Software Development for Startups - what to consider?
There are many approaches to building software, and it is not a one-size-fits-all deal, ever! The approach to build software for a medium to large size businesses should not and cannot be the same for a startup. Medium or large businesses have a lot of resources at their disposal and have a lot more money to throw at a project, and a lot of risk tolerance. They need a lot more audit trail and documentation as you want the development to be able to taken up by any team within a short notice. Now, don't get us wrong, documentation is great and useful, but you don't want to spend 20% of your time in such tasks but write better code, follow good naming conventions and use common sense with documentation. In this article, we will discuss what to consider when building software for a startup. We will explain why it is important to find a true software development partner who understands what your goals are and tries to work within your budget. Sure, the development partner has their limitations but that's why being upfront about each other's expectations is so critical for long-term relationship.
Identify the startup phase
First, it is important to understand and identify the phase or the stage a startup is in, which may also have an impact on the approach that needs to be taken. A startup may be in a early phase of conceptualization, ideation, customer validation - let's call this ideation phase. A startup can also be in a phase where things are relatively clear on what the first version of the software needs to be - let'ss call this pre-development or MVP phase. Of course there are lot more phases such as Series funding, growth, exit, etc. But we will focus on mainly the development aspect of an initial product for this article.
Developing Software for ideation phase.
This is the phase where, we are talking about building something for demo purposes only, maybe even for customer validation but not for production deployment. Our options are:
- Build a UI design or layout using tools like Figma which is basically a UI look & feel design tool with no functionality behind.
- Build an actual UI, maybe an iOS or an Android app or a browser interface, but no "backend" necessarily. Really depends on the immediate goal and needs of the entrepreneur. Often, this can be seen as a POC (Proof of concept), maybe we want to prove to ourselves or a VC that a specific UI feature works before going all-in.
Developing software for an MVP phase.
This is the next level where, a startup may want to put out a working software for their prospective customers. Maybe they want to "test the market". Sometimes we want to provide a couple different options and split the incoming customer traffic into different variations of the same functionality to see which one performs better, also called an A/B Test in the industry. The important thing to note here is that this is an actual working software which may require actual development and "your individual results/needs may vary".
Unlike the previous phase, you can immediately see that there is a lot more involved in this phase. So, what should an entrepreneur consider in this phase? What is the best way to intelligently build something for the short-term while keeping the long-term goals and costs in mind. Each company and their business needs, level of confidence on their hyphothesis are all factors which may need to be considered for the below points.
- Extensibility: This means being able to easily add features to an existing piece of code without causing too much harm or re-design or refactoring or re-work. Do you want to build your MVP so it can be extensible? For instance, our options might be, to put something together quickly knowing that 90% of it maybe throw-away and requires an additional 3 months and $50K to add features to make it production-worthy OR spend an additional $10K upfront and save 2 months of development time in the next iteration. Again, really depends on the individual startup situation and the business goals.
- Maintenance: People buy expensive things not realizing the cost of their maintenance. Anyone who owned a car or a home will know that it is not just about what you can pay at the time of purchase, but if you can afford the service or repairs on these big ticket items on an ongoing basis. This is not too different with software! But how is an entrepreneur supposed to know if the software is maintainable? They won't, unless they have deep technical experience. Some choose to bring a technical co-founder just for this very reason! You shouldn't have to go that length and throw away your equity on someone who may, at the beginning seem like they know everything about everything and appears to believe in your idea! This alone should not be the reason to bring in a co-founder. This is where a strong and trusted partner like Cerulean can help you stay focused on your business domain.
- Standards: watch out for which standards/features are a must-have to your product or industry.
- Maybe you are building a finance application - find a partner who understands PCI compliance, even if you choose not to build it in MVP, prepare to understand what you might need
- Maybe you are building a Healthcare application - find a partner who understands HIPAA guidelines, again even if you don't, at least you can plan or build a foundation in your prototype.
This is a glimpse of what sort of topics are going to be on discussion with us during your Project discovery with us. This can be overwhelming for someone with little experience on software development projects, but this is exactly the reason for having a trusted software development partner standing behind you, as part of your journey.
Note that there are a lot more things to consider when you set out to build an actual production quality software which is the next level up from the MVP, and that is not the focus of this article. Here are a few other things to consider in the next level of software development - Security, Performance, Deployment speed/agility to add features, etc.