Brading Services\nSEO Services\nSEM Services\nEmail Marketing\nVideo Marketing \nContent Marketing\nSocial Media Marketing\n

The go-to guy

Me doing this interview So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests. Hello! I’m Qin En - venture capitalist by day and podcaster by night. When the sun is up, I discover and partner ambitious founders in emerging markets to build great companies at , providing financial capital (in pre-seed to Series B cheques) and human capital (everything from recruitment to culture to leadership). When the sun goes down, I am experimenting with podcasting by speaking to dads & mums who work in tech - Saison Capital Parents in Tech When I started my first company, , at the age of 20, I struggled with over-work. I believed that my 20s and 30s should have been a relentless pursuit of career achievement, regardless of costs. I slept in office on weekdays, and worked weekends. 100-hour work weeks were the norm. I was relentless and obsessed - from being one of the youngest founders in Southeast Asia to raise venture capital, to being recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30 and Entrepreneur 27 Under 27. Yet I was never happy, never satisfied. Glints A few years later, I met my wife, Gladys. She helped me realize that an unbalanced life is an unhappy one. I began on a journey of change, that accelerated when welcomed our daughter, Gabrielle, into the world, in October 2020. I had to learn the hard way, that with a newborn child, you can’t ask her to “wait” for her milk or diapers to be changed. Her wails and cries demanded immediate attention and response. In the past, when it was just my wife and I, it was easy for me to explain to her “Hey I’m busy, let’s reschedule our dinner date”, or “I have to take a work call at 10pm”. But having a child and becoming a parent has changed that radically - I have to be there for my daughter. Yet despite the challenges, being a parent feels like “happiness on tap”. When work gets tough, all I need to do is stand up and walk over to find her, pick her up, hug her, and a rush of feel-good endorphins flows. More importantly, I felt happy and satisfied in a unique, distinct way that lasted beyond the next big career achievement. Parenthood over the past year has been a roller coaster, and I know I am not alone - so the ‘Parents in Tech’ podcast is my way of hearing and sharing stories of other parents! Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about? Are you a founder looking to hire blockchain talent? Great - your odds are 20:1 (stacked against you!). In my recent Hackernoon Top story, I discuss how . For example, is it realistic to ask candidates to have 9+ years of blockchain development experience - essentially asking folks to have started working on blockchain since Bitcoin was founded and worth $0 (talk about 20/20 hindsight)? hiring blockchain talent demands a thoughtful, considered approach If you are looking for the tl;dr of my story, here it is: Be aware of the hurdles around. Know the market and be realistic - don’t show your naivete by asking a blockchain developer to have more years of experience than the technology has been around for. Look beyond the hard skills - willingness and ability to pick up the skills matter more. Be creative - build a brand in the blockchain space, train your current employees and consider remote hiring. Plan your compensation wisely and know the risks - use a combination of salary, stock (if you are based in Southeast Asia, definitely check out the first-ever report on ), and tokens that fits your purpose and stays compelling to prospective candidates. The State of ESOPs in Southeast Asia Be aware of the potential hurdles in offering stock or token compensation, especially with constantly evolving legislation and tax guidelines in many emerging markets. Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about? Absolutely! Human capital topics are my favorite. I think this is a topic (or a set of topics) that is often under-discussed. Instead, the emphasis is often placed on financial capital - most media outlets often share about the new fundraising rounds, exit events, yet behind this value creation lies talent. Also, one of the key agenda items most founders usually have right after fundraising is to build and scale their teams. So I like to talk about these topics because more conversations leads to more awareness, more awareness leads to more transparency and more transparency leads to better outcomes. Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?) I strive to write at least once a week. Ideas come at any time, so I jot them down in Notion or Google Doc, then block out at least 2 hours to ideate and write on them. Sometimes, when things get hectic, I write short-form LinkedIn posts just to keep the momentum going! Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing? Finding the undistracted time to write! The best writing I have done comes when I am in ‘flow’ state - undisturbed, unconstrained by time (do I have a meeting in the next 10 minutes?). This can be challenging because of how busy things are already. What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career? To be the go-to guy for my portfolio founders (and the broader tech community) for human capital topics, anything from talent attraction to retention to leadership succession. I don’t and won’t have all the answers, but I am really excited and inspired by these topics and believe that together, we can come out with what works for each organization. Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice? Bringing my 15-month-old daughter out, buying a coconut and letting her sip it. (My wife doesn’t allow it because she insists on a strict no-sugar diet, but really, can you deprive the little one of nature’s best gifts to us - the coconut). Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it? Is podcasting counted? If it is - that’s my hobby at present. If not - I am a group exercise fanatic. Before COVID-19 I used to teach Les Mills group exercise programs like BODYPUMP, BODYATTACK and RPM. If you’re keen to find out more about that side of me, you can check out . an interview I did with The Business Times last year What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next? Definitely more on human capital, and intersections with Web3. I have been spending a fair bit of time to learn more about the space, especially in NFTs. And if you have ideas or suggestions, do share them with me at qinen@saisoncapital.com Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words? How can be a better writer? What could I have explained better? Did I miss out a footnote reference? I’d love to hear from you on how I can be better! I am grateful that you are reading this, at the tail-end of an article. If there’s any suggestions on how I can improve, do and tell me! connect with me on LinkedIn

