Eight years ago, in 2012, I went to the first Lean Startup Machine event in Toronto where our team won first prize by validating our idea and selling our prototype for $50. At the time, I was working as a product owner, and my company was looking to be the first to offer iPad applications within investor relations.

Our team from LSM Toronto, 2012

A few years before that, we had spent a bunch of time and loot building essentially what y...