WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:04.345 --> 00:00:05.665 Mike Bifulco: This is tiny improvements. 00:00:05.695 --> 00:00:06.715 I'm Mike by Fulco. 00:00:13.651 --> 00:00:16.111 The first year of being a technical startup co-founder. 00:00:18.363 --> 00:00:21.810 Last year, I wrote a reflection on the first three months of building Kraftwerk. 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.920 The article was largely a reflection on the differences between building a 00:00:25.920 --> 00:00:30.690 company from scratch in 2023, versus the time I had done it last, which was 2016. 00:00:31.410 --> 00:00:32.580 Plenty has changed since then. 00:00:32.580 --> 00:00:34.410 And I think that article is still worth a read. 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:38.130 Today, I want to reflect on the first year of building craft work. 00:00:38.610 --> 00:00:40.890 We've written many chapters of our story in the last year. 00:00:40.950 --> 00:00:43.110 And I think it's worth taking a moment to reflect on what we've 00:00:43.110 --> 00:00:44.310 accomplished and what we've learned. 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:48.270 You won't know some things until you try. 00:00:50.250 --> 00:00:51.540 I've spent a good deal of my career. 00:00:51.540 --> 00:00:52.500 Working in UX. 00:00:52.920 --> 00:00:56.190 I've gotten to work with some incredibly talented designers and UX researchers. 00:00:56.550 --> 00:00:59.160 And I do believe that a good design is a competitive advantage. 00:00:59.490 --> 00:01:02.910 Even still, when building real features for real people, you can't always predict 00:01:02.910 --> 00:01:05.010 what will work and what won't designing. 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:07.800 Great software needs to be both proactive and reactive. 00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:10.990 You need to have a vision for what you want to build, but you also need to 00:01:10.990 --> 00:01:12.820 actively respond to feedback and data. 00:01:13.420 --> 00:01:16.630 For example, the very first version of Kraftwerk's estimate builder was 00:01:16.630 --> 00:01:18.220 designed to be extremely self-serve. 00:01:18.610 --> 00:01:21.640 We built a tool that would let customers scope out the entire project they 00:01:21.640 --> 00:01:23.290 had without needing to talk to us. 00:01:23.860 --> 00:01:26.560 We thought this would be a great way to let people get a feel for what we could do 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:30.130 for them, and to be extremely transparent about what their project would cost. 00:01:30.610 --> 00:01:33.670 In practice, we found that people were often overwhelmed by the 00:01:33.670 --> 00:01:34.930 number of choices they had to make. 00:01:35.500 --> 00:01:36.100 Over and over. 00:01:36.100 --> 00:01:39.160 We saw people on our site getting stuck playing with the estimate builder. 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:41.770 They were weighing the cost of one little change against another. 00:01:42.460 --> 00:01:45.370 Many people that stuck in this process and many never actually 00:01:45.370 --> 00:01:46.630 submitted a request for painting. 00:01:47.590 --> 00:01:48.190 On a hunch. 00:01:48.220 --> 00:01:51.160 We ran a quick AB test to see if it would be more productive to have a 00:01:51.160 --> 00:01:54.490 conversation with one of our team members first, and the results were clear. 00:01:54.730 --> 00:01:56.740 Our customers have lots of interesting questions. 00:01:56.770 --> 00:01:58.930 Enterprise calculator just wasn't answering all of them. 00:02:00.010 --> 00:02:03.520 We've since reworked the estimate process to be more of a guided conversation. 00:02:03.790 --> 00:02:07.060 And we found that using it to create a human connection with our customers 00:02:07.060 --> 00:02:10.450 has been a great way to build trust and to get the ball rolling on a project. 00:02:11.630 --> 00:02:12.500 You can't do it alone. 00:02:13.670 --> 00:02:16.370 While building my last company, I was convinced that we could do everything 00:02:16.370 --> 00:02:17.720 with an exceptionally small team. 00:02:17.930 --> 00:02:20.420 We were just three people from inception to acquisition. 00:02:20.900 --> 00:02:24.110 I'm proud to say that we did the damn thing, but it was really difficult. 00:02:24.590 --> 00:02:26.450 You'll often hear founding employees at startups. 00:02:26.480 --> 00:02:28.310 Talk about how they're wearing many hats. 00:02:28.430 --> 00:02:29.360 That's definitely true. 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:30.590 And it makes work a lot of fun. 00:02:30.860 --> 00:02:33.500 It's also true that you can't wear all the hats. 00:02:33.710 --> 00:02:36.470 It's also also true that there are exciting, beautiful, new 00:02:36.470 --> 00:02:38.660 hats out there that you didn't even know you need to wear. 00:02:39.470 --> 00:02:41.660 From my first day as a working professional, I've always 00:02:41.660 --> 00:02:43.790 wanted to be surrounded by people who are smarter than me. 00:02:44.240 --> 00:02:45.860 Building craftwork has been no exception. 