Starting Up

A Non-Programmers Guide to Building a IT / Tech Company

Scott La Counte

• Publisher: SL Editions
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781629179247
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

Take your idea to reality! Think for a moment. Think about that one time--or maybe one of several times--where you said, "You know what would make my job easier? This..." Innovation doesn't have to come from innovating minds. It can come from ordinary people who are just trying to make their everyday lives a little easier. In my case innovation was twofold:
Modernizing every Shakespeare play
Putting it in a format that spoke to a modern audience: an app. The app became SwipeSpeare and the idea was simple: Let students read Shakespeare as they normally would; when they're struggling to understand a passage, they swipe their finger across it to see a modern English translation. It was simple--and it worked. With zero marketing, SwipeSpeare was downloaded over 350, 000 times. The number sounds good when in context, but it sounds even better when you understand that A) I wasn't a developer, B) I wasn't a designer, and C) Everything was bootstrapped. In writing, there's an old phrase: show, don't tell. If you want your product to be successful, then you have to be able to show (not explain) how it works. That's what this book will do. I'll start with the basics: wireframing your idea and giving it a high-level framework; then we'll move into more visual designs, and finally interactive mock-ups. Design is only part of the work. I'll also show you how to put your final product into a pitch deck that sells.

Getting Started

Once you download Sketch, the first thing you will see upon opening is the Welcome box; since this is the first time you’ve used Sketch, you’ll only be able to start a new document.

From this box, you can also learn more about the app. The box will appear each time you open the software, so if you don’t want to see it again, uncheck the “Show this window on open” in the lower left corner.



Once you start a New Document, you’ll be greeted with the blank canvas. There’s a lot of options, but you’ll only have to know a few to get started.



The first thing you’ll want to do is create an Artboard. Think of an Artboard as a slide in a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation. Within that Artboard (or slide), you’ll be adding your graphics and text. A finished project could have only one or two Artboards, or several dozen.

To create an Artboard, go to the top menu and select “Insert” and “Artboard”.



Looking at the options that just came up, you can probably guess that Sketch App is a popular tool with Apple designers. Just about every Apple product you can think of is there and the first thing you’ll see!



You can create a custom size by clicking on the bottom button, but before you do that, make sure the device you want isn’t in...

Table of contents

• I Got This Idea!
• The Drive
• Start Here
• This Won’t Last Forever
• Design It With Sketch App
• What is Sketch?
• A Quick Note
• Getting Started
• Prototype Away!
• Let’s Go Further!
• Constraints
• Get Stylish!
• Plug It In!
• Installing Plugins
• Parting Words On Sketch App
• Type
• Arranging Layers, Groups and Artboards
• Mock It Up In InVision
• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Creating Your First High Fidelity Prototype
• Explain It With Camtasia
• Introduction
• Capturing
• Adding effects and overlays
• Creating a Winning Pitch Deck In Keynote
• PowerPoint or Keynote
• The Four Key Points to Remember
• The Winning Pitch
• Conclusion