Ed-Tech Services
I've spent 15 years working in Education Technology (Ed-Tech) and have extensive experience in data migration and integration.
I can help you figure out how to move data from one platform to another, either one time or on a scheduled basis. I can also help you configure and test integrations between your applications.
Management
Early stage startups are typically managed by one or more of the founders. In many cases, the earliest team to grow is Engineering, which can be relatively self-managing until you have more than two engineers. The problem, of course, is that your growing Engineering team will require more and more leadership, but this will either take time away from one of the founders or require you to hire a full time VP of Engineering.
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I can help by providing part time leadership for Engineering, or other teams as required. This can be as simple as making sure the team is working on the right tasks and managing daily standups and sprints, or as complex as taking on a full leadership role for the team.
Strategic Planning
A little careful strategic planning can go a long way to avoiding later problems at an early stage startup. I've been through all of the startup stages and understand the implications of decisions made, or not made, during the early stages.
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I can help you decide what is most important to work on right now, what needs to be addressed in later stages, and create a high level plan for what you need to worry about and when. I can also provide ongoing advice and assistance in adjusting your strategic plan as necessary on an ongoing basis.
Technology Selection
Choosing the right technology can have major implications in the future maintainability and scalability of your product. The MVP might well be built with whatever seems most appropriate but as soon as you have your first customer you need to start thinking about which technology and libraries to use as well as tracking your choices and decisions.
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I can help you make the early decisions about what technology to use (or not use) and I can also help you revist your choices along the way. In addition, I can also help you set up your early documentation of what you are using to build your product.
Cloud Architecture
There are many ways to build a SaaS application that runs in the cloud - even within a single cloud provider's environment. Choosing the right proveder and then the correct combination of their offerings can be a challenge, but one that needs to be addressed so you don't end up with a product that can't perform or scale effectively, or runs up huge bills.
I can help you determine the appropriate cloud environment, what will work best for the MVP, and then help you plan for scaling in the future. In addition, I can help you work with the cloud provider to set up your account, support, and even usage credits.
Research and Analysis
Choosing the right technology or other key component of your application requires research and analysis, with special knowledge of how your product is architected and what technology it is currently using.
Your small engineering team will be focused on developing your application and won't have the spare cycles to spend on a research project.
I can help you sort through the options and find the one(s) that make the most sense for your product and vision.
Vendor Selection and Relationships
Choosing the right vendors is easy early on in the process but, as you grow, this becomes more complex and also more important. Good vendors and good vendor relationships can ease the growth process tremendously, but just one bad vendor or relationship can do a lot of damage.
I can help you choose the right vendors, work with them to establish relationships and find discounts, and then keep the relationships functional until you have a team member in place to handle this task.
License Compliance
Modern software is built from many components or packages and each of these may well be built from other packages. Each package comes with its own license agreement and, even if they are open source, these agreements may have certain legal requirements for their use. It is quite easy to end up with hundreds of different packages and, therefore, many different license agreements.
Some investors will want to know more about the licenses in use and may even have specific license types that they are unwilling to see in your application.
I can help decide which licenses are acceptable, track what is in use, and, if necessary, find replacement packages when a license is a problem. I can also help you make sure your decisions are documented clearly and are readily available to your engineers.
Regulatory Compliance
Depending on the type of customer data you are working with you may need to consider various government regulations (HIPAA and FIRPA are two common ones). These come with very specific requirements for how you manage customer data and they also include some significant penalties if you do not follow their requirements.
You should start looking into this as soon as you settle on a specific target market and product, as you will need to be compliant right from the start.
I have worked in environments with substantial compliance requirements in the past and I can help you work through what regulations matter, how you need to address them, and what the technical solution should look like. Finally, I can help you create the appropriate policies, both for the engineering team and for your customers.
Employee Growth Planning and Hiring
As you start to grow you will need to hire more employees for your firm, likely starting with Engineering and then Sales and Marketing.
Writing a good job description, determining where to advertise the position, interviewing prospective employees, and then making the hire are all areas where I have deep experience and can help.
Development and Configuration
Early stage startups frequently discover that they have technical requirements that none of their employees can address. You can have an employee spend time to learn the new technology, but time spent learning is also time spent NOT developing.
If you need extra coding or configuration work done on your application I can help or I can connect you with some of the resources I know who can help you. This can be for simple projects requiring a few days or weeks of work or more complex projects requiring one or more engineers for an extended period of time.
Technical Sales
Technical Sales (or Pre-Sales) is the practice of Sales from the technical side. Everybody knows what an Account Executive (Sales Representative) does, but fewer people know that the counterpart to the Account Executive is the Sales Engineer (SE).
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The Sales Engineer owns the technical part of the sale and is generally in charge of doing demonstrations, answering technical questions, and generally doing anything technical in the sales process. The Sales Engineer will also create demos and demo scripts, run Proofs of Value/Concept, and even do some consulting as part of the handoff to the Services team.
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Startups don't typically hire their first Sales Engineer until they have 40 to 50 employees and a few Account Executives. However, an experienced SE can add a lot of value earlier in the startup process, especially around polishing demos and demo scripts.
I've spent the past 20 years of my career as a very successful part- or full-time SE, and one of the services I can offer is the expertise of an SE without having to hire one full time.
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A good time to talk to me about technical sales is the point where you are starting work on the Minimum Viable Product. I can make suggestions around what you do, or do not, need to do for a good demo and I can help you script out the demo itself. As you grow I can also help with the actual sales process, and even the hiring of your first SE.