Articles by Alexa Roman

A group of people sketching
Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

Before You Build: How to Get Your Startup Off the Ground Without a Team

Photo from my colleague Yasmine Molavi’s sketching workshop You’re starting a company. You’re so full of ideas that you have three PowerPoint decks! Wowza! You have a couple co-founders or maybe even an employee. If only your team had some engineers to build the product… There are many, many important things you can do to

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

Crafting a Telehealth Solution: Pete Shalek and Steve Marks from Joyable

We’re catching up with some of the most inspiring founders we’ve worked with to share insights and advice from their experience of starting and growing businesses. Recently, we worked with the Joyable team on their iOS app, and we were inspired by their customer-focused mindset. For those who are not yet familiar, Joyable offers an online

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

Habits of Effective Teams

Have you ever worked on a team that went off the rails? Product teams need lots of support to run efficiently. You need to move fast, but you also need to be aligned in order to build successful products. Here are a few activities we use to keep our teams moving. We often facilitate them

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

A panel, a talk, a workshop @ Silicon Beach Fest 2015

Silicon Beach Fest is coming up next week! If you’re in Los Angeles or can travel there, get your tickets before they’re gone. (Note: open the design guide for a special discount) Carbon Five is involved in the Design Track and we’d love to see you there. The Design Track takes place next Friday, June 26th at the Marina

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

CliffsNotes for Startups

Clients often ask us if there’s anything they should read about product development to get a head start on working with us. Here’s a list of some of our favorite books, with pointers to the best parts for our busiest clients (Brian, we’re looking at you). These recommendations apply to any entrepreneur not just to our clients.

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

Mise en World

I gave this talk at Kluge’s Evenings at the Loft on March 20, 2015. The theme of the event was Aesthetics. Skot Carruth and Jeremy Mumenthaler also spoke. Video is forthcoming. Special thanks to Arturo and Cameron at Kluge and to David and Courtney at Carbon Five for helping me shape this. My background is

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

Delivering value, Making money

When I begin working on a new product, I’m always looking for ways to optimize the interactions for business and user value. I believe the best way to accomplish that is to get to market as early as possible with the proposed value. By getting to market, I mean everything from talking with customers about

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

Happenings in March

We have a medley of different events this month! Whether you are interested in finding like-minded people or need a space to work on some projects, we have an event worth attending. All events are at a Carbon Five office unless otherwise specified.

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

C5 On the Go – February

We have so many events going on this coming month that we thought it would be helpful to round them up in a post. If you’ll be in any of these cities, come say hello. For anyone who is new to our hack nights, we gather a diverse mix of developers and designers who want to

Alexa Roman

Alexa Roman

How to write an RFP

You’ve got a software project — you just need the resources to do it. So you start writing an RFP (Request for proposal). You put down the budget, timeline and deliverables in an effort to properly scope the initiative. After all, you need to find the best qualified team which means you need to be as specific