From Big Companies to Early Stage Startups
My career was not a "standard" one in the Israeli tech arena today. I started my career in big companies, the IDF and Intel and progressively moved towards smaller and smaller startups.
My last formal role as a hired VP R&D, was at Statement, a small, post-seed fintech startup. I started there as an advisor to the CTO/Co-Founder and then took the role of a fractional VP R&D.
When I started that role, it was clear to me that I might not be the right fit. I had no prior experience leading an R&D organization in a young, post-seed startup, and this was the smallest organization I had managed in my career.
All the industry myths about what is and isn't correct for early-stage development management were running through my head, but thankfully, most of them did not stand the test of reality.
Insights and Lessons Learned
Here are a few insights that might seem trivial, but their impact surprised even me:
It's not the Quantity - It's the Quality
When I started the role, there were more developers in the organization than when I finished, yet the delivery pace increased.
We had a team of developers in Europe, intended to add resources, while saving costs. In reality, I realized this was a high management overhead that slowed us down. Ultimately, we replaced the entire team with one strong developer in Israel.
Another example was the use of a single but very strong DevOps developer from Tikal who brilliantly developed and maintained all of our infrastructure.
Managing a small, high-quality, and well-synchronized team was more efficient, faster, and resulted in much higher quality deliverables. In hindsight, this was one of the most significant decisions we made.
Invest in Infrastructure and Processes - Even at an Early Stage
One of the common industry myths is: "Move fast and break things." I don't entirely subscribe to this, and at Statement, we proved it's possible to do things differently:
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We invested in solid cloud infrastructure (including handling scale and reliability)
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We implemented organized development and testing processes
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We significantly improved security infrastructure
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We even streamlined production management and customer support processes.
All of this not only enhanced the quality of our deliverables and service but also allowed us to move faster and make far fewer mistakes. And this was at a time when AI agents were just starting to emerge - today it would have been a no-brainer.
In today's climate, customers expect high-quality products and service from day one and have no patience for growing pains. The good news is that development organizations have plenty of tools to do this well right from the start (from open-source tools to managed cloud infrastructures and AI engines).
My advice: Don't let yourselves off the hook.
Organizational Culture is the Key to Everything
I know this is a bit of a cliché, but it’s also perhaps the hardest goal to achieve. This holds true at any size, but in smaller organizations, it’s highly palpable:
It takes just a few people who are not a good cultural fit, or who cause arguments and lack of synchronization. The friction becomes highly noticeable.
It's not always easy to identify, and even harder to address, especially because everyone is interconnected in the early stages, but a healthy culture doesn't build itself, and it is critical to address it decisively and continuously.
The Bottom line
Moving fast in an early stage startup doesn’t necessarily mean being chaotic and shipping bad quality products and services. In this day and age, startups should up their game and put basic infrastructure, processes and structure in place to make sure that their scaling efforts don’t break what they already built. This is crucial for healthy growth, especially in the AI era.