In the first stage, ideating. The goal is to build a prototype as soon as possible. Once you've got product market fit, what happens? This is the point where you could actually then put on your big engineering plans and figure out pieces of the tech that need to be built to scale. And here you're probably going to evolve from leaning a small team of engineers to hiring. At this point, your role really changes because you'll start having communication overhead.
YC Group Partner Diana Hu was the CTO of her YC startup Escher Reality, which was acquired by Niantic (makers of Pokemon Go). She shares her advice for being a technical founder at the earliest stages - including topics like how to ship an MVP fast, how to deal with technology choices and technical debt, and how and when to hire an engineering team.
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