Start-ups, Watch your steps!
Its not just hardwork or perseverance that will make your startup successful. Right associations are the key.
With the nature of services that we provide, I get a lot of inquiries asking me if I can do something for their existing website to bring in what they desire?
These websites are generally an Ecommerce venture, an Edutech startup or some other web portal. All these have 1 thing in common- they are the victims of unfulfilled sugar-coated promises by the web agency that built their portal.
The problem is the lack of technical knowledge. Not everybody can be from a technical background. So they are swayed away by the agency that offered them a good and cheap deal to build their product and are lured by their belief that the technology they are using is similar to that being used by facebook or twitter.
But in the long run it turns out to be a bad deal. Really bad deal. Why? Because they seldom know if the code language used for their website is actually coded in a healthy way? By healthy I mean if it can accommodate certain functionality changes based on the user behavior or is it good as per the digital marketing conventions. The knowledge of this comes later, when you've already suffered once. Next time you will specially take care of this. But would there be a next time? After investing so much time and money, one hardly has the enthusiasm left to do that all over again.
So the inquiries that I receive, are usually about amending what they already have. Little do they know that reading and correcting a bad code ends up taking more time than it would have taken to build it again from scratch. Moreover, the base structure may not be that flexible since there was hardly any planning from the technical aspect. But the usual mindset is to correct what they already have so atleast they can do a pilot and get the POC. I will tell you how that is bad. Do you think you will like a half baked bread and make up your mind that it will taste great once its baked full? The sensible in you will know that you can never ever get a POC with a half baked product.
If you are about to get into a tech.based startup, do keep in mind the importance of planning the technical part of how your Database and URLs are structured so that you don't end up spending more than you should. Its now the time you change your criteria of shortlisting your web agency. Ask them why they are choosing a particular technology? How is the database structured? What will be the URLs? etc.. Google a little. After-all its your startup and your money. Don't let your web agency learn at your cost. Know them well before letting them work on your brainchild.
