The Builder's Guide to the Tech Galaxy

Introduction

On a cloudless summer night in 1971, a slightly drunk young man lay in a wheat field near Innsbruck, Austria, and looked up at the sky. Beside him lay a stolen copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe. While gazing at the stars, the man decided that someone should write a “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” – a book offering answers to “life, the universe and everything.” The name of that man was Douglas Adams and his bestselling novel appeared in 1979. Today, it has been translated into over 30 languages.

The guide you have in your hands does not quite cover that scope. But for those with aspirations to scale a technology startup, it offers a starting point to build “unicorns” – companies that are valued with more than USD 1 billion and often employ thousands of people.

As the authors of The Builder's Guide to the Tech Galaxy, we have co-scaled a variety of technology startups over the years, including the FinTech N26, the Internet provider Planet Internet and the eCommerce enterprise Vivere, along with several cultural platforms and various ventures for McKinsey & Company. During our time working on these projects, we have realized one thing: when scaling a startup, teams had to reinvent the wheel over and over again. And while much has been written about how to find a product-market fit (such as The Lean Startup by Eric Ries) and business model innovation (like Reid Hofmann's Blitzscaling), there are few practical handbooks that focus on how to organizationally ...