Helping startup founders make the right tech decisions.

1. 360° TECH CONSULTING!
HELPING STARTUP FOUNDERS MAKE THE RIGHT TECH DECISIONS

2. Where it Begins
Many business ideas of today constitute of elements from different areas of expertise. Food
production may depend on transportation, transportation may depend on route planning,
route planning may depend on weather services and real-time traffic information. Each of
these links comes with its own tricks of the trade. Fail in one element, and the business fails
as a whole - either by not providing its services, or by not fitting within price range expected
by the market. Hit all the elements right, and business will grow and prosper.
And each of the links in the business chain depends on ultimate component - software. Not
on people, not on luck, but on machines and programs that run them.
Great Expectations...
Some parts of the future business can be - and should be - offloaded to specialized service
providers. But still the core of the business remains, and that is where startups expect to
beat the competition.
It is not only the idea that makes the difference. Startups are often aware that they must be
backed by a tailored software solution. This software solution is meant to make life easier
and to provide many vital services to the business:
• Help acquire new end users from the Internet, social networks, etc.
• Provide e-commerce services
• Cut production costs by letting the leadership organize processes
• Back business decisions by providing reports
• Cut intelligence costs by consuming commercial data services
None of these goals can be achieved without a proper software. Depending on particular
business needs, some of the goals are more valuable than others. Some companies grossly
depend on online customers. Others may depend on business intelligence and ability to
seize sudden opportunities. Yet another business may be operating in a tiny margin trade,
which vitally depends on massive electronic services. The best software solution is the one
that seamlessly incorporates into the particular business so that desired goals can be
performed.
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3. ... and Common Pitfalls
The most common mistake that startups make is to underestimate the software part of the
business. Pilot projects are very often treated as an unpleasant necessity, rather than a
valuable company's asset.
There are several mantras that recur among the startup owners:
• Just make it work
• We'll write it all over properly when we grab the market
• We don't have budget
These same ideas could be applied to any part of the business, but anyway, they are
specifically reserved for software. Reason for this misunderstanding is that many startups
consider software a kind of a magic, which can easily be stripped down and replaced with an
update that solves all the problems. But it is not like that.
Here is one indicative quote from Robert C. Martin, one of the most influential software
practitioners:
"I know of one company that, in the late 80s, wrote a killer app. It was very popular, and
lots of professionals bought and used it. But then the release cycles began to stretch.
Bugs were not repaired from one release to the next. Load times grew and crashes
increased. I remember the day I shut the product down in frustration and never used it
again. The company went out of business a short time after that.
Two decades later I met one of the early employees of that company and asked him
what had happened. The answer confirmed my fears. They had rushed the product to
market and had made a huge mess in the code. As they added more and more
features, the code got worse and worse until they simply could not manage it any
longer. It was the bad code that brought the company down.”
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4. Startups often discover problems with their software too late. The quote above tells a story
of a typical software solution that grabbed the market and started bringing revenues. But
with revenues, there comes the never ending stream of requests for new features. If software
solution was not properly built the first time, there will be no way to fix it later.
In many cases the idea of building the whole solution from scratch later is part of the picture.
But existing software is changing rapidly and company must assemble the second team to
write everything once again - this time right. But the new team is already months late. Even
worse, as new features are added to the production software, same new features must be
added simultaneously to the parallel track. That makes it near to impossible for the second
team to ever catch up with the first one. The whole process leads to an ill situation, very
common in practice, in which company runs on two tracks and both are failing.
There is no nice way to say this: Badly conceived software brings the operation down.
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…the same way as a cart in front of a horse won’t take you anywhere.

5. A Helping Hand
We are in the software industry for many years. We have seen projects that flourish and
projects that fade. We can provide technical guidance so that business owners can make
informed decisions before starting the company and when product hits the market.
We recognize that there are no ready-made solutions because there are no ready-made
businesses. Every trade has its own ups and downs and we are there to help choose the
best development strategy in the field of technology.
We are there to help startups avoid monkey-see-monkey-do mentality, which we recognize
all too often. It is impossible for a company to just copy from competition because if it does
that, the result can only be to become almost as good as the competition. Instead, business
wants to beat the competition with its innovative ideas and solutions to problems. We can
help decision makers discover the best fit software solution that can drive an idea to the
market.
We are there to help decision makers avoid following technology trends without knowing the
consequences. We want our partners to understand what value different technologies can
offer to a particular business.
We do not push the decisions, but rather provide the information and explanations. It is
always on the business owners to decide. Our greatest achievement is when we help owners
understand why their decisions are the right ones.
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6. InterVenture Switzerland
InterVenture Nearshoring GmbH
Luegislandstrasse 105"
8051 Zurich - Switzerland
Tel. +41 43 299 69 70
InterVenture Serbia
InterVenture d.o.o.
Kneza Danila 56"
11000 Belgrade - Serbia
Tel. +381 11 240 58 54
info@interventure.info
www.interventure.info
In partnership with
Marko Djuric
Managing Partner
Tel. +381 62 16 069 16
marko.djuric@interventure.info
Dejan Dojcinovic
Managing Partner
Tel. +41 78 665 19 81
dejan.dojcinovic@interventure.info
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