SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN STARTUPS Dr. Vadim Zaytsev Universiteit - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN STARTUPS Dr. Vadim Zaytsev Universiteit - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN STARTUPS Dr. Vadim Zaytsev Universiteit van Amsterdam 20 January 2014 CC-BY-SA Introduction Vadim Zaytsev aka @grammarware currently at UvA worked at CWI (Amsterdam) worked at Uni Koblenz (Germany)

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SLIDE 1

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN STARTUPS

  • Dr. Vadim Zaytsev

Universiteit van Amsterdam 20 January 2014 CC-BY-SA

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SLIDE 2

Introduction

  • Vadim Zaytsev
  • aka @grammarware
  • currently at UvA
  • worked at CWI (Amsterdam)
  • worked at Uni Koblenz (Germany)
  • studied at VU (Amsterdam), UTwente (Enschede), …
  • software language engineer


software engineer

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SLIDE 3

PART I

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SLIDE 4

Startups

  • Smaller companies
  • Active software engineering
  • Challenging & healthy environment
  • Sufficiently different culture
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SLIDE 5

Progress

  • Horizontal
  • globalisation
  • 1 to n
  • Vertical
  • innovation
  • 0 to 1

!"#$% &'() '+ ,#)"%-!)& %.. / 1 &( )

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, The Challenge of the Future, 2012.

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SLIDE 6

Why startups

  • Size matters
  • coordination costs
  • politics
  • incentives
  • doing work vs. signalling about doing it

1!$%#+! (&2!34'+! '-5(++'1.!

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, The Challenge of the Future, 2012.

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SLIDE 7

Why startups?

  • Money?
  • Fame?
  • Changing the world?
  • Costs of failure?

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, The Challenge of the Future, 2012.

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SLIDE 8

Dot com history

  • Internet & WWW
  • Mosaic & Netscape
  • Web presence
  • Prefix investing (e-, .com, nano-, 2.0)
  • All ended around 2000

Mike Masnick, Nanotech Excitement Boosts Wrong Stock, 2003.

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SLIDE 9

Dot com consequences

  • Grand visions stability & incrementalism
  • Know everything be lean & experiment
  • Always advertise no
  • Social antisocial
  • Sales product
  • Rapid monetisation reinvestment
  • Talk about the future shut up

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Party Like It’s 1999?, 2012.

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SLIDE 10

PART II

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SLIDE 11

First mover vs. last mover

Rocket City Space Pioneers, Ancient Chinese Rockets.

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SLIDE 12

First mover vs. last mover

Geoff Parsons, Newton Lewt, 2008.

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SLIDE 13

First mover vs. last mover

  • Being on the frontier
  • Creating your own market
  • Escaping competition

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters,The Last Mover Advantage, 2012.

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SLIDE 14

Inside a startup

  • Talented people
  • Long-term orientation
  • Generative spirit
  • No diversity (productive disharmony)

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Stephen Cohen, Max Levchin, The Mechanics of Mafia, 2012.

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SLIDE 15

Organisation

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SLIDE 16

Organisation

.(4

!

&3#+& 2'62

!

&3#+&

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Thiel’s Law, 2012.

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SLIDE 17

Organisation

2'62 %.'6)-!)& +&3#$&#3! .(4 %.'6)-!)& +&3#$&#3!

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Thiel’s Law, 2012.

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SLIDE 18

Organisation

&(& %.'& %3'%)'+-

%)%3$2/ "(6-!% &-"(6 '"!%.

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Thiel’s Law, 2012.

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SLIDE 19

Technical side

  • Lots of freedom
  • possible to find exotic stuff
  • Ability to use/try new technologies
  • Lots of learning
  • Quick feedback loops, fast release cycles
  • no bureaucracy / little process

Kudos to Justin Halsall

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SLIDE 20

More technical details

  • In-house vs. external
  • Often hacky [yet understood] ways
  • Hatred for too much infrastructure
  • Scrum, Kanban, TDD… never entirely
  • Short-term focus: deploy often
  • Unstable environment

Simon Pantzare, Unlearning software engineering, 2013.

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SLIDE 21

O!en encountered stuff

  • Version control
  • Some form of agile (+planning poker, etc)
  • Code review
  • Incrementality / refinement
  • Ad hoc modelling
  • Continuous integration

Todd Sedano, Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering for Startups, 2000.

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SLIDE 22

Ad hoc modelling

Ali Khajeh-Hosseini, Software Engineering for Startups, 2012.

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SLIDE 23

Startup community

  • Open community
  • Meetups & events
  • Everybody is helpful
  • Easy to ask for advice/feedback

Kudos to Justin Halsall

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SLIDE 24

Networking

  • “Is it efficient?”
  • No explicit black-tie dinners
  • Always networking
  • Keeping up

Kudos to Justin Halsall

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SLIDE 25

Pitching

  • You are smart
  • You have an idea
  • …
  • PROFIT!

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, The Pitch, 2012.

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SLIDE 26

How to pitch

  • Have a clear goal
  • Know your audience
  • Make it simple
  • Do a pre-pitch

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, The Pitch, 2012.

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SLIDE 27

Financial side

  • Lower pay up front
  • Growing with the company
  • People only get happier up to $70’000

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, The Challenge of the Future, 2012.

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SLIDE 28

Political side

  • No bureaucracy
  • Equal politics
  • Input is welcome
  • Lots of responsibility

Kudos to Justin Halsall

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SLIDE 29

How to get hired?

  • Join a startup instead of creating one
  • Fit
  • Broad set of skills
  • Get to know people
  • … (3 things mentioned before) …

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, After Web 2.0, 2012.

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SLIDE 30

PART III

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SLIDE 31

Summary

  • Aim at startups if you want to do innovative

stuff (0 to 1)

  • Build up and maintain a broad set of skills
  • Network and be aware of surroundings
  • Be open to learn & collaborate
  • Enjoy
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SLIDE 32

See also

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SLIDE 33
  • Sources of information/inspiration
  • given on the bottom of each slide
  • kudos to Justin Halsall and all other folks at H&F
  • kudos to Peter Thiel & Blake Masters for CS183.
  • Slides?
  • http://grammarware.net/slides/2014/startups.pdf
  • Fonts?
  • Avdira — George Douros, Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts, 2009.
  • Finger Paint — Ralph Oliver du Carrois, 2013.
  • Wild Honey — Denis Sherbak, 2013
  • Questions? Ask or email or tweet.