Meet the Writer: Hacker Noon's Contributor Qin En, VC @ Saison Capital & Podcaster @ Parents in Tech

a project's minimum person is the project's maximum This year i got a chance to work on a small IT consulting firm. Despite handling lots of projects, which is roughly around 5 projects every month, the company retain it's size by 20 - 25 people only. If we do a quick math, that will be 4 - 5 persons per project. Now I'm going to share how we did it with limited resources and budget. Case Study Most of our clients are requesting for exclusively designed app for their companies, whether it is to be used for external users or by the people inside the company itself. Let's take this example for our case study. Assuming that the deal has been signed, and we only need to consider the project management, there are a few process in order to satisfy their needs: Requirement gathering Requesting timeline Create mock ups Publish the approved requirement documents to client Develop and launch requested applications Publish application documentations In order to do all that, we will need people to manage each process. Roles Business Analyst Business analyst is the person who gathers all the business requirements from clients. This people tends to have a little knowledge on IT or whatsoever, however have a deep understanding or hands on experience on wherever the field our clients run, in this case, insurance. Their tasks will be something like this: Gather all requirements from the client Communicate feature's implementation to developers and designers Sometimes, give possible solution to the client (you know, you have that client who doesn't really understand what's going on and keep asking impossible requests) System Analyst The next step will be determining how to handle those requirements from the client. This person usually got lots of technical experience, therefore he/she should be able to translate the requests into possible implementation which will be developed later. System analysts job description would look like this: Create an architecture diagram Create a database relationship diagram Liaise developers with client if a problem occurs Publish technical documents UI Designer The sole purpose of a UI designer in this project management is to create mock ups and assets, which is usually less time and energy consuming. Therefore, it will be a waste to assign someone to be a dedicated designer for a small project. In order to handle this matter, we put someone who can do both designing and developing app (client side) instead. But, in order to make it clear, I will explain their job descriptions separately. This is what UI designers most likely do: Create wire frame Design mock ups Design assets (pictures, icons, etc) Front End After going into development stage, developers will start working to develop the application. We put front end developers responsible for the client side developments, whether it's mobile or web, user applications or a CMS. Therefore, this position is very fit to be merged with UI designers. Front end developers' responsibility: Develop responsive client side applications Deploy app to server (or Play Store) Back End This is the guy who will do most of the code. Starting from database, server side development, to managing servers. Usually this is the go to guy in our office when someone encounter some problems. Regarding the workload, we assign someone dedicated for this position only. His/her responsibility look something like this: Develop server side code Manage databases Manage servers and setting up their environments Deploy apps to production Quality Assurance During the development stage, there should be someone who should make sure the application runs well. That person it the quality assurance. Since, testing the application requires a good knowledge of the business process itself, this job can be done by business analyst. Roughly, his/her job looks like this: Create a test case document Report bugs to developers Project Manager Project manager is the head of the project. This person needs to manage people, distribute tasks, and keep the deadline achievable. Therefore usually it is not wise for a project manager to get involved in technical activities, apart from creating documents. But, if on a tight budget, a project manager could also be a system analyst. What project managers do: Lead and oversee the project from a to z Managing resources and task Participating in all tender processes Summary To sum it up, a small project may be tricky to handle. That's why allocating the correct man power based on the tasks and budgets needs to be handled with care, as this may save you lots of money. Our company uses this approach whenever we manage a project.

