Tech 101 for startups

TL;DR: Tech is critical for any startup, but it is just a piece of a bigger puzzle. Taking advantage of what is already built is a must. Customers always have the last word. Core elements (and tech among them) should be developed in-house.

Disclaimer 1: These are my learnings after 3 years as CEO/VP of Product at SocialBets and 5 months as VC at Samaipata. Comments are more than welcome! 😉

Disclaimer 2: This only applies for products or services that allow quick iteration loops with customers. For other type of projects (Deep Tech, Bio Tech, etc.) some things may apply, but their dynamics are completely different.

I must admit that my view about tech has changed a lot, mostly due to mistakes I made. A few that come to my mind are: externalizing development to freelancers in India and Philippines, releasing native products on several platforms (web, iOS and Android) at the same time, dedicate weeks to develop features before testing with customers, etc.

The waste of valuable time one of the main risks about being wrong when launching a new company. For me, time is the scarcest thing for a startup, so I hope this post helps founders to maximize the number of times they can iterate before running out of money.

I’m sure that my view about tech and startups will continue to evolve, but this is where I stand today 💪:

1) Tech as a means and not as an end

A common mistake in tech companies is giving tech more relevance than other core aspects of the business, such as design, marketing, sales, operations or funding. This may be ok in some cases (Hardware, AI, etc.) but it is not the case for most companies.

Don’t get me wrong, technology is critical because it is the main interaction channel with your clients and a bad technology will prevent your company from succeeding. Each project has different needs, however, technology should be seen as another part of the puzzle (design, marketing, sales, funding, etc.) and consume the appropriate resources (many times, less than we think).

A variant of this is using a trendy technology (today usually blockchain 😅) to solve a problem easily solved otherwise and adding no additional value to users.

2) The less code, the better

As most of you know, building something from scratch always takes longer and is more expensive than planned. Of course, software is not an exception. I think this is due to: 1) people are optimistic by default and 2) most of the time you don’t understand the complexity of a project until you get your hands dirty.

Because of this, I think that coding should be minimized as much as possible. Not only because it takes longer and is more expensive than expected, but also because you need to maintain your code. I’m not a developer and I cannot get very technical on this, but I have suffered important delays on releases because we needed to “update some libraries” (and it is not cool 😤).

How to do it?:

• Test your hypothesis as much as possible without coding. Talk to your customers, use messaging apps to build and MVP, create landing pages that replicate your product, do sales in person, or whatever you come up with, but think of coding as the last option.
• Decide carefully your stack depending on your needs and take advantage of frameworks/libraries already built. Every technology has its pros and cons and don’t forget about the community around it (Stackoverflow is usually your best friend). These are some of the ones I used, but I’m sure that there are already better options out there: React (Native) for web/app development, Ruby on Rails for backend or Python (and Pandas) for data analysis
• Use as many XaaS as you can. Usually they are much cheaper and faster than developing their features by yourself. My favourites: Segment, Customer.io, Drift, OneSignal and Google Cloud

3) Listen more to customers than to developers

In every tech decision there are usually two sides: product and tech. Best VPs of Product and CTOs understand also the other side and can design and code smoothly. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and, sometimes, positions are far from each other. Here the solution is simple: customers do have the final word.

With this I’m not saying that product people should decide. I’m saying that product people should be able to gather facts that show customers preferences and tech people should adapt to them. Usually, a fluid communication between teams makes things easier for both product and tech. However, sometimes they will have to compromise: tech people will need to do things they do not want to do and product people will have to adapt their prototype to tech requirements/limitations, but always without affecting user experience.

Also, sometimes, good developers are too perfectionist and they may complicate themselves more than necessary 🤯. This is not always a bad thing because it helps to have better code (which is is critical for scaling or adding more engineers to the company), but senior developers or product guys should make sure the ROI of time/cost makes sense.

4) Tech should be in-house

This point is very simple: companies should have the control over core elements of the business and tech is one of them. Personally, I’m not a supporter of externalizing almost anything excepting: PR (agencies have much more contacts than startups), SEO (most startups do not require to dedicate 40 hours a week to SEO and an expert really makes the difference) or cybersecurity (periodical reviews by an expert should be enough).

Having the control does not mean not receiving external help. For example, a company could hire an expert to build the analytics framework, but someone in the company must internalize all the knowledge 🤓.

We all know that there are always constraints in a startup, but there are some things that we cannot give up. Regarding to tech, I always prefer a smaller and junior team full-time than a bigger or more experienced team part-time.

That’s all folks. I hope that these few lines help you question your current ideas about tech. And comments are more than welcome, so don’t be shy!

At Samaipata we are always looking for amazing founders to back and support, so if are or know one get in touch! Also, if you want to know more about you should read this amazing post from Carmen.

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