startups articles

Sustainable development — code should be interesting, not frantic. Longer cycles, fewer all-nighters. Sustainable growth — attract users who already […]

2012, Thursday afternoon, sprint review. Twelve smart engineers, three product people, zero decisions. Every proposal dissolved into “yeah, that could […]

Rediscovered the fun of shipping. Felt like 2013 when I hacked random APIs together for the thrill of it. Picked […]

Two weeks ago I sat through a board call with a seed-stage startup. Burn rate north of “I’d rather not […]

Last Tuesday I had three draft CTO offers sitting on my desk — from a fintech, a health-tech, and a […]

Last week I found myself comparing two pull requests: both touched the same service, both under 200 lines, yet one […]

First week at mindnow, I walked into a planning meeting and instantly felt outclassed — three people were quoting Erlang […]

Falsehoods Junior Developers believe about becoming Senior Habits of great software engineers Proper Software Development Estimations Why software projects fail […]

Last Thursday I was reviewing a pull-request for a 200-line Swift UI tweak in the morning and helping untangle a […]

Dear JK, Your message landed in my inbox late Friday night, right as I was about to close the laptop […]

I still have the ZIP file from 2007. One PHP script, 9 KB, no folders in sight. Hosting was two […]

Networking as an introvert CTO Database Migrations Proper Documentation Habits of great software engineers Networking as an introvert CTO Database […]

I still remember a Sunday night last year when my phone would not shut up — PagerDuty, Slack, even a […]

I still remember my first week at a mid-size telco in 2011. On Monday I pushed a tiny CSS fix; […]

I had a call last week with a non-technical founder who pitched me a “digital allowance” app for kids. Ten […]

August 1st 2012, 9:30 a.m. on the NYSE open. Knight Capital flips the switch on a new release—and instantly starts […]

I stopped counting how many times I’ve stepped into a new client’s repo expecting Swiss precision and found a Jenga […]

Quick disclaimer: I’m still figuring this stuff out like everyone else. If something here feels off, poke holes in it—I […]

The first time an offshore agency locked our GitLab repo because an invoice was a couple of days late, I […]

I still remember sitting in a co-working space in 2014, watching my co-founder demolish the keyboard like he was racing […]

I still remember the first time an agency sent me a quote that started with a one-liner—“Design: $50k, Build: $150k.” […]

Short answer: Keep your day job for now. Spend evenings and the odd Sunday hacking on the idea until you’re […]

Friday evening, everyone has left, and that shiny M1 on your desk is begging for overtime. Tempting, I know — […]

It was a Friday night in 2018, and we were in a rented coworking space. Lukewarm Club-Mate bottles were everywhere, […]

It was 3 a.m., the office lights were off, and Slack was still pinging because I had forgotten to pause […]

The first time someone asked me to be their mentor I almost said no. It was 2012, I was knee-deep […]

I have an irrational love for documentation. Give me a quiet hour, a mug of half-cold espresso, and a blank […]

I wrapped up my backlog last Tuesday by noon and spent the next hour rearranging sticky notes just so it […]

I was staring at a whiteboard the other day, marker in hand, trying to decide whether we should build yet […]

Lessons learned from becoming CTO of a small startup How to build remote teams properly Things they didn’t teach you […]

I was re-reading Nixon’s 1969 “silent majority” speech last week (Smithsonian ran a good breakdown in 2017), mostly because YouTube’s algorithm […]

Two Fridays ago I picked up a bottle of Swiss pinot to celebrate a long-overdue bonus hitting my account. I […]

The other week I was killing time by the espresso machine in our Zurich co-working space when someone on my […]

This piece belongs to the ongoing Founders Guide. I’m scribbling down everything I wish I’d had on my desk during […]

I finished “Atomic Habits” on a delayed flight, half-listening to the gate announcements and underlining sentences with the only writing […]

Part of the ongoing Founders Guide. I jot these notes down while the memories are still fresh, so you’re getting […]

Two weekends ago I shipped a tiny API and, like a proud parent, waited for the internet to notice. Seven […]

I still cringe when I think back to the evening I asked my older brother for a small “friends & […]

This piece belongs to the ongoing Founders Guide—a collection of notes I’m assembling for first-year founders while the memories of […]

I still remember the first morning I woke up to an email from Stripe saying we’d crossed four figures in […]

I get this question every other week: “I’ve got an idea, where do I dig up a tech co-founder?” The […]

I once spent an entire Saturday fine-tuning a landing page animation. It looked slick, sure, but it didn’t move the […]

I wasted the better part of a Sunday drafting a spec for a tiny SaaS idea—only to realise, after a […]

I got burned once — two unpaid salaries, a panicked Slack message at midnight, and a curt “we’re out of […]

This piece belongs to my ongoing Founders Guide. I’m jotting these notes while the memories of our first-year battles are […]

I used to treat equity like collectible baseball cards — the more I had, the better I felt. Then a […]

It was 2 a.m. on a Wednesday when someone on my team pinged me in full panic mode: “The database […]

The night after my graduation ceremony I signed an offer from a fintech startup that operated out of a half-empty […]

I still remember the coffee-stained napkin where a non-technical founder once offered me “a meaningful slice” of his new venture […]

🎙️ Last Tuesday, stuck in Zurich traffic and running dangerously low on espresso, I queued up an old episode of […]

This piece belongs to the ongoing Founders Guide. I’m jotting these notes while helping first-year founders stay afloat — the things […]

This piece belongs to the Technical Manager Guide I’m slowly publishing for leads who want to scale without turning into […]

Tuesday’s stand-up started with the same sentence from two different teams — “The build suddenly takes fifteen minutes, what changed?” […]

🚀 Founders Guide 2022 📚 Q&A for Startup Founders 📰 Previous Newsletter Issues 🛠️ How to be a better technical […]

The first intern I ever coached arrived with an almost comical amount of enthusiasm. I had no onboarding checklist back […]

Update 2021: I first drafted this piece back in 2018, roughly eighteen months after I took over engineering at a […]