Looking at the technology behind startups, the focus is often on the end result—the shiny new widget that satisfies a craving we never knew we had; the timesaver in our day-to-day activities that fits so seamlessly into our lives that we can’t imagine life before we had it. What is often overlooked is how the technology and business model came together to create the end result.

As I write this, we’re in the middle of another technology bubble. There is a tremendous amount of focus on investment to fund an idea before it’s been conceptually tested with its audience, let alone a product actually built. Only once there’s a giant budget and assembled team of developers will the startup be able to determine if their product is going to sink or swim.

At Bento Box, we don’t think this is the right way to go. Through a disciplined process of experimentation, learning and validation, tweaking a fledgling startup’s idea into a sustainable business model can be a measured activity.

In order to be flexible enough to handle the experiments necessary to allow the rapid iterations necessary to optimize the relationship between both the product and the user and the product and the market, we look at applications like this:

• User Interfaces. The design, code, graphics and markup that users use to engage with the site—both to access features and fit within its business model. Think sliding interface panels, edible-looking buttons and gentle encouragements to buy an account with more features.
• Features. The specific code that addresses the functional activities that users engage with in the site. Think the map that magically appears in your profile when you add an address; the score that gets calculated when you answer a series of questions; the friends you’re suddenly re-connected with across several social networks.
• Engines. The building blocks of the application that support the abstract problems of the Web application users. Think the underlying concept that knows what a user account is; that understands that tests contain questions, questions have answers, and than answers have a specific criteria in their construction.

In traditional Web development, a great deal of planning goes into developing an application idea and the application is launched based on some business assumptions. If the assumptions prove to be incorrect or that the needs of the user have been misjudged, it typically means the developer has to go back and re-work the code add or improve the necessary features and re-deploy, hoping that this time, it will work out.

With the proper engines in place (such as Bento Box’s own Soba and Bonsai), the rapid reconfiguration of features are possible because the underlying technology is doing the heavy lifting. This allows the startup to focus on ensuring the product market fit is right, while independently developing the user interface as necessary without taking the whole system offline.

Backed by the right market experiments, it’s possible to test both the business and technology aspects of a new venture virtually simultaneously. The real data collected from these experiments fast-tracks the growth of the startup into a business as it gains the information it needs to become sustainable.

By getting their application and business model out into the real world for analysis, startups can gather the intel they need. And if the end goal is to build a successful and desirable product, there can be less focus on raising huge investment just to get started.