Tag Archives: startup

Never Underestimate Luck, You Lucky B***ard

"You lucky, lucky, bastard" - Monty Python the life of Brian

Do 👏 Not 👏 Buy 👏 Your 👏 Own 👏 Hype. Founder rule number ONE: be humble, stay humble. You really ain’t all that.

As you progress in your business goals as a founder, you will get told more and more about how impressive and incredible it has been for you to build the business you have, and how much effort, hustle and deep strategic insight you must have had in order to so so well.

This kind of praise comes from investors, partners and peers quite often, and it’s absolutely awesome to hear because – if you’re anything like me and crave validation of any sort (does it show that I’m an only-child?) – it feels good. But in those immortal words of Skunk Anansie – “Just because it feels good, doesn’t make it right”.

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Keep it Simple: A Letter to Myself as a Young Dumbass

The Three Fates, Giorgio Ghisi; engraver; 1558-1559; Mantua, part of the collection at Te Papa Museum of New Zealand

If you are a start-up that needs to build server-side applications: you do not need microservices, you do not need kubernetes, and you certainly do not need service mesh and it’s assorted bullshit.

There’s a common fallacy amongst engineers (even some more seasoned ones), that whatever Netflix, Google, Meta or Amazon are doing is “best practice”, and that may be the case – if you are one of the aforementioned companies.

As a start-up, you may have ambitions to become that size one day, but for now – you’re not, you’re trying to make a buck and stay alive.

Readers of this blog might be like “but Martin you run an Open Source API Management company, how can you shit on microservices?” Because I see customers come through the door that make their lives infinitely more difficult by doing things “the best way” instead of just getting shit done.

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How to set goals in a start-up? Guidestones and stories.

Scene from the Iliad – The Fight Over Patroklos, Black-figure wine-drinking bowl in the style of Exekias, c. 530 bc, from Pharsalos, Greece.

OK, chewy one incoming…

This is a big topic, because it’s all about context. This question came in from my YouTube Video on the importance of shipping product, asking: “how do start-ups define the right goals?”

In my humble opinion, this question asks about a framework for identifying goals – since the context at the time of goal setting is so important.

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JFSI – Just F***ing Ship It

The Return of Hephaestus to Mount Olympus

Hello Interwebs! This one’s going to be salty. I have worked with *many* product folks and I’ve met my fair share of fledgling entrepreneurs – from the “Would you like to develop my app” idea folks, to ones with serious execution chops. And I gotta say… it’s getting a bit much don’t you think?

When we were starting Tyk – our open source API Gateway – startup accelerators, entrepreneurship courses, and the wide unbundling of “making shit” weren’t really a thing. There was Y-Combinator, and maybe a handful of others in Europe like Seedcamp. That’s it.

Since then, “doing a startup” has turned into a multi-tiered, million-dollar industry of influencers, coaches, boot-camps, and courses that capture young talent, and propose to provide advice and “the right way to do things”. Don’t get me wrong, if you can get good advice when you start your project, it’s absolutely essential. However, just like being a writer, no amount of prep will really get you ready for a startup until you actually start one.

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