Bytes down - Tech CEOs sell pieces of code
Tech CEOs sell pieces of code
Welcome, again.
I’m glad to publish the introductory article of Byte Down, a series of special issues dedicated to technological challenges in startups, along with some programming horror stories and tips.
You may wonder where my self-proclaimed credibility to talk about technical topics comes from. Well, I’m a “developer” (not really) and started my entrepreneurial career as a CTO. Up to this day, I am the CEO/CTO of my company and spend around thirty percent of my time writing lines of code. I am not the CTO of Google, but I deployed and coded various software, used daily by thousands.
During the last decade, I worked in large companies - big banks - and small startups, both with developed and running products, or with nothing. I am glad I had to write the first lines of code for several software, and I think there are extremely valuable learnings I want to share, and most of all, criticize and refine.1
Most of my readers are interested in the software industry. I should say most of you are into technology: those opening those weird weekly emails are tech CEOs, online retailers, and investors. I even have some working at VC firms, even though they receive missiles on pretty much every article2. I use these words to thank you for your time and for reading. I would be glad to meet you in person, and prove … I’m as unbearable online as I am in real-life3.
Why is talking about code, programming, and technical challenges crucial? Because most entrepreneurs enter the SaaS industry with imperfect knowledge about what makes their products, lines of code, compiled and/or interpreted, turned into a usable piece of software. Please note I did not use insufficient, but imperfect knowledge: the average tech CEO is actually surrounded by noise, and scammers spending around zero-hour-daily doing code and building products giving free tips on product development. Here are a few examples:
- Use Python instead of C#, Angular instead of React.
- AWS is much better than Azure.
- You need a microservice architecture, don’t let your developers run a large monolith.
- You need one more developer.
- You can’t deploy without having the most robust, top-tier CI/CD pipeline.
And so on.
Beautiful simplicity
Facebook, not the smallest of tech companies, still runs a large share of its engine on PHP, often acknowledged as the single worst web language ever invented. Well, guess what, it mustn't be too bad if Mark Zuckerberg himself wrote the code of a multi-billion dollar company and shipped it so the whole humanity could use it. I am pretty sure he did not have any robust way of testing and QA processes.
Let me quote him, addressing his own team: 'Move fast and break things.' I'm an avid reader of biographies and generally spend a ridiculous amount of time immersed in books. I believe there are priceless insights and wisdom on managing technological uncertainty that we can glean from the experiences of tech giants.
On the investment side, the global ignorance and lack of genuine curiosity of investors about technological topics lead to silly investments. Most don’t make the difference between a new layer on technology, and technology itself. Most don’t understand the basic prerequisite needed for a B2B software to become the building block of a successful company. VCs invest money in companies whose technological substance is weak, and therefore very vulnerable to any adversarial attack on their tech. The history of entrepreneurship has shown that tech companies with weak technological foundations die, while those with a strong technological edge have a chance of survival4.
I feel too many entrepreneurs are getting cheated by their developers, and by unscrupulous salaried CTOs, making them invest time and money in silly technological directions. A lot of tech CEOs are looking for useless sophistication, whereas beautiful simplicity would do the trick.
On the other side, entrepreneurs will spend a ridiculous amount of time looking for a list of tools using AI, hype-based startups bringing nothing, and forget to invest in technology for real, because yeah, let me get this straight: technology, with humans, should be your single two biggest investments, and as the leverage multiplier effect of technology is reaching infinity, technology should become number one if you work in software.
I hope you’ll have as much fun reading it, as I have writing it.
Voss
This is, in spite of the harsh tone of this blog, my main objective. Knowledge creation starts with self-criticism, at the level of individuals, and at the level of ideas. Only truth I won’t debate is that most MBAs are business clowns.
There’s one for you later, I’m sorry. We live in the era of all-time-high dysfunction in the finance world. This is not your fault, but incentives are totally distorted and money has been cheap for too long.
Not true, I’m sure we would have some great time. Let me know if you ever come to Medellín.
This is a necessary but non-sufficient condition. Let’s give examples of winners in their segments : Toyota, Hyundai, LG, Dyson, Facebook, Instagram, Rolls-Royce engines, Nike, Christian Dior (yes), Amazon, PayPal, Google (In my opinion the single best example, of how better written code can lead to explosive outcomes).