00:02:46.130 --> 00:02:48.950 My co-founders are dedicated, talented and damn good at what they do. 00:02:49.550 --> 00:02:52.160 We've also hired some truly amazing people to build our team. 00:02:53.180 --> 00:02:55.220 A few things that I've learned about building the right team. 00:02:56.330 --> 00:02:59.030 Engineers tend to undervalue the importance of understanding 00:02:59.030 --> 00:03:00.200 the mechanics of the business. 00:03:00.200 --> 00:03:03.740 Uh, our growth team at craftwork has been instrumental in helping us understand how 00:03:03.740 --> 00:03:07.070 to reach new customers and how to build a profitable product that people want. 00:03:07.910 --> 00:03:09.620 Building a brand is like nurturing a garden. 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:11.960 It takes time patience and a lot of care. 00:03:12.510 --> 00:03:15.750 has Kraftwerk's brand has really grown into something special and 00:03:15.750 --> 00:03:16.920 it's been a joy to watch it happen. 00:03:17.610 --> 00:03:18.630 Give our Instagram a peek. 00:03:18.660 --> 00:03:19.500 If you want to see what I mean. 00:03:19.670 --> 00:03:22.910 At this stage in the startup journey, hiring engineers is really challenging. 00:03:23.270 --> 00:03:26.030 The perfect engineer for a startup is someone who's comfortable with a lot 00:03:26.030 --> 00:03:29.480 of ambiguity who can work independently and who can communicate well. 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:31.790 In addition to being technically competent. 00:03:32.540 --> 00:03:35.030 It's a tall order and it can be a challenge to find the right people. 00:03:35.750 --> 00:03:38.030 When I have roles open on my team hiring is the most 00:03:38.030 --> 00:03:39.350 important thing I do day to day. 00:03:39.740 --> 00:03:41.600 It's also a full-time job in itself. 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:44.840 It requires a fair deal of patients to assemble the right team, as 00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:47.600 well as a drive to actively and creatively seek out the right people. 00:03:47.820 --> 00:03:49.170 Just enough and nothing more. 00:03:50.040 --> 00:03:52.620 I recently came across the Japanese phrase, hold a Hodo, 00:03:52.740 --> 00:03:53.910 which means just enough. 00:03:54.330 --> 00:03:56.910 I've been trying to use it as a reminder to keep things simple 00:03:56.910 --> 00:03:58.350 and to overcomplicate things. 00:03:58.770 --> 00:04:01.080 My team is tasked with building the features that we need most 00:04:01.080 --> 00:04:04.050 today with eyes on what we'll need in six months and in a year. 00:04:04.140 --> 00:04:05.760 And that can be pretty overwhelming. 00:04:06.480 --> 00:04:09.540 It's easy to spiral out of control with feature creep and over-engineering 00:04:09.590 --> 00:04:12.830 finding ways to help each other do just enough for now is a team remit. 00:04:13.980 --> 00:04:16.380 In fact, just enough spills over into a few areas. 00:04:16.530 --> 00:04:18.030 For example, build versus buy. 00:04:18.390 --> 00:04:21.270 Almost every feature our team needs can be bought from a SAS vendor or 00:04:21.300 --> 00:04:22.590 coach built by our product team. 00:04:23.100 --> 00:04:25.410 Making this decision can be nuanced and difficult and it's 00:04:25.410 --> 00:04:26.820 something we revisit regularly. 00:04:27.660 --> 00:04:28.380 Adopting tooling. 00:04:28.890 --> 00:04:30.510 Engineers love to play with new tools. 00:04:30.570 --> 00:04:33.870 There's always a new framework, language, database, or library to poke around with. 00:04:34.140 --> 00:04:36.750 We've been very deliberate about what we adopt and we've been very 00:04:36.750 --> 00:04:39.810 careful to avoid adopting things just because they're new and shiny. 00:04:40.410 --> 00:04:43.620 We have also adopted tools with good intention, but found ourselves at 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:46.110 jettisoning them when they don't work out for one reason or another. 00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:49.980 Shipping new features, adding new functionality for our customers 00:04:49.980 --> 00:04:52.830 and teammates is always tempting, but it's important to me. 00:04:53.250 --> 00:04:55.830 But it's important to be mindful of the complexity that 00:04:55.830 --> 00:04:56.940 comes with each new feature. 00:04:57.570 --> 00:04:59.250 Our engineering team is small and mighty. 00:04:59.400 --> 00:05:02.430 And every new feature we build means we have less time to support the 00:05:02.430 --> 00:05:03.690 features that we've already built. 00:05:04.650 --> 00:05:06.750 I used to say just enough and nothing more. 00:05:07.170 --> 00:05:08.820 And there's a funny irony in that phrase. 00:05:09.180 --> 00:05:12.180 A year into this thing, it feels a whole lot more accurate just to say. 00:05:12.630 --> 00:05:13.320 Just enough.