Spherical startup

Disclamer: I did not create a startup, but I had to both turn out from the inside and watch from the outside. So the thoughts set out below are purely subjective and addressed to those who still want to launch their project.

Imagine such a very original situation: you are up to thirty, and you decided to start a startup. Mmm, the word “make” sounds a bit rude, right? This is hi-tech, this is innovation, this is the triumph of human intelligence and hard work, which should only change the world ... Or bring you millions of money. Let it be - “create”.

We will not breed demagoguery on the topic “how to drink coffee with investors” - imagine a phantasmagoric situation: you decided to create everything really from scratch. Without anyone else's help. And you have a pool of people from which you can choose a team for yourself. And all of them are the same as you, crystal-clear idealists who adore their work, dream to bring their talents to life and are always ready to learn new things. So how to make the most of all these wonderful resources?

As the fish rots from the head, so we will start from the very top - from you, dearest, from the ideologist and mastermind, IT-revolutionary with a warm heart and a cold head. And if in a simple way, then you are a product manager and are fully responsible for the quality of your product and its position in the market. Apart from you, by and large, no one is interested in it, and no one will eagerly catch your every word and instantly translate it into a perfect code for an ingenious design. So - you need to clearly set the requirements. Business requirements. It means - to write a lot, a lot of high-quality, so that on their basis later functional requirements appear (which, by and large, you also need to write, but we will regret it so). At a minimum, you need to know what is the difference between a DBMS and a programming language, to be a talented, perspicacious leader and hear every rustle in your team, moreover, without looking over their shoulder - they don’t like this oh. Based on the initial conditions - they will write anything, just set a clear task. And your project manager will do it already.

In addition to the subtlest sense of time needed to rationally iterate your ingenious plans and slow down your flight of thought (if you will still be able to respond to it after fulfilling your duties), in principle, he can write the aforementioned functional requirements. That is, it’s good for him to know what UML is, at least to guess that architecture is not only something connected with houses, and, again, to be inconspicuous so as not to interfere with the Creators of your worthless genius plan.

We’ll move on to them, because without them you’d better go on a hipstagram and consume directing your vibrant young energy into a more socially useful direction: open a stall with shawarma near the metro or go on a mission to the Red Cross somewhere in Indonesia. And so much has already been spent on operating expenses.

Designer. Not so long ago, representatives of this profession were treated almost like warlocks in the Middle Ages, considering their craft (I emphasize) something charlatan. Today a diametrically opposite image has developed in the consciousness of the masses. And the design should solve very specific problems, moreover, the most diverse, often rapidly changing, and therefore it would be nice for the designer to work, and not stare at the window in search of inspiration. Fifteen years ago, the designer was a usabilityist, and actually a designer, and a layout designer, and the crown did not fall from copywriting.

And finally, the heart, hands and brain of your project are developers. In no case can one regret their quantity (by and large, and quality, but, unfortunately, there are not so many crystal clear beserebereniks among high-quality programmers), but the smallest number are two. The minimum is four. The couple is working on the next iteration, the second is debugging the current one, then changing. Developers have nothing to blame - they really write code and pull design on it. If they came to your project, they don’t care what color and which side the “Use” button should be. And even if they are against, they will not insist much. But if the question arises, write the kernel in PHP or Django - it’s better to immediately go to a meeting with an investor and analyze your competitors so that you don’t have time to feel like a mediocre armless human unit.

Four is for the kernel only. We also need mobile applications, infrastructure ...
Only the goalkeeper is the last to make a mistake. At the gate you will have a tester (a tester is such a device for measuring electrical parameters). In a creative outburst, developers may well forget about the 49th paragraph of functional requirements or make the notorious “Use” button 27 pixels to the left. The first user of your system is an evil genius and a guardian angel, who drops to the ground and protects from tragic falls.

This is all to the fact that when you start a startup, you may not need employees who “everyone has” - there are small companies that do not have operating expenses at all. Barely somewhere begins to smell like money - immediately there are charlatans who will speak long and beautifully a lot and beautifully with an abundance of English-speaking words to seem smarter. Drive these to the neck from the doorway. A professional will make every effort to be understood, otherwise his knowledge is worthless.

In general, if you can not write, do not write. If you want a lot of money - go to work in a big company and plow, plow, plow. If you want to change the world - close at home, curtain the curtains and plow, plow, plow. True, is there something in common?