Photo by Per Lööv on Unsplash

A quick clarifier: I said on Friday, Oct. 29th that if you are not funded by Venture Capitalists and you are a startup then you are at risk. The clarifier is that you are most-likely bootstrapping the business, either with your own money or maybe some other method. Being VC funded is its own risk but I will not get into that now.

Now, today’s subject.

Acknowledging The Risk

For startups there are many risks. If you have worked for one or started one, you know that very well. But what are the risks really?

I would argue that the risk is knowing what you do well and what you do not do. The temptation as a startup is to try to be the one-stop shop, the sole answer, the ‘right place’, etc. But that does not exist.

Know Your Capabilities & Accept It

Sometimes you have to pivot. But if you know you can do something well, do it well and offer it as a service. You do not need to or have to pivot as soon as something doesn’t seem ‘right’ or where there may be more money.

Also, be willing to use tools. Using tools that are built by others does not mean you as a company are ‘incapable’. It means you know what you can and cannot do.

So, Now To Startups & Junior Devs

The problem is similar for both. As a startup, you want to offer customers and clients the full suite of services. But what does that mean? As a junior developer you want to be ‘capable’ of everything (which is impossible) but you want that so you will get hired.

The Answer: Do Less

I don’t know if you hate me for this answer, I will expound more on it tomorrow. But ‘Doing Less’ is an art. It is humility. But it is empowering.

Let me give a quick specific tool for junior developers and startups that will help you learn and scale. For developers it will help you focus on building out applications/projects which if you do will help you focus on getting a job. For startups it will help you focus on delivering the client/customer the sweet sauce (business logic) of their application.

Tool: hyper.io

What: Remove need to spend time on DevOps

How: Wraps the cloud for you and gives you a simple API for services (data, search, queue, cache, storage).

Give it a look.