Startup Strategy 101: 10 Tech and Product Errors to Avoid
When you start a startup you have a blank sheet of paper: the possibilities are endless and while it is true that there is no 100% effective manual on how to get started, there are recommendations about what usually works and what doesn’t. In this post I want to talk from my experience working in several startups, about common mistakes I have observed when defining the technology and product strategy. Of course, it is not a complete list, and you can surely find exceptions for most of the points, but I think these are decisions that in many cases can be considered as wrong or at least not optimal. In the startup world, mistakes are often referred to as learning, but stumbling twice on the same stone is no longer learning…
Without further ado, I will list some of what I believe are the most common mistakes in technology and product strategy.
Start building a solution to a problem without having validated it.
Design an architecture that is scalable and highly available from the beginning (with well-justified exceptions).
Choosing frameworks or technologies that are very new and with little developer community, when there are more widespread alternatives.
Not having a good outsourcing strategy (core parts are outsourced, or outsourcing is not considered at all).
Designing an MVP with too many functionalities.
Define a product roadmap as a list of functionalities and tasks without problem context.
Do not talk to early adopters or customers. Or listen to everything they say and put it directly into the roadmap.
Making costly technical decisions with no (or little) business impact.
View the engineering team as if it were an internal service team (like an IT team), rather than a product development team.
As I said at the beginning, this is not intended to be a complete list, but it presents some of what I consider to be the most common mistakes. How do you see it? Would you add or subtract any points?