes sense in larger organizations or as companies grow,

However, I personally think that this is very dangerous for an early company, and I’d go so far as to say it’s a major red flag.  Here’s an example of what you want to avoid

it’s a good sign and highly preferable if the founders focus and own the product process.  Ideally they’re also able to “go deep” and be involved in the entire product management process, writing the specs for engineering teams, managing the priorities, etc…

I think the founders of a startup need to be very cognizant and controlling of the product management process, at least until you become a larger organization, and avoid the temptation to hire “someone dedicated to product.”  In my experience, the more people/layers you add to the process and the further the founders step away from the product management the process, the worse the outcome.

The applicant must be financially sound, and Bell will be strongly impressed by organizations with low administrative costs which can offer a partnership that will fit its corporate vision and strengthen its position in the niches it wants to occupy.

crucial for Bell to have telecommunications exclusivity in the project

s it a unique made-in-Canada concept?

Is it likely to attract positive public attention?", "Is the applicant a Bell Canada customer or potential customer?", "Does this proposal present an opportunity for a commercial return for Bell?", and "Will there be a role for Bell employees to play?" No organization, Foster points out, will ever meet all of the criteria, "... but the more 'Yes's, the better your chances."

Offer proposals that make commercial sense to Bell Canada

The trouble with my last company was that our experience in software development came from large companies, where your job is just to ship code.

So we thought that a launch was just about writing the code.  And, we did that in 6 months.  But, what we didn't account for was that in a startup, you don't have a ready large group of users just waiting to use your product. So, your launch time must also include a cycle of user experience and marketing.

So, if you do everything in series in a drawn out way like we did: build, market, measure, it's a cycle that can turn months into years.  Eric Ries suggests that shortening an iterative loop and going through such a loop multiple times quickly is the key to success.  I would take that a step further and suggest not only cutting activities to shorten that loop, but to do as much of this loop in parallel.

Our workflow looks like this: get your Unbounce or LaunchRock page up from Day 1 and start marketing before you have a product.  You can gauge interest and get signups from the very beginning until you're done with the first iteration of the product.  Start getting the Craigslist posts out there on Day 1 to get feedback and potential customers immediately.  Once you have enough of an idea of what to build, start mocking up your idea.  Get those mocks back out to potential customers to make sure you're on the right track.  Iterate as much as possible on paper before building, because it's much faster to re-draw than to re-code.  "Delete features" on your paper prototypes as well, reducing what you need to actually build in code.  Try to code as little as possible to shrink that build time to about 1-2 weeks.  By the time you're done building your first prototype, you've already acquired users from doing marketing in parallel.  This puts you in a position to start measuring usage and gauging interest immediately before iterating through that loop again.

Build, market, measure should happen as much as possible in parallel to reduce your launch time and keep your money, morale, and support up.