How To Manage A Small Project With 4-5 Peoples

Around three years ago, a day I will never forget, a day that changed the course of my life. Marked the beginning of both my personal life (the day that my dear daughter was born) as well the day that the legendary entrepreneur and investor — called me and asked me to join the visionary team at together with and build a revolutionary idea — a marketplace for genetic tests which turnout to be a platform to managing all genetic tests of the hospital. And the rest is the history :) Eyal Gura KolGene Dan Faszczyk This post will not focus on how we raised our first seed round (but we did!) Or about how we made a successful pivot and acquired our first customers (hard work!) and all of the other fuck-ups we encountered along the way. But rather, about my personal journey to becoming and being a CTO. I was recently invited to talk with students about what it means being a CTO in a world. While preparing for the presentation I became inspired to share and write this blog post. Zell startup Not the same CTO The first thing you need to understand is that a CTO position ranges from company to company (Like every position!). For example, a CTO of a small startup is very different to a CTO of large corporate company. The first requires you to do everything — from the product, tech, managing and of course developing all by yourself. While simultaneously acquire investors and attend meetings. While a CTO in a large corporate company is far more tech only oriented, where your main responsibilities are to find out the right tech stack for a company product and explain it to the rest of the companies stakeholders. Prelude: Personal experience I was lucky enough to be able to observe various CTO’s in different companies embarking on different stages: from corporate to fast-growing startups like . But, since this is mostly about my journey let’s talk about my personal journey to becoming a CTO. For years I was “the” go-to guy, the guy that everyone looked to for solutions for all . During my time at , I was lucky to be able to learn backend and experience various architecture-growth problems and then happened which required me to figure-out-on-my-own what does it really mean to be a CTO and of course make all the mistakes possible (I mean we are only human). Gett Android development Gett KolGene Part 1: The Story of the Co-Founder What does it really mean to be a CTO of a startup? A startup of literally two people! Well, It’s basically being a developer that also tries to understand from the customer what their needs are and how we can meet them. In our story, our CEO brought an idea based on his industry experience. And I was a developer that was trying to figure out what the hell he meant. I mean I was only using A4 paper and a pencil. Later, I was sitting alone at home and trying to put all of those chaotic ideas into a formal product specification with wireframes, user flow, and a story. Yes, it sounds like work for the product person but, remember when you’re the only team of two we all have to wear many hats. On that same note, at the start of any startup even when the company begins to move forward until you have a product manager it is the CTO’s responsibility (along with his many other hats) alongside with the CEO to manage your companies product. And when a business is thinking in a more abstract and chaotic way, the developer is actually the only one who can bring more of an “order” and structure to what will eventually be built. And then, of course, build it. No. It’s not real. It’s just a chaos :) “Building” is separated into two things — or you know all tech stacks and you can build it alone. Or you can find someone who can build it for you (for money or equity). And here is where you actually make the first transition from being a developer to CTO (welcome to my place). In our case, we wanted to move fast and we had some funding so we decided to leverage my Russian roots and outsource development to one of the Eastern European countries. After some investigation, we found a company in Ukraine. Part 2: Building Product part Building Product The first thing you need to accept is — You Are Going To Make A Huge Mess. You are going to make all possible mistakes. A CTO position in its early stage startup is to develop the product with minimum effort for the minimum amount of time. You will be required to compromise. On developers. On tech stack. On solutions. On product decisions. Developing product requires you to make a lot of the decisions where you don’t have any significant knowledge. Just gut feelings. Yours and