It’s Monday morning, Theodore is sitting with Nancy on the terrace of "La vita è bella", an italian coffee shop near the San Francisco Zoo. Nancy is an entrepreneur looking for a development agency for her startup, Klafim. Theo works for Albatross, a software development agency that seeks to regain the trust of startups.
Nancy and her business partner have raised seed money for Klafim, a social network around books. Klafim’s unique value proposition is to combine the online world with the physical world by allowing users to borrow books from physical local libraries and to meet online to discuss the books. Most parts of the product rely on the integration of already existing online services. The only piece that requires software development is what Nancy calls a Global Library Management System.
Their discussion is momentarily interrupted by the waiter who brings Theo his tight espresso and Nancy her americano with milk on the side.
THEO: What’s a Global Library Management System in your mind?
NANCY: It’s a software system that handles the basic housekeeping functions of a library, mainly around the book catalog and the library members.
THEO: Could you be a little bit more specific?
NANCY: Sure. For the moment, we need a quick prototype. If the market response to Klafim is positive, we will move forward with a big project.
THEO: What features do you need for the prototype phase?