Starting a Tech Business: A Practical Guide for Anyone Creating or Designing Applications or Software

Roles and Skill Sets at Enable Quiz

Figure 5.1 shows an example organization chart for Enable Quiz.

Figure 5.1 Sample Organization Chart

Let's say Andrew has augmented his cast of characters by three people:

1. Ray Wong: Angel investor and mentor.

2. Mike Fedor: A friend of Ray's who is acting as development lead.

3. Joe Fang: A friend of Mike's they've brought in part-time to do systems administration (more on that further on).

You'll notice lots of people repeated in different slots. This is important. Just because you're a small company and people play several different roles doesn't mean you should institutionalize around them. In fact, the opposite is true. You must identify the discrete roles all the team members are playing so others know where they're coming from on certain issues, and whom to go to on specific questions so the structure of the organization is built to scale. We'll review these roles in more detail in the following sections.

Systems Administration

Mike is responsible for operations and engineering. On the operations side, he has a part-time contractor, named Joe Fang, he plans to use. Joe is available at $68/hour if the company commits to at least 30 hours a month. Mike would do the work himself, but he's going to have his hands full getting the development project rolling, not to mention that he's on the expensive side for that kind of work. Why ...