your partner’s. And your developers. Especially when you’re a first time CTO. Once you accept and let it go — the next thing is to learn as quickly as possible all the skills that you are missing. Not as an expert — but to have enough of it down to move towards your goal. Never too late to learn do not be afraid For example — we realized very quickly that our customer 95% of the time was using the web on their desktop so all of our Android & iOS apps were irrelevant. We started to adopt our platform to the web. I never developed something for the web. (I mean unless you count those days in school when I was writing some basic HTML website — we all have to start somewhere). How do you write product specification for a platform you have never had any experience building on? By . Very fast. Asking questions, the dumbest questions to your developers. Hiring developers, interviewing them and asking them the same questions. Actually, I was asking those questions during an interview — “Hey how should we build this?” or “I didn’t get it about how PHP should work with React?” Yes I know! Nobody’s perfect but I then learned from their answers. learning Part #3: Building product #2, With fewer errors Now you have a team of developers, you manage their sprints, tasks and daily meetings. The first version was shipped and you have your first customers. And now starts the hardest work. There is a word you need to learn. . It’s a beast which is very hard to tame. (If it was easy everyone would do it). It means that your product, the one with lots of bugs and bad architecture is actually a really good solution which solved real pain and once users find it — they can’t leave it. Product market fit And your job together with your business is to tame it. The taming process is an actual ongoing process where business (CEO) together with your (CTO) gather feedback from customers, analyze it and try to translate it into the changes that should be done to your product. Feedback could be formal (email from a customer) and informal (like Fullstory for web or TestFairy for apps). It’s not an easy process and it requires you to manage customer expectations, deal with immediate issues and find the best solution for this current moment (and not necessarily the right ones for the long-term). It requires you to move as fast as possible. Move faster. Break things. You will understand much more from the production rather than just guessing based on your gut feelings! Make mistakes — Bring the success closer and closer. And outsource everything. Everything that you can. Starting from developers to using external APIs to bring the necessary functionality. We hired an in-house developer only at the later stage of the company. Design and QA we outsource until today. We used all possible API for everything. From tracking the blood sample with FedEx to sending emails to our customers. Even a dashboard I built using Grafana library. Part 4: Becoming CTO During the taming process, you will figure out that being CTO is much more than just being a team leader to your 5–6 developers. You are required to pay a lot of attention not only to bugs, tech questions, and architecture but also to all aspects of a product and operational needs. It’s actually to figure out the right balance between three fields: Tech, Product & Business. Tech Team leader Solution Architect Developer Product Understanding business requirements Structure it and write product specifications Divide it into tasks for developers Business Business driver Salesperson ( To developers, to employees, to investors, to potential customer) Taking a wheel when CEO is in hard times For me personally, I succeeded in some of them and failed in others. But it’s clear to me that it’s an ongoing process. And it’s never late to learn. Hey, I’m still learning! We already paid for this lesson (by creating mistakes), now it’s a time to learn from them :) Last words The magic that happens out of your comfort zone I totally believe in going out of your comfort zone. It’s hard. It’s nervous. But when I look back on my life — the wonderful things that happened to me when I stepped out of where I already am and started to do something for the first time. That’s when the magic happens. So it’s doesn’t matter how hard it is — never give up. Building a product is hard. Being CTO is hard. But it’s possible. Totally possible. Do not give up on your dreams You dream is around the corner. Go get it! one of our customers **** 👏 👏 Thanks for reading. If you liked it, please give me your and share this. I’ll also love to hear your comments and suggestions :) Thanks

