Scaling from new start to enterprise platform
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Ali Khajeh-Hosseini gave a talk about scaling a startup from 2 people to 150 people. Some of the key lessons included keeping processes and tools simple when small, hiring selectively, focusing on the product and users, empowering employees, and investing in things like automation, design, and open source as the company grows. The talk covered topics like business planning, acquisitions, roles changing as more people are added, and maintaining culture as the company scales significantly in size.
Scaling from new start to enterprise platform
- 1. Scaling from new start to enterprise platform Ali Khajeh-Hosseini @AliKhajeh Oct 2014, Product Tank Edinburgh ® ®
- 2. I’m here to talk about… a few things I learned going from a 2-person startup to working in a 150-person startup
- 3. What’s a startup? A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Steve Blank
- 5. What do we do? We let you deploy your software on whatever cloud you want, then give you tools to manage, monitor and scale it. Our products: Cloud Management, Self-Service, Cloud Analytics
- 7. Forecast costs based on switching clouds or increased growth
- 8. Who buys our products? Enterprises like Sony, EA Games, PBS, Pearson Publishing, Zynga…
- 9. Our story so far… Jan 2009: Started researching cloud cost forecasting in St Andrews Dec ‘11: With Hassan, we launched PlanForCloud Jul ‘12: Acquired by RightScale Nov ‘13: Launched Private-Beta of Cloud Analytics Mar ‘14: Cloud Analytics goes into Public-Beta Oct ‘14: Cloud Analytics is Generally Available
- 10. Academic origins Khajeh-Hosseini A, Greenwood D, Smith J W, Sommerville I. 2012. The Cloud Adoption Toolkit: Supporting Cloud Adoption Decisions in the Enterprise. Software: Practice and Experience Khajeh-Hosseini A, Sommerville I, Bogaerts J, Teregowda P. 2011. Decision Support Tools for Cloud Migration in the Enterprise. IEEE 4th Int. Conf. on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2011) Khajeh-Hosseini A, Greenwood D, Sommerville I. 2010. Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an Enterprise IT System to IaaS. IEEE 3rd Int. Conf. on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2010) Khajeh-Hosseini A, Sommerville I, Sriram I. 2010. Research Challenges for Enterprise Cloud Computing. LSCITS Technical Report Sriram I, Khajeh-Hosseini A. 2010. Research Agenda in Cloud Technologies. LSCITS Technical Report Smith J W, Khajeh-Hosseini A, Ward J S, Sommerville I. 2012. CloudMonitor: Profiling Power Usage. IEEE 5th Int. Conf. on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2012) Rooksby J, Khajeh-Hosseini A. 2012. Diagnostic Work in Cloud Computing. ACM Conf. on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2012)
- 11. Usability of research tools 1. Install… Eclipse 3.5 Modelling bundle, Python 2.6, PyDev, Libxml2-python-2.7.4, Libxslt-1.1.26, matplotlib-0.99.1, networkx-1.0.1, numpy-1.3.0-superpack, cost modelling tool. 2. Spend 5mins configuring Eclipse… From the Eclipse Pydev Package Explorer, right click on companyX > New > Other > UML 2.1 Diagrams > Deployment Diagram. Each deployment diagram will have two files: a .uml file that contains the model, and a .umldepl file that contains presentation information. Open the model’s .umldepl file using Eclipse’s Deployment Diagram Editor, right click on the screen anywhere on the model and select Load resource > Browse workspace > then open the profile/Deployment.umlprofile file. Right click on the Palette window in Eclipse…
- 13. Academia to startup Ditched all the prototypes Started a new Rails app Simplified it a lot
- 14. Business plan The YCombinator application form is a good way to think about your startup https://apply.ycombinator.com
- 15. The acquisition We predicted it in our YC application form by listing 5 companies that might acquire us early Why did we go ahead with it? 1. The potential of what we could do together with RightScale was much bigger than what we could do our-self 2. There was a great product fit between PlanForCloud and RightScale 3. There was a lot of trust between the two companies
- 16. Starting up We both did a bit of everything, one focused on building it, one focused on getting users.
- 17. 2 people Use money to buy time so you can focus on users & the product Tools: GitHub, Heroku, MonsterTemplates, 99designs
- 18. Keep it simple Google docs does the job
- 19. Growing to 4 people Look for people who complement your skill-sets, not someone like you! full-stack eng + designer. It’s difficult to hire first few people. Go to every meetup/conference with your company tshirt, give talks, write blogs etc.
- 20. You might find 10 people that say they’ll apply but only 4 will, and there “won’t be a match” for 3…
- 21. Be super-selective Do technical interviews (i.e. coding or a task) and non-technical interviews. You’re building the core team so look for experience, passion and quick learners.
- 22. If it doesn’t work out, act quickly as an empty seat is better than a seat filled with the wrong person.
- 23. Our roles changed slightly I spent more time on pairing, reviewing stuff, and hiring. Hassan spent more time with users and thinking ahead. New tools: whiteboard, web-based scrum tool
- 24. 6 people Our role changed from describing what we should do next to explaining the problem and setting the context and letting the team come-up with solutions
- 25. Focus on keeping it fun, spend money on food, events, office toys. New tools: started using wiki, continuous integration
- 26. 10 people Two teams with overlaps, but different focuses Product-to-production workflow Weekly backlog grooming meetings Weekly front/back-end meetings Product roadmap meetings Team retrospectives TechTalks End of sprint demos A lot of new tools
- 27. Our roadmap Roadmap vision features: features that we’re looking at building, but have not yet been designed in a wiki. Product iTimes: features that have been worked on by anyone during their Friday afternoon iTime projects. In Design: features that have been designed in the wiki, but have not yet been implemented. In Development: features that are currently in development or are being tested, and will be released soon. Live for RightScale employees: feature is visible to employees. Live for private-beta users: features is visible for private-beta or selected users. Live for all users: shipped!
- 28. Cool stuff coming out of iTime
- 29. We build prototypes and let users try them using their live data!
- 30. 150 people ~100 people in engineering & product ~50 people in sales, marketing, services, finance PMs spend a lot of time communicating with Sales & Marketing Setup of teams is reflected in our products PMs & architects are key to integration across products
- 31. What’s important? Give people freedom to experiment, Friday afternoon is iTime Strive for transparency, and trust people to execute Communicate the context; give people problems to solve, not solutions to implement Manage your managers Empower people to change things
- 32. Lead the way
- 33. Edinburgh, Santa Barbara and remote…
- 34. RightScale Employee Meetup (a week of fun in California)
- 36. Dev tools Invest in good tools
- 37. Invest in design
- 38. Invest in open source eng.rightscale.com
- 39. Invest in automation Meet Leeroy: our bot
- 40. Our quotes page
- 41. Remember that as you scale…
- 42. Some articles that have influenced my thinking Inspired: how to create products customers love: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inspired-Create-Products-Customers-Love/dp/0981690408 Engineering Management: http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management.html The Leadership Challenge: http://www.leaderpresence.com/resources/The%20Leadership%20Challenge.pdf Netflix Culture: http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 How Google Works: http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Google-Works-Eric-Schmidt/dp/1455582344