5 Signs You Need a Technical Advisor (And Don't Know It)
At some point, almost every founder hits the same wall. The business is solid. Growth is real. Then someone says “software” and you’re lost.
Software vendors are incentivized to make it sound easy and founders have no good way to determine who is telling the truth. Here are five scenarios where a founder might benefit from a technical advisory:
1. You have a software idea but no idea how to vet a developer or agency – You don’t know if a $50k quote is reasonable or robbery. You don’t know what questions to ask. So, you either stall or take a gamble.
2. You hired someone and it went sideways (stalled, over budget, or unusable) – You went into a build and it’s not turning out how you expected. You’re at odds with your dev team and aren’t sure how to get back on track.
3. Your team is buried in manual work that software should be handling – Growth is capped by a process bottleneck. Your team is at capacity and output is limited. Your processes are error prone. The hard part isn’t knowing you need to fix it. It’s knowing whether to buy a tool, connect what you have, or build something custom.
4. An investor or acquirer asked technical questions you couldn’t answer – An investor asked how your system scales. An acquirer asked about your technical debt. You gave your best answer but weren’t sure where it landed and you had no one to check with afterward.
5. You’re making tech decisions based on whoever talked to you last – The last vendor you spoke to made a compelling case. But the one before that also made a strong argument for their product. Now you’ve made several decisions, and you aren’t sure about any of them.
You don’t need to become an expert in this field to make progress. Just like hiring a CFO before becoming an accountant, you need a technical partner to help you navigate these unfamiliar decisions. The goal isn’t to make you technical. The goal is to make sure you stop making expensive guesses alone.
If any of these scenarios resonate with you then the next best step is to schedule a free 45-minute conversation. No pitch! Just an honest look at where you are and what’s in the way.