The True Story: The Life Of A CTO

Bob is a senior IT in charge of a mid-sized manufacturing company, having its operations in 10 countries, and factories in 2 countries. The company decided two years back to migrate 80% of its IT infrastructure to . As Bob led this activity, he was the go-to-guy for the finance dept., for verifying the bills. AWS For few months, Bob managed the verification of bills and budget planning, by going through AWS website and scrubbing pricing data, through his own eyes and mind. But, Bob was a certified smart guy. So, he decided to automate it. How? Let’s hear from Bob. Hey Bob, ? Me: How you doing (smiles, coz he got who I sounded like) cool man, thanks. Bob: Bob, you used the AWS pricing APIs. What compelled you to do so? Me: The time taken to go through the AWS site, for pricing details. Bob: We use 100s of EC2s of different flavours, of different sizes, TBs of different types of storages, databases, etc. And that’s just a small part of huge offerings by AWS. Manually going through the prices, noting it at a particular date, keep looking for changes was too much. So, decided to do something about it. By integrating the AWS APIs, now we have a dashboard tailored to our needs, and is always up-to-date. We have also created our own customized calculator for our users. It integrates the AWS prices and that from local vendors. This has helped in streamlining our consumption and price is now more predictable. This makes sense for somebody like you, who deals with these many AWS components day-in-day-out, and is accountable for the expense. Me: Yes that true. Bob: I went through the documentation of AWS Pricing. Let me summarize what I have understood, and ask you my doubts. Me: API Sure Bob: First, the basics: Me: The API access is through https. AWS provides the pricing information as json or csv. The APIs are publicly accessible, without AWS account. The base address for accessing json/csv is https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ us-east-1 in above url is where all information is available and is not limited only to this zone. To access the data, I followed these steps : Got the list of offerings from AWS by downloading Step1 . https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/index.json It has details of all AWS products and information of where to get its prices from. For eg. “AmazonEC2”: { “offerCode” : “AmazonEC2”, “versionIndexUrl” : “/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/index.json”, “currentVersionUrl”: “/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/current/index.json”, “currentRegionIndexUrl”: “/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/current/region_index.json” }, (Note: A product, like AmazonEC2, is referred as ‘Offer’) : From the above set, accessed the ‘currentRegionIndexUrl’ url – Step2 https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/current/region_index.json It gave details of prices in each region. For eg. "ap-south-1" :{ "regionCode" : "ap-south-1", "currentVersionUrl":"/offers/v1.0/aws/AmazonEC2/20180628005902/ap-south-1/index.json" }, Now, the things are getting murkier. It’s a sea of confusing data. There are some involved, and I couldn’t find any AWS document explaining these codes. Also, some sections show price as . How’s that possible? cryptic codes 0.0 dollars The summary till now is correct. You have reached the source of data, but you are struggling to extract information out of it. To do that, you have to understand the offerings, and find patterns. Bob: For example, you are accessing EC2 pricing. Now, EC2 pricing has variations like on-demand, dedicated hosts, reserved hosts. Then again, variations like full/no/partial upfront payment, etc. Such variations are captured through those alien-looking codes. Let’s take an example: We want to check the price of Linux m5.large with SQL Enterprise preinstalled. Through parsing, you get the code of this variant — ZV5VAXGR4YZS96VY Search with this code and you will get multiple blocks in the file. Each block represents a unique variant of the same product — the varying factors are mentioned above, like payment terms, dedicated hosts, etc Each block will have a unique identifier, ‘Offertermcode’. For eg., ‘JRTCKXETXF’ represents on-demand pricing, payable per hr. Another example, ‘HU7G6KETJZ’ represents reserved pricing with partial upfront fees. So the billing will include some amount to be paid upfront and some per month. ‘2TG2D8R56U’ is for upfront & ‘6YS6EN2CT7’ is for per/hr. That’s it. To summarize, there are three level of depths. Unique code of EC2 — say ZV5VAXGR4YZS96VY Unique offertermcode of above variant –On-demand, fully-upfront-paid, no-upfront-paid, etc –~13 unique offertermcode Upfront and/or Per-hr payment terms Thanks Bob. It’s clear and demystified now. Me: I really want to be like you. AWS Price API documentation can be accessed . here This post was originally posted . here Please provide your feedback in the comment section. It will help me improve. You can also email me at dhruvdesaai@gmail.com.

