Time Sinks for Tech Startups

So you have an idea for a startup…great! Now what tech stack do you choose? We’ll go over some of the common time sinks that tech startups experience and how to avoid them. Early stage companies should spend their time figuring out their business and not over-engineering for problems they don’t have yet. You probably don’t need microservices, you probably don’t need that new framework that is all the hotness, you probably don’t need 100% test coverage…you need to figure out how your business is going to make it.

Transcript

1. TIME SINKS FOR TECH STARTUPS Travis Nelson September 25, 2018
2. JAKE JABS CENTER AT CU DENVER
3. JAKE JABS CENTER AT CU DENVER
4. TRAVIS NELSON -Cofounder and CTO at Focal Revenue Solutions -Partner / Software Architect at Moonsault Software -15 years in enterprise and startup experience -Denver Java Users Group - VP -Denver Microservices - Founder -Indie Hackers Denver - Community Ambassador
5. TIME SINKS FOR STARTUPS? - Two groups - engineering sinks and business sinks
6. ENGINEERING TIME SINKS
7. SCALING - Time Sink: Focusing on scaling over feature development - Time Sink: Infrastructure as code - Time Saver: Can you survive at scale? - Time Saver: Manually configuring via console
8. MICROSERVICES - Time Sink: Microservices from the start - Time Saver: Transition to microservices down the road
9. MICROSERVICES: SACRIFICIAL ARCHITECTURE
10. MICROSERVICES: PEEL-OFF
11. MICROSERVICES: COARSE-GRAINED SERVICES
12. CLEAN CODE - Time Sink: 100% test coverage - Time Sink: Build restrictions around code styles - Time Saver: Start with at least some tests - Time Saver: Don’t create restrictions that prevent you from getting builds deployed
13. LATEST AND GREATEST - Time Sink: Bleeding-edge everything - Time Saver: Latest stable versions
14. WRITING YOU OWN - Time Sink: Writing your own frameworks - Time Saver: Leverage open source or third party services
15. ABSTRACTION AND REFACTORING - Time Sink: Forcing abstraction too early - Time Saver: Wait for patterns to emerge
16. TECHNOLOGY STACK - Time Sink: Hype framework - learning curve, poorly documented, or might not be around in a few years - Time Saver: Boring technologies - well- documented, well-tested, stable.
17. BUSINESS TIME SINKS
18. MVP - Time Sink: MVP is everything - Time Sink: Build MVP without involving a single customer - Time Saver: Just enough features to satisfy early customers - Time Saver: Get feedback from customers early and often
20. FEATURE AND TIERS - Time Sink: Building hard boundaries in you application - Time Saver: Let usage patterns determine your tiers
21. OVER ANALYZING DECISIONS - Time Sink: Making sure you made the best decision possible - Time Sink: Meeting about everything - Time Saver: Move forward and correct course along the way - Time Saver: Meet when things need to be addressed and don’t force meetings that aren’t necessary
22. COMPANY NAME - Time Sink: You need the perfect name - Time Sink: Everyone has to like the name - Time Saver: Pick something people can remember and spell - Time Saver: Accept that not everyone will like your name. You should be focused on them liking you product
24. STARTUP BOOKS AND BLOG POSTS - Time Sink: Too much time reading - Time Saver: Start something!
26. RECAP - ENGINEERING TIME SINKS - Scaling - Microservices - Clean code - Upgrading/Refactoring - Writing your own - It’s okay to pick boring technologies
27. RECAP - BUSINESS TIME SINKS - Get feedback early - Don’t be too rigid - Don’t overthink decisions - Don’t need the prefect name - Take the leap
28. THIS TIME IS IMPORTANT
29. MY FAVORITE RESOURCES -Denver Startup Week -How I build this with Guy Raz -Indie Hackers -Local Meetups
30. QUESTIONS?