Finding the tech co-founder
Building a Startup is like drinking coffee. When you hold a cup of freshly brewed coffee, the aroma excites, invites and there is nothing else in this world that you want to do, except take that sip. Once the taste of coffee lives to the expectation that aroma created, caffeine takes over and makes it even better. From then on, you need to live the experience and repeat until you are satisfied. It is not just the coffee bean that makes coffee great, but the cup you hold, temperature of the coffee, ambience and everything else around that add to the coffee experience. Similarly, it is not just the idea that inspires you as a founder to do great things, but the people involved will help bring structure and form to your idea and help you make it a reality.
In the current startup world, it is often the technology that helps to define, differentiate and deliver the product. It is primarily because technology has the ability to reach, expand and evolve quickly. When technology becomes a key component of your startup, either you as a founder needs to have a good grasp at technology or find a co-founder or a tech team to fill that void. Due to the nature of what I do, I have been meeting with quite a few startups and often the success of the product has been strongly influenced by the decisions made by the technology team.
Too many tools
It is real easy to get started with technology stack these days, with cloud offerings, easy to learn programming languages, support tools and also develop-with-no-programming-background tools to make your life even more easier. While most of you know that it is not that simple, at least these tools hold a great deal of promise. If you don’t have the right co-founder or technology team working on your idea, it is easy to get lost in the lines of code and the product no where in sight. Don’t get too excited with the tools and don’t trust that tools alone will solve your problems. It is how the tools are used, will drive the success of your product. So, keep it simple. When you are in the early stages of development, progress is paramount, not the tool set.
And one more…
Taking an idea and converting into the code to see it work is what excites a software engineer the most. With this intoxicating experience, features keep on piling up and makes your team feel that the product cannot be rolled out with this one more feature. It is not true. Get out there, put your product to test, even if it is strapped together and get first hand experience from your target market. This will help you to derive the most desired features for your product.
Knowledgeable, Reliable and Sensible
It helps to have a tech co-founder or team member who is knowledgeable as you need to trust that person to deliver the final product, while you focus on building traction and raising capital. When you are relying on the tech team to build your dream, you need to make sure they are not just there for the excitement of working in a startup or just for the equity. They need to share the same passion as you do and feel the same sense of responsibility in the success of the product. Finally, they need to be sensible and not burn to much budget on fancy technology or burn hours trying to perfect the software architecture to match book. Get the MVP out there as fast as you can.
Your technology team should help you get ahead of the competition, acquire your first customer, provide great customer support and then develop the core to handle large volumes. It is all about how quickly you understand the market, stabilise and apply the learnings to make it even better.
Now, drink your coffee, build your dream…
