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

What Will I Get out of These Chapters?

Over the course of your venture, you'll need to confront eight trials that commonly snag entrepreneurs:

1. Crystallizing your idea

2. Defining your strategy

3. Designing your product

4. Defining your architecture

5. Assembling your team

6. Executing your development

7. Having a successful beta

8. Scaling the business

Since it helps to visualize these challenges along with their resolutions, I've created a series of adversaries as focal points for the eight trials.

We'll see how to succeed in these trials using the case of a fictional company called Enable Quiz,⁶ which provides online skills assessment quizzes for engineers. The following subsections describe the book's chapters. All of these chapters will help you if you're a starting a technology-enabled venture. However, you might find some chapters more immediately relevant than others depending on your background.

Chapter 1: The Idea

Even when you have an idea that's been percolating, making the decision to go after it isn't easy. You have your regular job, your family, your personal life. Doing nothing is easier. The Lawn Gnome of Indolence stands in the same place every day because he prefers to do nothing. Your first step is to confront the critical question of whether you ...