Building a Strategic Tech Ecosystem as a Startup
Originally published on LinkedIn April 4, 2019
We are an early-stage data and technology company. Our primary focus is innovating in order to yield data products and technology platforms that create better impact and more efficiency for our customers. So, it only made sense for us to make our own investments in a tech ecosystem that makes our work more efficient and keeps us focused on innovating.
When you think of technology solutions you often associate them with cost and learning hurdles within organizations of any size, but even more so larger organizations. Whether it is a budget restricted environment or an “old school” manager that resists change, embracing new tech is a challenge. Well, think about being a startup living on a predefined lifespan tied directly to the investor funds you pitched hard for — I can tell you firsthand way more stressful than a “budget restricted environment.” With that said, taking risks can be way more strategic than ignoring opportunity.
We decided early on that infrastructure for product development in the form of tech was key and we are continuing to make strategic moves in other parts of our company with the same mindset. Let me share with you some of the awesome tools, products and services we have invested in strategically as a small early-stage startup.
It all started with Google — G Suite specifically — to foster collaboration amongst a team spread remotely across the US and eventually abroad. Slack is our communications platform and integrates well with G Suite. Our engineering team are Microsoft certified gurus, so we elected to build/develop within Azure cloud services. Our first really strategic purchase was monday — a project / quasi-product management platform. Monday serves us well with workflow, tracking, reporting, and more communications — overall it is the single best place for me (as the founder) to see an end-to-end snapshot of product and operations. We have kept it as clean, simple, and integrated as possible on the product and operations front. The solutions we invested in have really positioned us to scale quickly and we have seen this happen already.
As our team grew, an HR/payroll system was necessary, so we selected GUSTO. In the spirit of the ecosystem, GUSTO integrates with our accounting software, QuickBooks. On the business development front, we procured a number of tools like SurveyMonkey and MailChimp. Our biggest investment came recently on the bizdev side as we are building out the Salesforce lightning platform.
The common theme in the ecosystem we have built — cloud based services/solutions with integration capabilities. Necessary for our work from anywhere hustlers across the globe and really the best tech available today that returns immediate value with less to zero maintenance concerns.
If you’re a startup thinking about pulling the trigger on tools that will accelerate your growth — do it! If you’re a larger, more mature organization not making investments in enabling technology — good luck!