Demystifying AWS Pricing APIs & its Cryptic codes

Photo by on Ian Schneider Unsplash When I first started out in venture, I asked my mentors what I should be doing to become a better investor? Without fail, the number one answer was to “find a niche”, or in other words to find an area/sector to dive deep on and be the smartest in. It’s a good strategy and it has worked for many well-known investors. For example, Fred Wilson and have become well known for their deep knowledge in blockchain. Similarly, has become the go-to guy for eSports. From their public personas (tweets and posts), it’s clear they that are some of the smartest people in their respective areas, which keeps them top of mind when relevant startups are looking for investors. Chris Dixon Blake Robbins But finding your niche, or domain expertise, is more than just diving deep into a specific area. It’s about discovering what you’re most passionate about and spending your time thinking about it, writing about it, and ultimately making bets on the technologies that will play a major role in it. For some, it’s easy to figure out. For others, like me, it’s a bit more challenging. When I tried to discover my niche, I figured I’d fake it till I make it. So I started with an email draft that listed a few sectors that I thought were interesting. Some of the sectors on that list were logistics tech, real estate tech, marketplaces, and blockchain. With each one, I spent a lot of time diving deep, researching most quality sources I could get my hands on. I wrote about the and about , but it didn’t feel satisfying at the end of the day. I realized that you can’t choose your passion “off the cuff”. It has to be something that you truly enjoy spending time with. So I gave up. I quit with the deep dives, and it felt great. logistics tech landscape investing in the future of blockchain Fast forward a few months, I was sitting in a cafe with a mentor of mine who leads PepsiCo’s venture and innovation initiatives in Israel. We were discussing the innovation challenges of a giant like PepsiCo and the many facets there are to solve including shopper insights and behaviors, automated checkouts, the future of physical retail locations, marketing, advertising, and more. I was hooked. I realized that finding your passion and niche is really just finding what you love talking about. For me, this means the intersection of RetailTech, CPG, Marketing, and Consumer Tech. The products and services that people use everyday are much more exciting to me than the sensors in autonomous vehicles or the latest cyber security solution. Others have spoken about this too. branded these themes as the “ ”. In his , mentions that the criteria for his investments are based on how much he loves talking about the company. NextView Ventures Everyday Economy post about the launch of Shrug Capital Niv Dror Link So have I found my niche? I think so. But what I discovered in the process is that there is no limit to the things that you can be passionate about. For some people, their niche is one thing. For others, they go big and cover many areas. It all comes down to finding your passion and living it. And when you do that, you’ll know if you’ve found it :) Thanks for reading! Hi! I’m Jordan, and I work for a global VC based in Israel. There’s a lot happening in the VC/startup scene and I figured I’d post my observations here. All opinions are my own. Feel free to follow and get in touch on Twitter @jordanodinsky .

