How To Ignite Your Technology Startup

How To Ignite Your Technology Startup[i]

I feel I have been distracted lately. I have strayed from my original focus on topics that have a practical relevance to African entrepreneurs seeking to build technology startups. Lately, I have taken on topics of a more broad and general nature. That was the case in the 4-part series How To Make Africa More Innovative and Entrepreneurial and again in How Can Africa’s Governments Harness Mobile Technology To Engage Rural Parents In The Continent’s Drive To Improve Educational Outcomes?.

This week’s post is the beginning of a course correction. I’m going back to the basics – writing about some of the practical issues that entrepreneurs grapple with everyday. First, an update; in On Startups, Business Plans And Failure I told you I was studying for a test. Well the results were communicated to us on July 24. I passed, and have already registered for the next and final exam in the series. I have a year to get ready. Please wish me luck. I am told, by potentially unreliable sources, that only 20% of the candidates that begin this particular series of professional exams make it through to the end.

Before I jump into the topics of today’s post, some coming attractions. Two weeks from today I’ll start using The Startup Owner’s Manual[ii] to guide our conversations. Generally, we will consider one chapter of the book every two weeks. By my reckoning that should take us pretty much to the end of 2012, and possibly even into early 2013. Now, back to our regular schedule.

While contemplating the topic for today’s post, I started reflecting again on my recent experience as a volunteer MBA Consultant to a team of entrepreneurs-in-training at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology in Accra. That got me thinking about how startup teams come together, and about the decision making process that leads to the formation of these teams. I found inspiration in two articles. You can read them for yourself by following the links at the end of this post.

The first article[iii] discusses a topic that I am certain many people with an idea that they believe could form the basis for a technology startup think about frequently; how do you become a technology entrepreneur if you are not an engineer? How do you succeed in building a product if you are not an engineer, or do not know how to write software code? The author is a marketing manager at Mozilla, and this is her advice.

• First, focus on your strengths – do not spend a lot of time trying to become a programmer, or an engineer. Attend to those areas of the business in which you excel, and find people who can attend to other areas of the business. I should point out that not having a technical background should not prevent you from contributing meaningfully to product development.
• Second, don’t cut corners on development costs – find and pay for the best engineers you can locate. Work with them directly. Avoid the curse of trying to save money on development costs only to find that you must return to square one because you have had to jettison work that was poorly done.
• Third, thoroughly vet technical candidates – you might need to get creative. Ask someone knowledgeable to vet engineers and other technical candidates on your behalf. If your startup has technology at its core, your vetting of the engineers and developers you will be relying on has to be absolutely and completely thorough.

The second article[iv]continues the theme of forming a startup’s founding team. Dr. Douglass Merrill, former Google CIO and now co-founder of a loan underwriting technology startup called ZestFinance, spoke with the author about how he went about finding a co-founder for his technology startup.

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