- Build the smallest thing that solves a real problem. If you’re not a little embarrassed by how bare-bones your launch feels, you’re shipping too late.
- Focus on three metrics: Are customers happy? Are you spending less than $1,000 on infrastructure? Can you deploy in under 10 minutes?
- Hire for pragmatism, not prestige. I will never hire ex-FAANG engineers in the early days of a venture. My experience tells me we’d drown in over-engineering before finding product-market fit. Early-stage startups need builders who can ship fast and iterate based on real feedback.
- Measure runway, not architecture complexity. Every unnecessary microservice brings you closer to death. Every hour spent on “perfect” code instead of customer conversations is a missed opportunity to learn something vital.
The healthcare startup I mentioned earlier learned this the hard way. After months of architectural complexity, they discovered their users didn’t want half the features they’d built. The real breakthrough came from a simple workflow change that took two days to implement.
Sometimes the best technical decision is choosing not to be technical. Early-stage startups don’t die from lack of Kubernetes; they die from lack of customers.
Your early-stage CTO should be a pragmatist, not a perfectionist. Because learning beats scaling every single time.
Stop building for your first million users when you don’t have ten. Build for the ten you can get tomorrow, learn what they need, then scale when success forces your hand.
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