If you are reading this as a non-technical person, this article may prove to be a little overwhelming. Please read it anyway, discuss it with colleagues and friends who are technical, to see if it makes sense.
Please let us know if you have any queries too.
Our Web Data Platform is a content management system with substantial capabilities for dropping content and data into the website. Here is a realistic scenario, which we use on our websites;
The net result is a website which lowers the technical requirements needed to build a feature rich data website.
For specific functionality we either build it into our platform, or can work with third party developers to build these components for you.
We have a fixed price and implementation timeline which means you know what the costs will be - almost unprecedented in software implementation.
If you wish to have specific customisation or don't think our platform meets our needs, please talk to us and we can always discuss this.
Before delving into the different types of technology startups, the single and biggest challenge to any technology startup is the data. It is the data which is so valuable, and yet so hard to port to other platforms. The burn rate is the biggest threat to any startup. It is simply the amount of cash which gets spent without profit. Ensuring your data is easy to access and work with is a key principle of our platform. Most of our data doesn't reside in databases or NoSQL databases - despite us being experts in databases.
You may know that we use our web data platform to deliver websites for our own business models as a means to scale them out to separate commercial entities. This article uncovers our own experience of creating our own websites with a startup mentality and our experience around the startup scene. What is essential to see are the mistakes made by startups and the huge costs incurred whenever they use a significant amount of technology. We will use real numbers and real conversations but avoid disclosing sensitive information. We are launching two websites with different niches with our own web data platform, one cryptocurrency analysis, and another is a property data platform.
We will refer to any website and/or mobile app as a platform unless necessary to differentiate.
Most startups start by trying one or more of the following approaches;
Sweat and Lean are commonly known as boostrapping. Funded at initiation tends to be rarer, because investors look for evidence of traction or growth.
These are all based off interactions with startup cofounders and discussions with them. Naturally, we keep the specifics confidential. Remember, each approach can work in certain situations and be very successful. Our focus is on why the majority of startups fail whenever they choose a certain implementation strategy.
A sweat startup attempts to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) up quickly. "Fail fast, fail early". It sounds great. Build something basic, get interest, don't care if it fails, get investment, rebuild it, grow the business. We just think that the technology is always a bigger chunk of the pie than most entrepreneurs consider.
Sweat startups commit a number of errors;
Our observation is any sophisticated MVP platform will need replacing.
Typically, this involves finding a software house in another country cheaper than your own.
This seems fine. You get something which resembles the vision of your platform and yet, certain elements just don't work. An equal challenge, most decent software consultancies may not be able to salvage any of the development already paid for.
Funded startups have major advantages in that they have significant resources to devote to technology, and can pay top dollar. Funded startups often fail, for the following reasons;
One startup we spoke with, focused on reusing empty commercial space. They burned £2 million and it failed. Now, £2 million is not a huge allocation in larger enterprises, but it is a lot of money to not deliver a viable business.
Any non-technical cofounder, CEO, CMO, CCO will want to invest money into marketing and driving revenue. Technology should be as cheap as possible but let's talk numbers.
The deliverable will not be a data rich platform. If you are looking for an application in addition to a website, add on another $5-30k.
The above means you will have spent a huge amount of money, and potentially have to start all over again once you get investment.
Having attended pitches and interacted with many startups, our projected costs are something like the following;
The "elephant in the room" is that a startup may have to acquire at least £170k to have a starting base of technology. At that point, the venture is not viable because the capital should be focused more on marketing and brand awareness.
Rather than go through all this effort of trying to build an MVP, having to rewrite it once you get funding, spending most of your seed capital on rewriting the technology - not once, but twice! Why not have a platform that is; robust, flexible, data-centric, less technical, and with a known cost?
The most amazing thing about our technology approach, we are happy when customers decide to move to different technology. The data our customers platform contains is accessible, known to them, and we celebrate customers building applications off our own data formats.
Our solutions are low cost and the data is yours. You can plan to engage other providers to work with your data for your business.
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