Software Product Development

Software Product Development

Tarun Upadhyay   //  Tarun is still just flatly amazed by the power of the Internet, its ability to level the field and help the little guy compete with the biggest organizations.

Those little guy success stories are what drags him to work every morning and he lives a small part of that little guy's dream working for hCentive.

Prior to co-founding hCentive, Tarun served as a co-founder and CTO for GlobalLogic - an outsourcing service provider for large, complex products and software - which grew from 0 to 400 engineers while he was the CTO.

Prior to Globallogic, he was co-founder and CTO of Pinelabs - an India-based provider of Loyalty and Payment solutions using Smart Cards. While Tarun was CTO, Pinelabs grew from a drawing board idea to a suite of successful products running at many fortune 500 companies handling millions of credit card transactions per day.

Tarun holds an M.S in Mathematics and Computer Applications from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India.

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Nov 18 / 5:10pm

when good people resign (to join you)

by tarun upadhyay
What should you do after you make an offer to hire an A+ player from a big company for your small startup? Mark Suster - as part of his startup series - talks about how bigger companies roll out the red carpet when a good employee resign to keep him/her from leaving. This is an all too familiar phenomenon. Companies do not do enough for their A-players (due to the fear of antagonizing others - most likely, B-players) till the person resigns and then suddenly everybody from CEO down wants to meet in person and convince him/her to stay promising big raises and perks. At hCentive - my current startup - we have seen it from the other side of the table. When we make an offer to an excellent engineering or business person from a bigger organization - they are usually given royal treatment from their current company as soon as they tell them about it. Meetings with CEOs are arranged, salaries are raised and sometimes offers to fire their immediate boss are given in hushed voices. What should be your role as a small entrepreneur who has been able to attract this hotshot engineer or business guy but now his current company is making him an offer he cannot refuse? Here is my list of things we all should be aware of:
  1. It ain't over, till its over. The selling does not stop just because somebody has accepted the offer. Be prepared for the fact that if he is any good, his current organization will try to do everything they can to win him back. You have to continue to woo him and keep the selling hat on - at least till he officially starts working for you (and may be a little later). Peter Harrison - CEO of my last startup - knew this game very well. He would invite potential hires to our office and his home continuously - making sure they are engaged and excited about their work, their boss and the team. He would continue to be close to them (directly and thru common friends) trying to see if there is anything at all that can derail the deal.
  2. Negotiate a win-win deal. This is a lesson I learnt the hard way. Just because somebody is excited to join you is not a good reason to offer him less than what he or she is worth. It is true that you are a small startup and you should be careful about where you spend the money. However, the best way to spend money in a startup is to spend it on your A++ players. Offer them good money - always more than they are making now (or at least a time-bound promise of reaching that level). People get used to the money they are making and adjust their living standards to it. It is very hard for them to cut back even when they are excited about their work. They might say they can live on less but as time passes and when a sweet counter offer comes in (and, trust me, it will come in), that excitement may not be enough for them to stop from reconsidering. You got to pre-empt that. Yes, I know, YOU are willing to live on Ramen noodles and on cheapest health insurance for your dreams. But, there is a reason why you are an entrepreneur and the person you are hiring is a salaried employee.
To be fair, I think most hires will have a lot more maturity and will not consider going back regardless of the sweetness of the counter-offer. Afterall, the love is already lost and they will be forever tainted and remembered as someone who was willing to leave, but could be bribed to come back. But, this is something you do not want to bet upon. Bottomline: it never hurts to be too careful and offering a little extra when hiring the people you know will make a difference to your company.
Filed under  //  Building Great Teams   Building Software   hiring   startup   Startup & Entrepreneurship  

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Nov 17 / 11:00pm

2 things every good startup needs

by tarun upadhyay
Robert Scoble has a great article today on his take on mistakes startups make. You really should read his whole article but two things stand out for me.
  • FOCUS ON USP: You should be able to say in one tweet why anyone should buy your product
  • SMART AND GET THINGS DONE: You company is full of smart people but you know when to say "no" to them.
The first is strategic and the second is tactical. Strategically, you need a razor-sharp focus on why you are different and you should be spending enough time thinking about why anybody will buy your product. Then, you should be able to express that differentiation in one sentence. (Robert gives the example of Prius: "It gets better mileage than your car") Tactically, we all know the importance of hiring smart team (Joel Spolsky even wrote a book about it). Its getting-things-done part that gets sidelined. One needs to be careful about over-engineering any part of the organization. Over-engineering not just happens in engineering but can happen anywhere where very smart people exist. In my last company, we had a manager incentive plan so complex, that, famously, only two people in the entire organization understood it when it came out !! (those were the two people who designed it) The reason plan was so complex was not because creators of the plan were evil or stupid but exactly the reverse. They wanted to be fair to everyone in every situation and they were some of the smartest people I have known in my life. However, the end goal was lost. An incentive plan is no good if you cannot even understand how you are being incentivized !! At my current company - hCentive - we constantly worry about if there is anything at all on our web application that is extraneous. Something that will get in the way of a visitor's experience of buying a health insurance plan - the tool time - needs to be removed. Avinash - our UX designer - constantly comes up with yet another feature that we can add and I have to say no to many of his beautiful mockups. Not because they are bad ideas but because we want to leave it simple and truly make hCentive the easiest way to buy health insurance. Scoble gives the example of Evan Williams (founder of Blogger and Twitter) here who prides himself on NOT doing things. To summarize, if you know your goal (why customer will buy your product) and you have hired a smart team - the job of an entrepreneur is limited to just two things: saying no and moving the furniture out of the way.
Filed under  //  Building Great Teams   Building Software   execution   hiring   startup   Startup & Entrepreneurship   strategy  

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