Advice from PushStart Mentor Session
On Tuesday I took part in the PushStart Mentor session (as an entrepreneur asking for advice). Here’s the advice I received (with a lot of paraphrasing):
Dave Cunningham:
When expanding internationally, you have to hire the local sales people. If you’re going to expand into China, you need to live in China.
Alex North:
To motivate your developers, you need to put them on a pedestal. Your job is to give them everything they need (in reason) to get their job done. The employees that are getting in early and leaving late are the future of your company.
Marc Lehmann:
Only give equity away to the true believers in your company. Don’t give shares away give options (due to Australian Tax laws there is a fairly hefty Tax burden if you do it that way).
Doing development in India is quite effective. You need to hire your own team in India, and that means having leadership over there (even if you have to tag team with your co-founders. An 80-120K dev in India costs 20K in India. You have got to make them feel part of the company. This includes using the same development methodologies across borders, with code reviews conducted in Australia. Marc reckons that it takes a highly trained Australian dev 2 hours to code review.
You will have to let a lot of Indians go, (labour laws are different over there, so you can churn through them till you have the right fit).
Nick Holmes a Court:
You have to be in San Francisco.
