The early phase includes so much administrative work... boring! But you need to get it done. There are people who like this kind of work. But as a startup you don’t have money for this luxury to hire such people. It remains with you.
So, get over it and get it done fast and in the required quality. And don’t underestimate the list of things you need to do
• Beside set up the company it also means organize insurance, value added tax etc.
• Provider selection for hosting (software application, website)
• Software or service to build the website (even as a programmer you don't need to re-invent the wheel)
• Software to create diagrams (to specify our software requirements e.g. Use case, sequence diagram)
• Selection of accounting software
• Define document layouts (even or specially?) as a startup you need to create appealing documents / presentations)
• Create email-addresses
• Define some basic rules of working-culture / -cooperation (where to save documents, when do you meet, meeting minutes, how to share information, how to work together)
• ….
The list is quite long. For me a key success criteria is to find the right level of quality for each tasks (and how much you want to spend: money and timewise). E.g. data security we take very serious, same goes for hosting provider selection. Document layouts we did, but just the light version.
What also helps a lot is the trust in each other. We worked together before. I know exactly where I can 100% rely on Andreas.
And communication… we speak the same “language”. When we discuss concepts, processes, use cases, tools etc. I know he understands what I try to explain. He also challenges certain aspects or brings in new/better ideas. This gives me great confidence and it makes us extremely efficient. Looking back what we already achieved in this short time is impressive…
I hope we can keep that speed, quality and fun-factor.
