Building an MVP

Learn to code.

• It's not that hard (so many tutorials out there now)
• You don't have to be good to show value
• Pays dividends in automating your workflows
• You can evaluate new hires (i.e. they must be better than you)
• Learn Git

Get a good tech co-founder

• Hardest thing to do but the most important
• If you're not technical ask a friend to test/vet
• The tech is just as important as your business idea
• Don't outsource

Build fast. Break things.

• You need to launch early
• Spaghetti is edible
• If you survive you can rebuild it better later
• Slap beta on it and no one will care if it goes down

Someone's already built it

• Open source is love, open source is life
• Modern day programming is kinda like Lego
• Write as little code as possible
  Less code == less bugs???
• Build it vs Buy it

Language?

Javascript I guess...

• Only langauge that can be used on front AND backend
• Lots of developers working with it
• Large pool of existing packages to leverage
• Easy to learn

Scale later

• If it crashes from too many people (100s) congratulations on your good product
• Better to scale vertically (big server) than horizontally (many small servers) until you have no other choice
• Your time is better spent building/testing features

Free (1 year+) infrastructure getting system

• IBM Softlayer (generous, we use them)
• Amazon (hello vendor lock-in)
• Azure (Get bizspark for free MS products)
• Google Cloud

Must have hosted Services

• Cloudflare (free dns/ddos protection, sitespeed, helps with scaling issues)
• Transactional Email - Sendgrid, MailGun, Amazon SES
• Automation - Zapier (Can probably build a startup using just this)
• Payment - Stripe/Braintree
• Analytics - Google Analytics/Heap
• Source Control - Gitlab/Github

Development

• Fast, Cheap, Quality (Pick two)
• Software is like building a house
• Aim to replace it in a year
• Make notes of hacks that you make
• Use Linux for your infrastructure
• Try to avoid vendor lock-in (e.g. AWS)

Main take aways

• Javascript based stacks are easiest
• Release early
• Don't hire bad programmers
• Good programmers are hard to seduce
• Get your hands dirty, everyone should be coding
• Don't be a perfectionist
• Leverage free tools/ always ask for discounts

Questions?