People often ask me how they should launch their app or web venture, so I thought I’d share my answers here.
There are two main books I recommend, the first is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, the second is The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki, which he has recently re-issued as The Art of the Start 2.0.
First: Videos
Lean Startup
Art of the Start 2.0
Second: Summaries
Here are two summaries of The Art of the Start (the original): Summary 1, Summary 2 and The Lean Startup
Third: Getting Real
The next step in launching your concept is putting pen to paper and planning it. This is mainly to share with software developers so you can get quotes for the work and start building it. Traditionally in software development this was via lengthy, abstruse documents called “Software Project Management Plans” or “Software Requirement Specifications”, but over the last 10 years these have been replaced by a different approach based on designing the look and feel of the app and using that to drive the development.
Here are a couple of resources
App Cooker is an advanced iPad app that helps you plan your app project and prototype it.

Prototyping On Paper (POP) is a unique tool that lets you sketch your screens on paper, take photos of the sketches and link them into a mock-app that acts how your real app would. Very cool.

You’re still here? Get going already!
Check out Balsamiq wire framing tool for easy & simple prototyping
Great for getting developer quotes as you can build the entire user journey and conducting user testing