Startups & Online Business

One of my commenter’s Geva’s Scaling Stateful Applications on EC2 on the EC2 Story and Entrepreneurs made some comments about me not mentioning the architecture aspects of building a web application.

He is right, I did only put a paragraph to it

"Somewhere along the way you realise that your application wasn’t built
to deal with this many people and make a few architectural changes to
the way it works"

I agree its important and frankly most programmers I have met wouldn’t know the first thing about building scalable web applications. (I do know 1-2 ex search engine types who how to build non blocking architecture who are available for contract, just contact me)

But the whole discussion did get me going about an entrepreneurial issue that I see as a recurring pattern with engineers, technicians and any other tech type who finds themselves in an entrepreneurial business (ie no time, little cash and a pressing problem).

There needs to be balance between doing a perfect technical job and expediency and making the job fit within the cash runway.

Most tech’s (especially really good ones) sometimes have trouble dealing with the compromise of getting something to market inside of your cash runway and creating the perfect solution.

Ideally you would have a tech that would get the web architecture issue right from day one, but the guys who actually understand the difference are pretty thin on the ground.

Im a business guy so Im aware of it, but I am more worried about creating a traffic problem than solving it.

The thing that bothers me from an entrepreneurial perspective is that I have seen developers (come to think of it, technicians in general) labour for months about technical details whilst not even thinking about if the company will get off the ground and produce something users want to use and survive.

In their perfectionist way, they spend inordinate amounts of time on minute detail, all the while the clock is ticking and the cash is draining, they miss the big picture.

I think getting the architecture right is very important, but lets face it, most of you in startup land dont have access to the guys who really know how to do this.

So lets create a traffic problem, then when the idea proves to be something the user wants and you are getting traction and traffic and things are chaotic and your infrastructure is groaning, raise some cash, work out how to solve the technical scalability issues or throw pure computing horsepower at it until you can make it more efficient.

Love to see you your comments on this.

Thanks

Mike