This document discusses how to build and scale a technology company. It describes the different stages of a fast-growing startup, from the early stage focused on speed and product-market fit, to the scale stage requiring quality and exponential growth, to the late stage focused on business continuity and agility. It also discusses the key components of scalability, including the product/software, team, and infrastructure. The role of the CTO changes across these stages from technical lead to people manager to strategy and vision setter.

1. HOW TO BUILD AND SCALE A
TECHNOLOGY COMPANY
"We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Endeavor ScaleUp
March 12, 2019 Istanbul

2. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
@hakanerdogan
Predefined and Sequential Life:
Birth, School, University, Consultancy,
Corporate Career, ...
Life with Entrepreneurship:
Uncertain, ups and downs, stressfull,
enjoyable, passionate, roller-coaster ...
1981 2005 2007 2012 2014

3. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
A True Story

4. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."

5. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Tech Company
OPERATION TECHNOLOGY
SCOTTY

6. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Dependency Layer of a Tech Company
INFRASTRUCTURE
SALES MARKETING FINANCE OPERATIONS …
ARCHITECTURE
DOMAIN
PRODUCT / SOFTWARE
TECH STACK
BUSINESS
UNITS
VALUE
PROP.

7. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Dynamics of a Tech Company
40% +
ENGINEERING
EMPLOYEE
PRODUCT
DRIVEN
AGILE
MINDSET
ENGINEERING
CULTURE

8. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Technical Debt & Cost of Delay

9. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
CTO
Technical
Lead
People
Manager
Strategy
&
Vision
Setter

10. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
3 Stages of a Fast Growing Startup
Early Stage
- Employee Type: Warriors
- Main Concern: Speed
- Looking for: Product-market-fit
- CTO main role: Tech Lead
- Lack of A players
- Lack of brand awareness
Scale Stage
- Employee Type: Professionals
- Main Concern: Quality
- Looking for: Exponantial Growth
- CTO main role: People Manager
- Requires Scale Experience
Late Stage
- Employee Type: Stabilizers
- Main Concern: Business Continuity
- Looking for: Agility
- CTO main role: Strategy & Vision Setter
- Relation & Communication Management

11. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Velocity & Total Cost of Ownership

12. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Engineering
https://twitter.com/hakanerdogan/status/994817032087638017?s=21

13. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Scalability & Timing
https://twitter.com/hakanerdogan/status/963486496551571462

14. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
The Term
Scalability is the capability of a system, network,
or process to handle a growing amount of work,
or its potential to be enlarged to accommodate
that growth.
Bondi, André B. (2000). Characteristics of scalability and their impact on performance.
Proceedings of the second international workshop on Software and performance –
WOSP '00. p. 195. ISBN 158113195X. doi:10.1145/350391.350432
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability

15. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
What About Growth ?

16. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
What About Bottlenecks ?
?
Database
CPU
RAM
DISK
GPU
Virtual Servers …

17. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
What About Concerns ?
Caching Indexing (e.g. elastic search)
Locking (concurrency)
Tx management
SQL & performance optimization
Partitioning, sharding, replication
High availability
DR & active-active DCLogging & monitoring
Backup management
…

18. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Re-writing

19. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Vertical vs Horizontal Scaling
Vertical
Horizontal

20. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
3 Main Components of Scalability
PRODUCT /
SOFTWARE
TEAM
INFRASTRUCTURE

21. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Infrastructure

22. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Product / Software - SDLC & CI-CD Pipeline

23. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
The Team: Sharp Knives in the Kitchen
“If the knives in the kitchen are sharp, all kinds of food can
be done easily with enjoy”
Hakan ERDOĞAN J

24. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Tech Stack
Engineering
Culture
Hiring
HTC Framework
HTC
Framework

25. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."

26. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Hiring

27. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
https://twitter.com/hakanerdogan/status/829793382289510400
Hiring

28. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Over-Engineering ?

29. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."

30. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Culture
https://twitter.com/hakanerdogan/status/1001680311858712576

31. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Goal
No SILOs PAIR SWAT
TRANSPARENT TRUSTABLE
SELF
ORGANIZED
COMMITTED
FREEDOM
UNDER
RESPONSIBILITY
TIMEBOX
KAIZEN
INSPECT &
ADAPT
SYSTEMATIC

32. "We are motivated, disciplined, passionate crafters at Craftbase. We build the right things right."
Contact
@hakanerdogan
hakan@craftbase.io
/hakanerdogan
@craftbaseio
@ScottyTurkiye
https://craftbase.io
https://scotty.app
hakan@scotty.com.tr