Tips For Technical Startup Founders | Startup School

Intro (00:00:00)

• No bullet points required for this section as it only contains a greeting and background music.

How to Build and Perpetuate as a Technical Founder (00:00:09)

• Diana discusses her experience from starting as a CTO of augmented reality startup to Director of Engineering at Niantic.
• Presentation on the role of a technical founder and stages of building a startup: ideation, MVP, and launch.
• The talk draws from insights of other YC technical founders.

What Does a Technical Founder Do? (00:01:56)

• Technical founders are deeply committed partners in the startup's journey, not just developers.
• They lead product development, interact with users, and make critical technical decisions.
• Early-stage technical founders often handle a wide range of tasks, from coding to IT.
• They focus on building minimum viable technology for the sake of progress rather than perfection.

How To Build (00:04:38)

• In the ideating stage, the goal is to quickly develop a prototype to demonstrate to potential users.
• A prototype should be simple and can be created using tools like Figma or Envision for software or 3D renderings for hardware.
• Prototypes like Optimizely's visual editor or Azure Reality's AR algorithms can validate ideas and facilitate user feedback.
• Common prototyping mistakes include overbuilding and delaying user interaction.

Build an MVP: The Startup Process (00:08:30)

• The MVP stage requires building a functional product for launch, typically within weeks.
• User commitment, often in the form of payment, is a crucial goal during this stage.
• Hiring too early can be counterproductive; it's essential for founders to stay hands-on to gather insights.
• Examples include Justin TV's founding team building the initial platform by tackling different system elements themselves.

Principles for Building Your MVP (00:11:29)

• "Do things that don't scale" principle suggests using hacks like manual onboarding to launch quickly.
• The "9010 solution" emphasizes launching a limited but functional product and avoiding scope creep.
• Simplify the product to limit situations, data types, functionality, user types, or geographic scope.
• Startups have the advantage of moving faster than big companies with this approach.
• Examples of simple MVPs include Doordash's initial static website with Google Docs as a back-end and the strategic focus on a single location.

Choose the Tech Stack That Makes Sense for Your Startup (00:15:04)

• Balance your product needs with your personal expertise to ship quickly.
• Keep tech stack simple and choose what allows for fast iteration.
• Utilize third-party frameworks and API tools for functionalities like authentication, payments, and cloud infrastructure.
• Avoid building everything from scratch to save time and resources.
• Cost and scalability concerns of third-party APIs are secondary to moving quickly.
• Tech stack choices are less important if a product gains users—technical scaling issues can be resolved later.

What Happens In The Launch Stage? (00:19:43)

• The goal after launching an MVP is to iterate towards product-market fit.
• Use both hard data via a simple analytics dashboard and soft data from user interactions to inform decisions.
• Example of WePay pivoting to an API model after analyzing data and user feedback.
• Continuous iteration is key, illustrated by Segment's frequent launches and feature additions leading to significant company growth.

When You Launch: The Right Way to Build Tech (00:22:43)

• Balance fixing bugs, adding new features, and addressing technical debt.
• It is okay to incur technical debt for getting closer to product-market fit.
• Example of Pokémon Go's success despite initial technical challenges.
• Avoid building complex systems like large companies, and focus on insights from users.
• Building tech for growth can come from collaboration between engineers and sales/growth teams.

How the role evolved from ideating to hiring (00:25:36)

• After achieving product-market fit, focus shifts to scaling and refining technology.
• The founder's role expands from coding to hiring and setting engineering culture.
• Communication overhead increases with team growth, affecting the amount of time spent coding.
• Founders must choose their role between being a technical architect or focusing on people management.

Summary (00:26:51)

• Initially, build a prototype as fast as possible.
• For the MVP stage, build quickly with a non-scalable solution and prioritize iteration speed.
• Upon launch, iterate with data analytics and user feedback while balancing tech development and addressing tech debt.
• The startup's primary objective is to move quickly and adapt.