Building Technology for Startups

Notes from my Keynote at the 1st YES : Head-STARTUP bootcamp – ‘Making your startup enterprise-ready’.

Previous: Marketing Revolution : Realizing the Power of Technology

Since everyone was into Startups and funding I began with some interesting facts from the Grant Thornton: Startups India Report.

• India today has the third highest number of startups in the world..
• 28 years is the average age of startup founders.
• Only 9% of startup founders are women.
• That is a growth of 50% in the last year.
• Number of PE/VC firms have doubled in the last year.
• Only 43% are Tech and 57% are Non Tech Startups.
• By 2020 we will have 11,500 Tech startups and growing by 2,000 annually.

Also as per World Bank’s Report: Doing Business 2016

Out of 189 economies India is ranked 

130th on the ease of doing business,

133rd on the ease of trading across borders 

157th on the ease of paying taxes

155th in case of starting a business

Still as per yourstory,

$3.5 billion invested across over 815 deals between Q1-Q3 2016, 

In 2014, $5B over 300 deals.

In 2015, $9B across 1,005 plus deals

Between 2010 and 2015 - $18B

So for a startup what are the main functions Technology plays?

Mainly 3...

1. Website Creation - Create and Launch Website with Company Info and details of Idea and how it works.
2. App Creation (Android and IOS) - Create and Launch App to get the Idea working. on at least the Android and if possible IOS Platform
3. Backend Reporting - Create a backend with Latest technology to manage and monitor the unique business opportunity created by Startup.

Thats it. Nothing more is needed.

There is much more that technology can do for a Startup...

1. Communication and Collaboration

The very first thing a startup does today is look for a name and a domain. Assuming a domain is booked, next would be an email id for each employee. As employees grow from one to four, it is important day one to ensure the text, audio, document and video communications can be tracked and searched and managed. Not only that, you might need a task management tool. Tasks should be shared, tracked and monitored among the team. Calendar to fix meetings and appointments, remind you when a feature needs to be tested or an investor needs to be called. A Notes, File, Document handling and sharing tool to ensure document sharing.

And if all above can be provided on desktop, web and mobile it will enhance productivity round the clock, manage communications and get you more collaborative.

2. Marketing and Customer Management

A startup’s main asset is its customer. A Customer Relationship Management Software would help you do just that. Manage Leads, Prospects and Customers optimally. Social Networking is the most optimal tool to reach out for any B2C startup. Use a tool to Listen, Engage, Collaborate and Analyze your customers on Social Networks.

Reach your audience, Email Campaigns, Content Creation, SEO, Advertisement Campaigns technology enhances your reach and makes it effective at the same time. Call it growth, growth hacking, quantitative marketing, full stack marketing, technical marketing, or whatever you want.

3. Accounting and Stock

The speed with which one laptop becomes a few phones and a few laptops and then many is unbelievable. Same with expenses and accounts. It is very important to therefore to ensure daily recording of stock and accounts statements. Also Invoicing needs to be properly generated and pursued towards fulfilment.

4. IT and Equipments

Every member of the team will need a laptop or mobile. Need devices like Landline phones, Switches, Firewalls etc depending on the Startup’s line of business. These devices need configuration, troubleshooting, maintenance, warranty management etc. If technology is not used to manage that it becomes a pain as soon as business starts growing and trust me its during that time you dont want your focus on this.

5. Project Management

For a non technology startup this might be maintaining of who is doing what, which stage is it on, how much who worked, when, is the task complete etc. For a tech company it will extend to code repository, reviews, builds etc.

To use all the above, a company should try to hit some stage of funding as it would cost substantially if not a fortune to set this up.

Disclaimer again that I am not associated with any of these companies nor will I be benefitted for naming them here.

A startup does not need a lot of Money to setup and run all that. There are numerous free services and tools which can be used.

Some of these are

• Zoho - Zoho has everything you need to boost sales, step up productivity, and manage all day-to-day activities.
• Gitlab - Tools for modern developers GitLab unifies issues, code review, CI and CD into a single UI
• AWS - Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services.
• Hootsuite - From finding prospects to serving customers, Hootsuite helps you do more with your social media marketing.

Grouping up a few of the essential ones...

AWS, Google Cloud, Azure - Free to begin with IAAS and PAAS tires are provided by many providers. Providing you with free compute and storage for your tasks and then pay as you grow.

Google Analytics, Piwik, Clicky - Know your customer’s behaviour on your property. See what works what does not. Track Changes and their effect on customer behaviour.

Wordpress, Joomla, Typo3 - Content management systems have gone from blogs to being complete development platforms with numerous plugins to support multiple tasks.

MySQL, Redis, Mongo - A multitude of open source databases, with numerous applications. All we need to do is choose the right one for ourselves.

Git, Jenkins, Vagrant - Code Management, local Deployments, CI are the way to go for any startup producing code.

RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, Slim, Monolog - Middleware Queues, Micro Frameworks etc makes it easy to architect, build, operate and manage large applications.

In essence these tools will work till the startup grows and has finances. Then we can grow and move towards a better stabler and scalable environment.

This or any tool is as good as we can use it. Almost all of these are either self host free or pay as you scale model. When ever you plan you should plan usage with future scalability in mind. You never know when you will become large enough to not be able to manage unmanaged operations. These tools will help you organize you complete business.

My 3 point advice to all budding startups poised to make their mark in history.

Get a Technology Advisor

A Tech advisor would help a startup with tools they would need, to operate and work efficiently. He/She will understand the business and its intricacies and guide the team on what to use. I am sure in todays era of internet/tech every startup can figure their way out if pointed in the right direction.

Outsourcing and Misc tools

A lot of tools today need only internet and reading skills. These buildup on the individuals core skill to achieve objectives. Where core tech skills are needed outsourcing helps to avoid the pain of hiring and managing. Please ensure to retain your code and its exclusive rights in case your outsource.

Scalable Architecture

Whether it be free tools, outsourced or paid, the architecture defined for your business solution needs to have some core properties day one. Loosely coupled, Horizontally Scalable, Redundant, Fault tolerant, Layered are important ones. Spend some time with your technology consultant to ensure you understand your architecture atleast on a broader level.

Questions if any welcome.