Hot Stuff - Better Than Sliced Bread

Hot Stuff is a three person startup comprised of three friends who have come up with a better idea than sliced bread.  They are on a shoestring budget and working out of a co-work space downtown.  They know their idea is cool so they want to get to market fast.  Code is being pushed out multiple times a day and MVP is right around the corner.   Everyone is in a state of excited exhaustion, but have they thought of everything?

Here are some areas that Hot Stuff may be neglecting:

• Market Research  - What is your target market?  What are their pain points?  Are you bringing the right features to market in a way that adds more value than your competitors?  
• The Big Picture - What is the product goal?  What are the use cases?  How will you monetize?  What is your target market?  How will you measure?  How does everything fit together?  How do you communicate about your product?
• Reality Check - Is your MVP actually viable?  If not, you could be missing your chance to build a loyal (or at least interested) user base.
• Product Evolution - Now that you have a product, where do you go from here?  What are users saying and how do you improve?  What does that roadmap look like and how do you get there?
• General Cohesion - Everyone is focused on their individual tasks, but who is making sure that everything is going to come together in the end?

If you can't afford/don't believe a PM is necessary at this stage, bringing in someone even part time will add value to your product and help keep the crazy in check.  A good PM will be thinking about the "what ifs" and looking three steps ahead to help you avoid becoming just another product lost in the noise.