Hear ye, Hear ye!

You’ve heard it ad nauseum for the past decade:

It’s an amazing time for the Internet entrepreneur, for the startup business executive.  User expectations for the quality, sophistication, performance, usability, and ubiquity of dynamic web and mobile products are growing. And every day, the barrier to entry for building and launching online applications is shrinking.

Yup, it’s the startup ecosystem’s permanent ambition mantra.

But let’s be honest

The amount of stuff going on under the hood to build and grow a modern web business is bound to make even the most intelligent minds spin in an uncertain whirlpool of acronyms, diagrams, vendors, and geek-speak. (Hint: even trained professional developers feel this way, we just won’t admit it.)

Advising dozens of early-stage companies, and interacting with hundreds more, I’ve seen a common pattern emerge. Once upon a time, starting a company that built highly technical products was the vaunted domain of the computer science elite. But today, we’re hard-pressed to find a new company that doesn’t have to build at least an interactive web site to complement their product, and for more and more companies, that web site (or mobile app) is their product. This new reality has spawned thousands of ambitious founders who are jumping head-first into murky waters. They know it’s possible to hire and grow an A-class technical organization, to build a lasting technical platform, but the right path is less than crystal clear.

If you’re starting a business, it’s likely you either hire and run your own engineering organization, or have a critical partnership with an outsourced software development firm. The evolution of your products and revenue are at the mercy of your technical team’s ability to build and deliver. You are selling and marketing technical solutions to your customers. And you’re dependent on technical integrations with your partners, social media sites, and vendors to leverage pre-built software, share data, and consume web services.

Build with confidence

ClearlyTech.com exists to demystify the otherwise intimidating technology and development that powers your business. Building web-based technology is no longer a wild-wild-west reserved for academics, comp-sci PhDs, or hackers. Best-practices and incredible tools have emerged. Coupling smart choice of technologies with a basic understanding of how all the pieces fit together, any intelligent and ambitious entrepreneur should feel excited to tackle new product challenges.

Your feedback is critical in this process, so reach out! What irks you? What hotspots are the most confusing? What do you get conflicting advice on? What do you secretly think everyone knows except you? Let’s create a dialog, let’s bust open some myths, let’s embarrass some technology “know-it-alls” who would rather pretend it’s all really complicated so they look like kings. We don’t even have to take ourselves too seriously here. Learning, growing a great business, and having fun are definitely not mutually exclusive.

You deserve to Build with Confidence.