Finding Your (Investment) Niche

One of my most vivid memories of investment banking occurred in my first week in the business. It was a lesson about perception. I was fresh out of college and clueless about my new environment, but ecstatic to be finally on track to becoming the next Gordon Gekko. It didn’t last long, though. An associate of the M&A team made me take the red pill. “You have to understand that this business is all about perception. You don’t actually need to be a top-performer to be top-ranked. You need to convey confidence, to be the go-to guy, to be friends with Managing Directors. That way you’ll always have support during ranking committees. You are nothing but a brand here. It will take you time to build your brand, but remember: you can destroy it in no time.” At the time I had no idea this truth about perception also held true for other sectors, particularly the industry. startup A startup is a socially-accepted gamble The startup industry is now as attractive as a career choice as investment banking or strategy consulting once were. As a result, when transitioning from an “attention to details” to a “get shit done” industry, I drank the Kool-Aid as anybody would have. Competing on the number of stickers on your laptop and how creative you were in terms of clothing was indeed way more attractive than bragging about the number of consecutive all-nighters you pulled over the last month. The most striking difference however was the strength of the signal emanating from this ecosystem. I knew about a lot of people making shit-loads of money in the PE and hedge fund industries worrying about remaining under the radar. I had many examples of successful PE investors taking millions in carried interests, or executives getting crazy management packages — all of them with a low-key attitude, only bent on cashing in while not being revealed to the outside world. In the startup industry, on the other hand, every stakeholder, or venture capitalist gets its fifteen tweets of fame, regardless of how much cash they’ve made. Pretty weird, right? entrepreneur There might be a reason for this discrepancy, though. When I think about it, this is quite similar to Poker where you have to look strong when you are weak and appear weak when you have a monster hand. In the startup game, you are weak by definition. You are most presumably product-less (hello Magic Leap), looking for a model (hello Snapchat), burning like hell (hello Uber), or worried that you’ll get so much attention that a big player will replicate your product before you get off the ground (hello everyone). In other words, you have to give your clients confidence and have to look bigger than you are. You have to pretend to be well organized, say and believe that you have a development track for your new hires, attend every single conference, be everywhere and demonstrate traction even though you have nothing tangible to show. Signal again and again. Launching a startup is actually nothing more than a socially-accepted gamble. When I tell my wife I made some money betting on sports or exploiting suckers at a poker table, I get a bad look (followed by some gift ideas). When I launched a startup, that would ultimately fail, I was such a brave and driven person. My chances were, however, way better in betting or poker… go figure. All about perception and signal once again. Is there a unique growth path? With the odds stacked against them, most entrepreneurs consider partnering with a VC fund as being the best way to keep their business afloat. The reality, however, seems different. According to Fred Wilson, the majority of expected gains made from a VC portfolio will come from just 30% of the companies in it. Being a successful VC, therefore, involves being able to spot and invest in the moonshots that will generate those massive cash-on-cash returns. As a result, every investment decision is based on implementing some devilish and disruptive industry play that will create the next unicorn. As a naïve non-insider, I have the feeling that there isn’t enough room for all these unicorns in book value. My fear is that, as smart and visionary as VCs could be, all these well-thought plays won’t necessarily end up as winning bets. More importantly, I’m wondering about these 70% portfolio companies that flew too close to the sun. Did they fail for organic reasons or did they blindly follow a VC-constructed industry formula for success? Furthermore, if the industry was rational, VCs should have, by now, returned more money than they raised thanks to these moonshots. However, this hasn’t been the case to date. Between 2001 and 2013, US VC funds raised $100bn more than they returned — that is total nonsense. Money oversupply, increased competition and tough public market conditions are often being pointed at, but something is truly broken here. The aggressive growth route has ended up having an impact on entrepreneurs. When the amount you raised is a social marker and when the cash you are burning defines how visionary you are, it questions the whole industry. Do VCs consistently need to aim for homeruns? Is aggressive and unprofitable growth the only possible play? As a matter of fact, some of the most successful French entrepreneurs weren’t fueled by VC money (OVH, Vente-privee, Free or Ebay)… They are, however, the most active business angels today. Launching a startup has never been this cool. I regularly see people quitting their job to embark on a more entrepreneurial project while huge numbers of people look to get into the startup game straight after graduation. Software is still eating the world and everybody is trying to jump on the bandwagon. This ongoing hysteria around startups makes me think our collective level of confidence in the startup industry might be related to our lack of experience. And by being overconfident, you widely broadcast signals which in turn end up being relayed by pretty much everyone. This is akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy; we are all bullish so prices should go up but who cares about prices going up on illiquid-markets? Perception about startups has never been this wrong. Launching a startup is not cool at all. It’s actually one of the hardest thing ever. The pattern we are seeing in the current startup hype is quite similar to what happened during the Gold Rush or any other industry boom. First the spark then the rush and ultimately the support system racking up most of the profits. Schools, incubators, VCs, Google Adwords, advisors, headhunters, media, banks (just to name a few) are the ones supporting the system. Who’s digging then?

