How to Launch a Successful Startup? 12 Insights We Gained

Hi everyone! We decided to share the lessons and mistakes we learned during the lifetime of our startup. In this article, five Checkaso executives who founded the company will elaborate on their key insights. Here it goes.

1. 🚀

Keep in mind that you’re going to be growing, and adjust your decisions accordingly, early on. Let’s take choosing a tech stack as an example. Check right from the start how scalable your stack is. Will it be easy for you to find a team to support it?

2. 🧐

Creating an easily scalable system is the most important part. At the same time, common programming languages may not always be the best solution. Yes, it might be easier for you to find a team this way, but then you’d end up spending on resources. With code efficiency affected, you’d have to literally buy the performance. Smaller teams are often more efficient as developers thanks to friendly ties, personal responsibility, and engagement. Generally speaking, taking a careful look at the pros and cons is quite worth it.

3. 🎯

Making open features right from the start may be worth it. That is, the tools that have the potential to be improved and refined. Leave some space for growth, or else you’d eventually either have to rework everything or give up on some ideas.

4. 🔎

Introducing the analytics as early as possible is a must. This way you’d be able to see exactly where you’re losing users if new features meet their expectations, and how much money they bring. Another important point is the “redundancy” of features. During a retrospective, it may turn out that you could have the same outcome with less functionality but spent a lot of money and time on development, and it didn’t pay off. Calculate the cost of features wisely and in advance. You also may want to hire an experienced tester as early as possible.

5. 📈

Take a sober look at your ideas as they can get you all dizzy. For example, it may turn out that the market doesn’t really need your feature. Challenge your ideas, ask for some criticism, and utilize a detached and cold approach. In fact, this can apply to everything: creating new products, planning an ad campaign, or launching a new department.

6. 😎

Develop a design system. In order for everything to be consistent, you may want to start planning early on. This is the substance of quick and convenient new section development. This way, you won’t have to figure out from scratch what a toggle should look like because you’ll know it from what’s already done. Our UI kit is frequently updated now, but it wasn’t always the case back then. Besides, during the scaling process, we had to move from one software to another, which was rather challenging. We allocated entire sprints to move and reassemble the components. So, when choosing a stack of tools at the start, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re going to grow.

7. ⚡️

Cultivate a whole new code review culture to shape a unified “code style” and create a pool of universal optimal solutions. The second one is technical documentation maintenance. It will minimize unnecessary communication during onboarding and help you track controversial issues. You may want to introduce this practice right now, as it won’t be that easy later on with all the new projects and burning tasks. You won’t be able to delegate it to a new employee either.

8. ❤️

The team is the most important part. First, you invest in it, then it pays back. Don’t be afraid to reject those whom you don’t trust, and wait for the right people to come. If your team has those in love with their work, customers will feel it.

9. 🦸‍♀️

The product vision can change and you’d better be prepared for this. At first, we made a platform for ASO specialists, knowing what they might need based on our own experience. Well, it turned out that they are too small an audience. Many people who are not professionals in our field are looking for easy-to-find and easy-to-use solutions. To make sure that’s exactly what you have, you may want to take a layman’s look at your product. Since you have a good understanding of your field, you may find it easy to grasp but it’s not always the case for the users.

10. 🧠

You should have a firm grasp on your field and feel for users at the same time. Avoid mindless prototyping. How would people feel when they use a section? What would they find really important? How else can you make your job easier? Designers need to understand that they affect product growth. Maybe you should look for something that would emphasize the section's importance or some solution aimed at extra sales? Our team consists of not just employees but designers now.

11. 🌎

Set your priorities right, or else you might end up trying to release new features and catch up with your competitors with users throwing bugs at you. Even if it takes a couple of minutes to troubleshoot, you may lose focus. Ask yourself: Can that user solve their problem in a different way? What’s more important to you at the moment, perfect performance or meeting the users’ needs?

12. ❗️

And the final lesson: Make friends with similar startups. Embrace networking; this applies to every team member. It improves your out-of-the-box thinking and helps you find new partners and customers.

Learn more about Checkaso.

Written by:

Kseniya Burn, CPO & COO at Checkaso
Evgeniya Baekenova, Product Owner at Checkaso
Vasily Mikhailov, Tech Lead at Checkaso
David Margaryan, Head of ASO at Checkaso
Abbi Kerimov, Design Director at Checkaso