Areas of Expertise
I've spent 25 years working in startup companies and have done many things, but the ones I am most familar with and offer services around are found on this page. ​What I offer in each of these areas depends on the stage your startup is in (see Stages of a Startup for more details). ​
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At a high level, the areas I work on include the following:
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Click the links above or keep scrolling for more information.
Product Management
Product Management is the process for determining the next most important thing to add to your product. There are lots of additional details, of course, but how much you need to focus on this very much depends on the stage of your product.
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In the Ideation stage this can be safely ignored as you are really just figuring out what you want to build.
Once you start developing the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) you really just need to make sure you focus on what you MUST build and park all other ideas for future consideration.
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As soon as you get your first customer you need to start paying more attention to what does (or does not) make it into the product, with more and more attention being paid as you add customers.
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Once you reach the Strong Customer Growth stage it's time to hire a full-time Product manager to help keep the team on track.
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I can help you with the limited Product Managment you'll need until you are ready for a full time hire, and then I can help guide you through the stages of the hiring process.
Engineering Leadership
The earliest stages of a startup typically have one of the founders taking on the engineering role. This will frequently last up to, and maybe through the MVP stage, but some of the first hires will be engineers.
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When there are only two engineers you can safely work as a team with minimum overhead and structure, selecting the best tools to get the MVP built out as fast as possible. As soon as you have a customer, however, more structure needs to be added in order to keep your growing team of engineers on track.
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Multiple customers will mean you will need more engineers, and, at this point you need to start thinking about how the engineering team and product should be set up for growth. You also need to think about how to lead the team, what sort of planning and documentation needs to be done, and what you can still safely ignore.
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I can help you lead the early team, do the most important planning and documentation, and start to hire both engineers and a manager when required.
Operations / DevOps
Operations (or DevOps) covers process of deploying your application to a production environment. If you're providing a SaaS product, as many companies do these days, this encompasses your cloud environment and the ways you deploy code into that environment. If your installation is on-premise this covers preparing the releases and making sure they are ready for deployment on the customer site as well as managing the deployment process customers will use.
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In the Ideation and MVP stages this can frequently be ignored, beyond setting up a simple Cloud provider account and manually deploying your application into a virtual server of some sort.
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As soon as you have a customer, however, you need to start thinking about both how to manage your cloud environment and how to deploy the code in a safer, more auomated fashion. You also need to consider security and scalability, as it is quite easy to build a system that leaks data and is very expensive to scale.
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My goal is to help you start planning your Operational environment and DevOps processes early enough to avoid the more dangerous pitfalls, while not overbuilding or overspending on services you don't need. For example, if you have one customer you probably don't need multi-cloud or multi-region scalability!
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Part of this process is also engaging with the cloud providers early on, as they may well have free training, services, and even billing rebates that you can leverage to build your product.
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Once you're ready to hire your first DevOps engineer I'll be there to help with the hiring process and onboarding.
InfoSec
InfoSec (Information Security) is the practice of keeping your data, and that of your customers, safe and secure. This is an often-overlooked area early in the startup process, but few things can sink a company faster than a data breach or leak.
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You need to start thinking about InfoSec as soon as you start work on your MVP, even if the approach remains very simple (e.g. locked down whitelisted servers for the first customers). Early considerations include evaluating the type of customer data you will be working with and whether or not there are regulatory considerations (e.g. HIPAA and FERPA).
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Once you are clear about the data you are working with and what the regulatory environment is (or is not) you can formulate a plan to address security, document it, and then make sure you are following the plan as development progresses and as your company and customer base grow.
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This is the one area that you need to consider right from the Ideation stage, or you could end up building in a large amount of risk that will be very hard to remediate as the company grows!
Information Technology
It's never too early to think about your IT needs, but it's also important to not waste time on overthinking them.
In the very earliest stages you just need your technology to stay out of your way and help you do the basics. As you add a few people to your team you should start thinking about how best to collaborate, where to store your code and collateral, and how you back up critical information.
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Eventually you get to a point where you need to start thinking about things like laptop warranties and service plans, software licenses, tracking hardware and other assets, and onboarding/offboarding employees.
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I can help you through all of these stages, including making a plan early on to ignore everything but the critical parts. Once you know what you need to do when, you can stop wondering whether or not you are missing something critical.
Technical / Pre-Sales
Technical Sales (or Pre-Sales) is the practice of Sales from the technical point of view. Everybody is familiar with 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 handling 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 great 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, fulfilling the role of SE, and even the hiring of your first SE.