How do technical leaders transform themselves as they advance in entrepreneurship?

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When a product is created from scratch, the role of technical personnel needs to be integrated into every stage of the business. Any product demand, operation strategy, and even the judgment of promotion effect all involve technical implementation. At the same time, as the company continues to grow, the number of product functions, departments, and personnel increases, coordination, communication, and management will be involved. This requires the technical person in charge to not only be good at technology, but also learn and improve in management.

What should the technical person in charge do during the entrepreneurial process:

Product 0 to 1

In the 0 to 1 stage, there is only an idea, no users, no large amounts of data, and only a knowledge of the problem to be solved. Then, based on this problem and the effect that technology can achieve, a solution is thought of, and the product is designed based on this solution. At this time, the company has few employees, and the functional definition of product and technology is often not clear enough. Everyone thinks together and discusses how the product should be designed. When the design is completed, the engineers start coding to implement it. At this time, the technical director can also rush to the front line and fight with everyone.

Suggestion: In the early stage, startups cannot be like big companies. A new product must go through N rounds of verification to be perfect, or every detail must be thought out clearly before it can be started. Big companies have the manpower and time to do this, but startups require speed, and need to launch and verify quickly. Once a direction is determined, it is necessary to invest all in it. In the early stage, it is "all in" and energy cannot be dispersed.

Experience: The technical leader needs to be at the forefront at this stage and lead everyone forward.

Li Zi: In order to solve the strong demand of users who "can't do homework", the first solution that Afanti thought of was "take a photo to search for questions". Logically, there are only two results: there is an answer and there is no answer. The technical implementation of "take a photo to search for questions" involves the development of technologies such as photography, recognition, and retrieval. The technical person in charge needs to be comprehensive, have an in-depth understanding of each area, and lead the team in development.

Products 1 – 10

When a product is first launched, it is in a state where basic functions are available, and may face problems such as immature technology and poor user experience. At this stage, products and technologies must be iterated quickly to continuously improve user experience. Every week, users must feel that core functions have improved. At the same time, we must find ways to "compensate" for technical problems that cannot be solved quickly in terms of product functions. This requires continuous improvement of technical indicators related to each core functional module. At this stage, each direction can be managed by a dedicated person, rather than the technical person in charge.

Suggestion: For functions that cannot be implemented in one go technically, other functions should be used to make up for them in product design. Especially for products with technical barriers, the user experience of core functions can be improved through close cooperation and communication between products and technology. In addition, product usage data can only determine the user demand for existing functions and exclude functions that users do not need, but data cannot define what new functions users really want. New functions can only be determined through user demand research.

Therefore, don’t be too superstitious about data in the early stages. Instead, you should verify with data when there are already many functions or the core functions of the product have been completed, or when there are uncertainties in the design of multiple new functions.

Experience: The technical director needs to find and train people in charge of various areas during this stage, and communicate with the product team to ensure the core functions are implemented well.

Li Zi: Baidu only had a search box at first, and QQ only had a chat function. Afanti also only had the "search question" function at the beginning, and conducted research based on this function. On the technical level, we continue to improve the recognition rate and accuracy, and launch the "answer square" and "go away" functions based on user research. But how to do the "answer square" specifically? This requires continuous communication with the product about the usage process and user needs, and then determine the comparison of data through the sorting algorithm, and finally determine the current functions of the answer square and go away.

At the same time, when our users exceeded 10 million, how to stimulate user interaction became a new bottleneck. By investigating relevant products and user behavior data to monitor the frequency and duration of use of each function, we can infer the correctness of our product logic and operation strategy.

Product 10 and later

When the product has relatively rich functions, it is necessary to make a judgment on new needs and already developed functions. There are also other needs, such as how to improve user retention and increase user interaction within the product. Data will play a very important role at this stage. When the number of users is small, the data does not have much meaning; but when the number of users increases, the data will become very convincing. At this stage, technology, products, and operations will all affect the user experience.

If the first two stages are the stages of solving the initial core functions, that is, meeting the core needs of users at the beginning of the business. At this stage, some other functions are needed to assist the product, or to discover some new functions. At the same time, there will be multi-task parallel development in this stage, involving project management. First, the company is becoming more and more sound, and technology must communicate and collaborate with products, operations, and markets in multiple directions; secondly, the product architecture and core modules have been perfected to a certain extent. At this time, it is necessary to jump out of the transaction level and consider how to break through barriers strategically, and to define the culture and functions of a technical team, and to distribute aggregation.

Suggestions: Rapidly iterate products, implement technology at a fast pace, continuously collect user usage data, and determine which product functions are redundant and which functions need to be reinvested. Form a user data argument, and then get the right answer from multiple solutions.

Experience: At this stage, the technical leader needs to coordinate and communicate with other departments, determine the priority of each project, and institutionalize various technical specifications to smooth the operation of the entire team and even the company.

The following is my experience in team management:

1. Recruiting reliable people is always a problem for Internet startups

There are two ways you can try. One is recommendation by acquaintances. Everyone is familiar with each other, and the recommended person is also known to the other party. Therefore, you should make good use of this second-degree personal connection. The other is to train interns with good foundation and let them grow quickly. What kind of person is most suitable for the entrepreneurial process? There is a Ph.D. in chemistry, not a computer major. He wrote some scattered codes when he was in school, but he has a strong ability to learn and understand. By working on projects with everyone, he has accumulated solid programming skills and cultivated project planning and management experience. He can independently be responsible for the development of Android projects.

2. Fully trust and delegate power

As a technical director, it is impossible to do everything by yourself. Entrepreneurship is a team activity, so you need to find the right person, assign all relevant tasks to him, and give him full trust and empowerment.

3. Cater to the preferences of post-90s and create a working environment suitable for the technical team.

People born in the 1990s pursue individuality and like to express their opinions, so we have established an equal and democratic communication mechanism to give them the opportunity to express their ideas and participate in many company decisions.

4. Either be good or go

"Either be great or leave" is the slogan of our team, and it also reflects the values ​​of our technical team. Everyone here is not just idling around. We allow employees to have an integration process when they first come or change to a new project, and we also allow everyone to make mistakes, but later we need to do a certain direction well and do it well, which means that the team must have the ability to learn, make continuous progress, and become great people in this direction.