Following up on a couple of posts from last week, I wanted to share another one of Allen Stern’s videos he recently took at the monthly meeting of the New York Software Industry Association. They had a quasi startup bootcamp. This next video that he shot is all about technology planning for your startup. As we have talked about before here, the technology landscape has changed, lowering the barriers to entry to an extent that it is allowing almost anyone with an idea and a few dollars to build a product that can theoretically compete on a global level. Products like Amazon EC2, GoGrid, Google App Engine, and other cloud resources allow small firms to scale up and down to meet demand and needs.
That being said, it does not preclude proper planning for technology and the video Allen provides gives a few pointers. As he states, the topics include
SaaS as a business model, the realization that you may need to do things again in the beginning to find the perfect model, the importance of staying focused, and a number of pitfalls to avoid. The pitfalls slide is a must-read for any new startup (about 13 minutes in). The pitfalls include: not documenting your work, doing it the second/third time before finishing the first time, staying away from consultants, deadend architecture and finding the right balance of equity for employees. Also discussed is management and when/how to split out all of the tasks when you are a founder.
