Longreads from the Rocketship

The narrative in tech often centers around visionary founders with coding prowess, engineering backgrounds, and technical expertise. But technical proficiency isn’t the sole gateway to launching a successful tech venture. Some of the world’s most innovative tech brands were founded by non-technical entrepreneurs. 

As a non-tech founder, though, the path to startup success can be a lot more daunting. From dealing with unfamiliar tech jargon to technical complexities, you’ll often find yourself navigating uncharted territory, facing a steep learning curve as you strive to translate your vision into a viable product or service.

In this blog, we offer 4 crucial tips for founding a tech startup from a non-technical perspective. We'll explore strategies for idea validation, assembling the right team, securing funding, and navigating the ever-evolving landscape of technology and entrepreneurship.

For many years Nginx has been a default solution to serve as a reverse proxy for Rails applications. However, with the release of Kamal, the Rails community opened Traefik as a new reverse proxy solution. Within my 15 years of experience with Rails, I created an almost perfect configuration for Nginx that migrated through all my projects. With Traefik, I had to start from scratch.

The average large software project goes 66% over budget. This often happens not because of paying too much, but rather, by trying to pay too little.

If you go too cheap, you will often wind up paying twice: once to build the project, and again to fix it.

The best way to avoid this problem is to adopt the right mindset. Custom software is usually something you want to prioritize quality for. It is, after all, usually intended to be an asset. It will provide value to your business for a long time.

You might be surprised by the number – and caliber – of businesses that outsource software development. Google, Alibaba, Slack, and Github are all high-profile examples of companies that have used an outsourcing software development agency, dispelling myths that only small businesses outsource. 

The decision to outsource software development is driven by a number of factors, including cost efficiency, access to specialized talent, accelerated time-to-market, and scalability. However, while outsourcing can offer numerous benefits, it also presents its own set of challenges and considerations. 

Right after my first try of Kamal (MRSK) in the spring of 2023, I understood that an ideal use case would be running it as a GitHub Action. Almost a year passed, and my 30-line action has grown and become full-featured, configurable, and reusable. In this post, I will share the evolution of the action and the lessons learned.