The Series A inflection point is the most fun* time in a startup, if you ask me. Here's what it looks like.
*fun means that it's stressful and there's lots to do, but it feels rewarding. Everywhere you look code feels broken, something's always on fire, and everything you do brings tangible results.
This need not be associated with a funding round, if you're profitable. It's more about hitting the S-curve where grow-by-hustle and early adopter pull stop working. You are crossing the first chasm.
Big chasm to the right is around Series B or C.
The business side
On the business side the Series A inflection point is driven by having verified that your core thing works and you have strong product-market-fit. Now it's time to figure out scalable distribution – repeatable playbooks, profitable, strong return-on-ad-spend, money machine go brrr.
You're building the money machine.
The engineering side
On the engineering side the inflection point is about transitioning from programming to software engineering.
You have a product that works and may be breaking under strain. Could be that it's falling apart for technical scalability reasons (performance etc), or social scalability reasons (team grows and no one person knows the whole codebase anymore).
The toughest transition for every engineer is when they learn to work with a team and accept that they’ll never know the full codebase https://t.co/MyfclmgMyi
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) September 1, 2024
Usually it's a combination of both with social factors hitting first because computers are fast now.
This is when you start having enough existing users paying you hard money that you have to start caring about reliability. You're also growing to a point where 1-in-1000 bugs start happening daily.
All this forces you to grow up as an engineering org or you'll have so much churn that marketing/sales feels like they're dumping users into a leaky bucket rather than growing the business.
A caveat
A common failure mode, though, is to get too spooked by growing up. People become too concerned with quality and stop innovating or moving fast.
You want things to feel a little broken and like you're barely holding on for dear life as the business rockets away. It's too early to slow down.
Cheers,
~Swizec
Continue reading about The Series A inflection point
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- When to join and leave a company, project, or trend
- When to stay at a company
- Can I get your opinion
- Let small fires burn
- Notes for my Scaling Fast talk next week
Learned something new?
Read more Software Engineering Lessons from Production
I write articles with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them. Fueled by lessons learned over 20 years of building production code for side-projects, small businesses, and hyper growth startups. Both successful and not.
Subscribe below 👇
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️