The Idea stage, or pre-seed stage, is where inspiration strikes, that 'ah-ha' moment that eventually led you here in the first place. The goal here is to really focus the idea and 'trim-the-fat' in order to really distill the idea down to its essence. This should result in a cohesive 'Unique Value Proposition' (UVP) that is the elevator pitch of what your business does and more importantly what makes it different.

The UVP also needs to align with making money in order to really turn the idea into a business. This means doing some financial modeling and market research to define best-worst-expected case scenarios and determine if a viable business can be made out of the idea. We tend to think of finance as a little dry and analytical when in fact this can be one of the most creative stages of the company, determining price structures, potential business valuation and profit margins etc.

As much as us humans prefer to work linearly, the fact of the matter is the UVP and financial model also need to have a certain level of technical feasibility, and cannot rely simply on building the most or best features, but instead contribute something 'new' and 'fresh' to the market. To get to the next level, whether that be profitability or investment, you'll need a 'Minimal Viable Product' (MVP), which could be something as simple as a website, infographic or slide deck, or as complex as a rocket you can shoot into space. This is where the technical feasibility assessment comes into play, it helps you determine what it will actually take to build your technology to deliver your UVP to customers.It'll also helps to think in terms of 'versions' too, where v1 comes after your MVP, and subsequent versions are where you can plan potentially cooler but 'non-essential' features.

If you've gotten your idea off the ground, whether that be through an angel investor or real customers, you may have the tendency to start adding new features and applications. In some cases, especially with large seed rounds or rapid growth, this may be appropriate, but more often than not from a technical point this stage should be very conservative and boring, unfortunately. Ideally it should be used to really nail down your v1 product, make it as smooth and optimized as possible. The fact you made it to this stage is a great accomplishment so you must be doing something right, this is the time to double-down on what that is, most likely. The best way to do that is to be extremely critical of adding new features, but instead invest in what already exists.

So what tech would you invest in if you aren't trying to build new features? This is the time that makes sense to eliminate any tech debt, which is 'bad code' that has accumulated in the previous stage, and ensure things are scalable, secure and reliable. Additionally, this is where A/B testing and website/app optimizations should be the focus in order to optimize sales pipelines and increase the top line. Setting up proper business tools such as CRMs, Accounting software, Chat/Live Answering etc. will help your business make the most of your opportunities and set you up for the next stage, and these are all things Dreltek can help with.

Think of the MVP as the 'beta' stage, where you're proving out the idea in a tangible form, while v1 is the official release that says this is a polished, finished product. With a solid v1 there should be zero reservations with an 'all-systems-go' sales/marketing strategy, whereas with an MVP you may be a little more hesitant because your confidence in it rapidly scaling should not be as high because it is minimal, after all. Shipping v1 really should be the main technical goal of this entire stage.

Startups will typically bring on a CTO at the very beginning in order to build the MVP and v1. One of the fundamental goals of Dreltek is to challenge that paradigm and instead wait until this stage to find a CTO . This article goes into more detail [LINK NEEDED] why, but regardless this stage should be more about building out that core engineering team now that the business has had serious success and has the funds to hire seasoned pros that are typically quite expensive but make a huge difference over those less qualified. If you've worked with Dreltek only up to this point we can help you find, train and hire the right people, and if you haven't then we can help you expand your existing team.

With a solid v1, a growing business and a budding in-house tech team, this is a great time to really define the long-term technical roadmap and product vision, especially as a way to align the brand new tech team with the company's long-term goals. In fact, it's probably ideal for the first couple months to really just focus the tech team on planning and establishing a roadmap based on all of the different ideas you can get your hands on for the company.

Though not quite as fun as planning all the cool features of the future, the roadmap and ambition of the future should be grounded by an assessment of technical risk as well. The risk of security breaches, losing data, competitor products etc. should all be factored in to determine how to prevent any potential catastrophic events from derailing your companies future success, especially before investing heavily in exciting new features etc. A lot of this should have been addressed in the seed stage, so hopefully you already have an accurate picture of your risk, and if it's pretty low then lucky you, time to go all out on the fun stuff, feature development!

If we use think of the Idea, Seed and Series A stages as the baby, child and teen years of a human, once your company reaches your Series B you are an adult. You are a mature startup at this point, still not a public multi-national behemoth, but a real business with a fair amount of employees, significant revenue and/or a big investment. Just like in real life, this is the time where Dreltek may transition away from the day-to-day 'parenting' and instead become more of a trusted advisor and ally that is there to help in a pinch.

Although we still encourage larger companies to work with Dreltek for development, it should make up a much smaller ratio of total R&D budget and if anything used for non-product work i.e. internal tools, support roles etc. The emphasis should instead be around on assisting with finding, interviewing, hiring and training employees. Dreltek can work with your company in a contract-to-hire or even train-to-hire capacity, which is even more useful if you've worked with us from the beginning because we can train them to keep everything consistent with our standards, so they are like an extension of both Dreltek and your company.

Talented engineers are very difficult to find, hire and retain, not to mention expensive. Interviewing is also very difficult and current practices aren't necessarily a great indicator of success. Great engineers know the importance of tech culture, but defining what exactly that is and establishing it can be very difficult and abstract. The right tech culture empowers engineers to collaborate and contribute as 'individuals' rather than employees, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, preferences and needs. Understanding them and working with them rather than trying to force everyone into a one-size-fits-all situation will increase their loyalty towards your company, provide them an incentive to stay, and should inspire them to do all they can to make your company a success.