Truth vs. perception — demystifying the startup game

When the first website appeared in 1991, nobody could imagine how easy it would be to do the same in 20 years. And as we are rolling into 2021, we don’t even need to hire a web developer to craft professionally looking websites. Instead, most smaller businesses, freelancers, and firms are opting for drag-and-drop platforms that let you design and publish websites without writing a single line of code. But what are the tradeoffs of creating websites using ready-made solutions versus hiring a web developer? And do we even need these web guys today? Let’s dive into it. What is a website builder? In case you haven’t stumbled upon this software yet, drag-and-drop builders are software platforms that enable you to put together a website with little effort or coding skills. Most platforms allow you to construct a website without manual code editing. However, some website builders like Velo by Wix allow you to add extra functionality and interactions to your website with code if you’re capable of, and comfortable with, using it. You can subscribe for one of these services, drag and drop content on top of built-in themes and you’re ready to roll. The beauty of these tools is that anyone can start the ball rolling in minutes. Who is a web developer? In a broad sense, a web developer is someone who takes a web design and transforms your idea into a reality. Let’s say, you want an extremely creative web layout with hundreds of buttons all over the screen and with bouncing letters that have a different color, font, size, and… Well, in short, if you need a website that can knock your socks off, blow your mind, and take your breath away, this is all possible with a developer. Or was it possible? Let’s get closer to the point. Website builders vs web developers For your convenience, let’s divide our comparison into several consideration points that will affect your choice. Flexibility Complete flexibility is never a forte of pre-made solutions. In this case, a drag-and-drop solution can provide a nice amount of versatility, especially if the functionality can be further expanded with coding skills. And although you can drag-and-drop anything and anywhere, a web developer is the one who can make your wildest web dreams come true. Even if you don’t have an idea of the future look-and-feel, a pro developer will perform competitor research and analyze your needs to yield the best possible results. (We are talking about professionals here) But this comes at a cost, which brings us to the next point. Costs Do you see it? An awkward question of ‘How Much” is hanging in the air. Well, custom web development can start in thousands of dollars. After all, you are commissioning an experienced developer to work his magic. But the costs do not end here. Once your website is up and running, you will also need regular maintenance and support for your platform. Let alone constant changes, edits, and additions that you’ll likely have to make. Yes, you’ll be paying each time you want to do something on your website. And we shouldn’t forget that not all specialists are created equal. So you may shell out for the website of your dreams and end up with a middling product way behind your expectations. In this case, the reward for cost-effectiveness goes to website builders, since there are simply no overhead costs. You pay a subscription fee and enjoy the freedom of creativity. If you need a generic solution with basic features like free hosting, access to a website builder’s features, and a custom subdomain, you won’t have to pay at all. Time investment Have you ever tried hunting for talent? Screening candidates and scheduling meetings with them? Then you know the drill and the staggering amount of time this activity guzzles up. Therefore, if you need to set up a website in the very nick of time, a builder might be your go-to guy. The templates are pre-made, hence you don’t have to zhuzh up your online platform for dozens of hours. On the other hand, web developers require lots of time to create a design from A to Z. The planning and designing naturally ramp up the number of hours needed to set up your website. And the reward for supersonic speed goes to drag-and-drop platforms as well. Customization Okay, you got us with this one. In terms of customization, the builder’s capabilities will be limited by your skills and potentially the amount of pre-made functionality this software offers. When it comes to tailor-made web development, the sky's the limit and you can twirl and twist your website to meet your expectations. Also, custom web development allows you to choose the features that will work best for your business. In the end, web developers provide you the chance to design and construct an online destination that channels your unique business message. Making Your Choice Having broken down the pros and cons of all options, which one should you go for? The decision is up to you and your needs. If you own a small business or trail the blaze as a freelancer, drag-and-drop builders will do the trick at less cost compared with hiring a web developer. If you can fork out for a bespoke product fine-tuned to your expectations, custom web design is the way to go. Finally, if you have the coding acumen and want to build robust web applications with zero setup, full-stack development platforms can add a new twist to your everyday routine. This article is part of a writing contest hosted by Hacker Noon in partnership with Wix. Learn how to enter here and take a shot at winning $1000 every month, from March 1st, 2021 to May 31st, 2021

Do We Still Need Website Developers?

In this series I’ll validate a new idea. Read about the concept and the idea . here (Day 0) here (Day 1) Today was very boring. I only had 1h to work on this project. I was basically only communicating. As mentioned yesterday ( ), I sent some cold emails to agencies. Let’s see how that works out. I don’t really understand why and how such agencies work. Day 8 — Rethinking UX content marketing If you are interested in how to do (and want to read more than this short post), you can go to (the guy who to do this series) to read how he does cold emailing. He writes awesome articels by the way. You can’t learn a lot from me on that topic, I’m doing this for the first time. I might share some numbers later in this series. cold emailing Matthew’s inspired me posts My First Live Chat with Drift This is the first message I received from .Someone also told me that my landing page looks terrible on mobile devices. Thanks. I knew what I was talking about when naming Day 7’s post: . findbetterquestions.com What a bad landing page About Find Better Questions It lets you find the best questions on , so you get traffic from your answers. If you’re interested in that, sign up for early access at Quora findbetterquestions.com ← Day 8— Rethinking UX → Day 10 — What I Learned So Far

THE GO-TO GUY

thegotoguy.co

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

THE GO-TO GUY

EVERGREEN INDEX #10997

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

The go-to guy WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!

THE GO-TO GUY

thegotoguy.co

-- employees

Since n.d.

COMPANY RANKING

THE GO-TO GUY

EVERGREEN INDEX #10997

RELATED COMPANIESRANK

STORIES ABOUT THE GO-TO GUY

Representing this company? Click here to claim and customize this page!

The go-to guy WIKI

Apply to get your Tech Company News Page live on HackerNoon.com today!