Essential considerations for a Tech startup

Many business owners are building revolutionary technology, but they lack the knowledge, skill, and guidance to implement it effectively.

If you are not technical or do not yet have a technical co-founder, then understanding technology is a must to grow your business.

While you can still solve some problems by hiring developers or outsourcing, you need to identify if it’s cost-effective and when to trust your gut.

There’s a lot to consider when building a tech-based product and ensuring it’s safe.

Creating a strong tech product requires that you have a basic understanding of the tech involved. Read on to learn the six essentials for creating a successful tech product from both an entrepreneurial and technical point of view.

1. Do I need to learn the code? What language?

You don’t need to be a developer and you don’t have to learn code. However, now more than ever before, it’s becoming essential that CEOs have a good understanding of technology.

The real questions that need to be answered are:

(a) Knowing what languages are used for rapid development is very important. They are mechanisms that allow you to create prototypes in a short amount of time to get consumer feedback on your product.

(b) What’s the best framework to build your product? Is it Angular, React, or something else? Which development language should your product be created in? Various frameworks and languages dominate the tech landscape. To avoid costly mistakes, you must read about these technologies to learn more about them. You don’t want to rely on developer recommendations alone.

2. Architecture?

A new technology startup needs to plan out the entire product design and development cycle. It’s a process that contains important errors that tech developers are eager to avoid. They will give you a detailed technical breakdown of your next product’s design and creation.

What type of architecture makes sense for my product?

Don’t worry about learning every technical architecture framework there is. It won’t affect your chances of success. Just learn the big ones like MVC, service-oriented architecture, microservices, and a few others and you will be prepared for yes or no questions during an interview.

It's important to understand the different pieces that go into a successful app or website. If you're getting help from developers or you're doing it yourself, then you'll want to know the technical basics.

3. Servers

When building a product, non-tech founders tend to focus on front-end development, which paves the way for an easy launch. However, what happens once the product is launched is where most non-tech entrepreneurs get caught up.

Which servers should I use?

The first step is to ensure your application is fast and performs well for the minimal load you expect. Then you need to make sure that it can scale if the demand increases. These are two things that every server helps with, but they all have their particularities, and you’ll need to identify which one applies best to your project.

4. Do I need security?

The answer is yes if you are a non-tech founder. As an entrepreneur, you might think that hacking your app itself doesn't matter -- but what about hacking your data?

How can I make sure that no one steals the data that I care about?

As a non-technical founder, security can be a topic that is difficult to grasp in all its detail. Having a good technical advisor or partner early on will allow you to navigate your way through that complexity and concentrate on the business side of things. This is especially true if you plan to take on funding at some point down the line.

5. Development lifecycle

Forget everything you learned about project development. Agile methodology is the only way to build digital solutions, and we have over a decade of experience in developing them. It’s the gold standard for today’s digital projects, especially software as a service (SAAS) platforms.

6. Costs

Establishing a tech startup can be daunting. You have to take into consideration all the essentials listed above and then factor in one more important element — cost.

The key to adopting technology in your business is to first be sure you understand your customer’s needs. You need to do research. How much do they want and how will they react to technology in their day-to-day lives?

This should answer exactly what you need to have for the first version, and ultimately, how much you need to sacrifice from your pocket.