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cloud decisions design hacks leadership program security startup strategy team tools

Tech Stack for Growth

So you have launched. You figured out how to make money and you are ready to grow. A good tech stack for growth businesses is depicted in the diagram. Gowing the business usually requires more people. So your tech stack will need to expand to include user management tools. My guidance here is to make sure you figured out what’s available from Gsuite or Office 365 before adding new complexity. By the way, you should only use either Gsuite or Office 365. Never both. Remember to always avoid complexity. If you like us and many other businesses, you will have Macs and Windows. You should also understand Gsuite or Office 365 offering for user kit management before adding new tools. As a growing business, you will consider adding new customer channels. We added fairly quickly telephony and webchat and also integrations to other (non-core) services. You don’t want to build any of this unless it’s your USP which is very unlikely. Finally, remember to constantly review your technology stack to continuously remove legacy.

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cloud design hacks innovation startup strategy system tools

Tech Stack for Launch

So you are ready to launch an MVP or ‘open-to-all’ service? Scary, right? Preparing for launch it’s never easy. Bear in mind that no one has many users to start. However, if you have keen investors or an active board, the pressure is on. A good start tech stack is depicted in the diagram. The big difference is analytics and tools the business needs to make a success out of the launch. So a lot of new tools are added to facilitate timely and accurate product usage tracking. Finally, marketing and support tools will make or break the business so overinvest in figuring what works for you. Challenge arguments based on people’s previous experiences. (We used MailChimp at X). Also, remember to constantly review your technology stack to continuously remove legacy.

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cloud code decisions design system

Tech Stack for Early Startup

When you start to build your business it’s often hard to work out what you need in the first 3-6months. A good start is depicted in the diagram. I think in terms of what makes teams productive so Tech Stack is divided between Ops, Product & tech and Sales & Marketing. If you operate in a highly regulated market you could have for example regulatory reporting in the compliance vertical. I constantly aim to review our technology stack to continuously remove legacy.

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cloud code decisions design patterns startup strategy

Microservices dependencies are difficult to track

After building online mortgages website and backend systems (integrated with top UK banks) using microservices (Azure, NodeJS, Mongo, React) for the new project I picked a less ambitius stack while leveraging teams know how (Azure, NodeJS, MySQL, templated HTML). This article captures my thinking:

  • Fail fast – they let development teams focus on delivering features (to prove or disprove a hypothesis) rather than a complicated microservice architecture
  • It helps you to understand your requirements (UML diagrams and domain models are not perfect first time they need to evolve)
  • Microservices are complicated to develop (e.g. graceful degradation, health checks, retries) and monitor
  • Microservices dependencies are difficult to track
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design hacks patterns short startup tools

Early stage startup design resources

The Black Design resources let you conduct a meaningful user observation, engage in product design, and communicate value of your business.
http://www.black.design

Categories
code design

NodeJS best practice

Hard to disagree with this collection of valuable insights. Keep coming back to it https://github.com/i0natan/nodebestpractices

 

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design innovation

What’s technology

Technology is something you need to explain to your parents.

For millennials internet is not a technology but AI is.

For the generation X, internet is a technology but the TV is not.

Technology is always invented in your lifetime.

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design innovation startup

Complexity in banks

Banks cannot do what they want to do – innovate.
And banks do what they don’t what to do – manage legacy operations, processes and old systems.
As a result Banks are building new next to old. Fintech partnering with banks can create value at scale.

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design startup work

Cost of complexity in startups

As in architecture adding complex operational or marketing processes is pricy. Frank Gehry, an architect, said about building complex structures: flat costs $1, one curve $2, double curve $10.

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decisions design hacks leadership other system

What actually matters

MVP, happy path, test coverage, Devops… In practice everything is in a spectrum. Focus on building value as the primary goal.