Focusing on the important stuff early
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Common mistakes for early-stage startups and teams:
- Planning: too much Tech, not enough Product, rigid organization
- Build before talking to customers
- Complex internal systems
- Complex internal permissions
- Technology: not keeping things as simple as possible
- Building a robust CI/CD pipeline too early
- Learning a new technology in the process (not everything needs to be done in Rust, even if Rust is very cool)
- Using complex technologies (If you can use IF/ELSE statements, avoid the neural net)
- Building for scale too early (product-market fit must be validated on a small scale first)
- Product
- Complex measurements and instrumentation
- Building too many features
Tips to avoid these mistakes (based on my obervations):
- Talk to customers before building
- Keep internal systems simple
- Prioritize core metrics over complex measurements
- Avoid using complex technologies until necessary
- Focus on iterating on market and distribution rather than adding more features
- Don't build for scale too early, prioritize velocity over scalability
Overall, keep things simple and resist the urge to optimize as it leads to less flexibility, and thus fragility as you become inapt to pivot quickly to correct course.