"Don't add process until you feel the pain of not having it."
Excellent phrasing of what I've been preaching in our startup all along. We apply this to every angle of our business and I find this is very, very good advice for startups.
And it's not just for software development, either! Need an order processing system? No you don't — you can handle things manually at first, thus learning what you really need. Need a CMS? No you don't — the bugtracker you use for your software can probably help you enough in the beginning. Examples abound.
Follow this philosophy and you'll build a lean company. What's even better is that once you actually do add process (or buy external solutions, or hire additional people, etc), you'll know what you're doing, because you will have learned the real requirements.
I think the point is that it is risky to design before you fully understand the problem you're solving. From my interpretation of the slides, they are often working on tasks they have little experience with. Instead of spending time thinking about potential design issues (which may or may not exist), build something that works and the patterns which the feature requires will emerge, enabling an elegant design afterwards.
Suffering-oriented programming: A great mantra for startups. If you don't face the problem yourself, then there is no point in building software for it -- chances are no one else has it too.
Actually, that's not what he's talking about. He's saying that they only do something about lack of process or messy code or whatever when it starts to hurt them. It's strictly internal.
The money will be used to fund product development so we reach product/market fit. It will be used mostly for growing the team. Our burn rate is actually quite low right now since we generate significant revenues that support most of our infrastructure.
Which is why I like to be able to download a SlideShare item and then view the PPT as a pdf.
But this one DLs to an OmniOutliner doc ?!? Unfortunate. And author's site (nathanmarz.com) does not even mention this presentation. Can you help us out Nathan?
Great set of slides, thanks for posting this.