How to start and scale a full stack startup
blog.42floors.com
How to start and scale a full stack startup
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Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#2Many engineering types seem to feel more at home making tools to "automate all the things". On the surface, it appears a lot easier than making 100s or 1000s of phone calls, but it can be dangerous because it gives you the feeling of doing important work (not to say it isn't important, but for early stage startups, it's not the highest priority).
But I guess everyone is learning that this is not a substitute for all the grunt work needed to grow a business. PG wrote it in his "Do Things that Don't Scale" essay:
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On another note, I hope this term doesn't catch on, because full stack already has an abundance of meanings depending on who you are talking to:
- Full Stack Web Developer (backend, frontend, maybe design?)
- Full Stack Developer (backend, frontend, design, ???)
- Full Stack Developer (older meaning) (knowledgable about hardware and software)
- Full Stack Startup (developing, business, and everything else?. They call it a "complete, end-to-end product or service")
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#3> Start with manual processes
This actually goes for all companies. Early on, whenever you can replace code with a manual process, you should; if for no other reason than it can help you to iterate faster. We do it religiously at 42Floors. Everything starts manually. Save your precious engineering cycles for the times when you actually need it.
God, there needs to be a sexy phrasing of this, kind of like how quick-iteration-cycles has "Move fast and break things." Today, people are so dependent on computers that they seem to forget that there used to be a way to just do things even without an app.
I've helped or consulted on various researching projects for fun, and it always pains me to hear a very smart person say something like, "I saw that there's a great Java library for sentiment analysis. Should we build our project on Java?"
Nevermind the layperson ignorance of software engineering evident in that question...my problem with this kind of question is why do we need any kind of software to do "sentiment analysis"?
The reason isn't self-evident...and if the questioner would just take the time to do "sentiment analysis" manually, as if no computers existed, what they actually need would be easy to explain to a software engineer. And what I mean by "manually", I mean to take a sample of input and a spreadsheet, and then mark down the "sentiment" you yourself can detect by reading over each unit of input.
After an hour of that, you'll have a great idea of what you actually want and need, such as, what kind of sentiment are you looking for? What is the granularity of sentiment, e.g. just "happy" and "angry"? Or do you need "Very happy/happy/neutral/unhappy/angry?" And if the latter, how did you, yourself, as a human, differentiate between an "unhappy" and "angry" input?
You may realize that you don't need very much granularity. Or that the kind of input you're analyzing, such as tweets, do not lend themselves very easily to accurate sentiment analysis...or, at the very least, will require certain tweaks in the software so as not to be thrown off by common styles of phrasing. Or you may find the input lends itself to having a nice loophole that greatly enhances how quickly you can judge sentiment, such as if your input sample tends to use a lot of emoji.
These are all computational thought processes that require no machine learning to just do, that we as humans can do for ourselves, whether it's to efficiently prototype a machine learning model or because an EMP bomb just went off. As a programmer, I'm all for automating the hell out of everything, but it really irks me when people have no idea how to automate something, nor have a reason why something should be automated, and then hope that the machine (or its mercenary operator) can figure it all out for them.
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#4> Start with manual processes This actually goes for all companies. Early on, whenever you can replace code with a manual process, you should; if for no other reason than it can help you to iterate faster. We do it religiously at 42Floors. Everything starts manually. Save your precious engineering cycles for the times when you actually need it. God, there needs to be a sexy phrasing of this, kind of like how quick-it…
I realized exactly this when I wanted to write a backup script for some of my client's websites.
My usual process had been to 'manually' backup using rsync, which was a matter of cutting and pasting the commands from a text document.
When automating, however, I realized I'd also have to check if certain files (db dumps) were present, and of course if the script itself succeeded.
I then realized that in this particular case, the simple cut and paste approach was perfectly fine, because: 1) it would take months for the time spent automating to be worth it compared to a quick cut and paste, and 2) it was much safer for me to quickly scroll back in my terminal and see if the particular files were present.
Now I wouldn't generally recommend my approach, but in context it made sense not to automate, and yet I felt a 'need' to automate anyways.
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#5Many engineering types seem to feel more at home making tools to "automate all the things". On the surface, it appears a lot easier than making 100s or 1000s of phone calls, but it can be dangerous because it gives you the feeling of doing important work (not to say it isn't important, but for early stage startups, it's not the highest priority). But I guess everyone is learning that this is not a substitute for all…
"full stack already has an abundance of meanings depending on who you are talking to"
That's why it's useful! There isn't a pre-existing term that means the same thing exactly, and there is enough need for one that we are seeing it employed in the wild.
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#6Many engineering types seem to feel more at home making tools to "automate all the things". On the surface, it appears a lot easier than making 100s or 1000s of phone calls, but it can be dangerous because it gives you the feeling of doing important work (not to say it isn't important, but for early stage startups, it's not the highest priority). But I guess everyone is learning that this is not a substitute for all…
I'm just waiting for the Full Stack Cloud to become a thing
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#7Many engineering types seem to feel more at home making tools to "automate all the things". On the surface, it appears a lot easier than making 100s or 1000s of phone calls, but it can be dangerous because it gives you the feeling of doing important work (not to say it isn't important, but for early stage startups, it's not the highest priority). But I guess everyone is learning that this is not a substitute for all…
"full stack already has an abundance of meanings depending on who you are talking to" That's why it's useful! There isn't a pre-existing term that means the same thing exactly, and there is enough need for one that we are seeing it employed in the wild.
No, there's no need for a new term. From what I've read 'full-stack' in this context is not much different to 'vertically-integrated'. The way it's being used, it's about as useful as 'ninja' or 'rock star' in job ads.
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#8Very interesting perspective. I think he goes a bit overboard with saying that everything should be manual by default. Most business are not like real estate in terms of profits in dollars. I think that is giving them the opportunity to hire a lot of inexpensive workers to do all of these manual tasks. That and investment which is naturally attracted go real estate. Anyway it is a good point if a bit overblown in this case. Even internet businesses need tointeract with the real world and changing requirements in a fluid way and that means you can't always have the ultimate integrated automated system. Spreadsheets are very powerful.
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
"full stack already has an abundance of meanings depending on who you are talking to" That's why it's useful! There isn't a pre-existing term that means the same thing exactly, and there is enough need for one that we are seeing it employed in the wild.
No, there's no need for a new term. From what I've read 'full-stack' in this context is not much different to 'vertically-integrated'. The way it's being used, it's about as useful as 'ninja' or 'rock star' in job ads.
Doesn't full stack just mean decent ability all the way from assembly or C, to web dev or phone apps, pretty much
Re: How to start and scale a full stack startup
#10Anyone know why 42floors blog posts end up on the front page so often?