How do you find the right tech partner? 🤝🏽

Atom CTO May newsletter

Welcome to the latest Atom CTO newsletter where we share tech news and stories for founders and entrepreneurs who are starting and scaling businesses.

Editor’s Note

We have a big announcement! We are partnering with Siya Tech Ventures to provide a “Tech Co-Founder” service to entrepreneurs and start-up founders.

What does this mean you say? Well, we will be combining the decades of experience we have in developing tech strategies and designing complex systems with the decade of experience that Siya Tech has in building and delivering complex systems.

For the founder / entrepreneur, we will be able to guide you through the process of building your app or digital product and we will work alongside a company we trust and knows has a track record of delivering great software and most importantly has a history of successful exits under it’s belt.

So the question you are asking yourself now is whether this is all clickbait….

….is the title of this newsletter leading you to a promo where I tell you about how wonderful we all are and why you should work with us?

Yes and no.

Of course we all love a bit of clickbait but in reality this partnership does not mean that we will work with every entrepreneur that knocks on our virtual door.

I have always said that a tech partnership has to be a two way street, if the tech partner does not understand the business, what the problem it is the business is trying to solve and what the USP is, then you as a founder shouldn’t be working with them. Similarly if you are a tech company, you shouldn’t be taking on every project that comes your way, you should ask whether you believe in the product, whether you believe the founder will ultimately be successful because there is nothing worse, in our world, than creating great tech for a bad business.

Choosing a tech partner is like choosing a co-founder. The tech partner is the company you are going to be spending the most money on and probably is the company you’ll know the least about. You have to do your due diligence and more than that, you have to chat with the team you’re about to pay a significant amount of money to in order to make sure that they actually believe in what you are building. They don’t have to be as enthusiastic as you, but they do need to at least care that you care.

Too many times we’ve seen companies come our way that have worked with a software development house that took their money and gave them something that wasn’t what the company asked for. Why is this? Because the development house wasn’t engaged, they just wanted to put something in your hands to justify their pay.

Take the choice of tech partner seriously, don’t go to the first person you find, don’t go to the cheapest option. Go to the partner that actually “gets” what you do and don’t be surprised if a good development house rejects you because they’ve understood it but don’t believe in it…it doesn’t mean they are right, it just means they’ve listened.

As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com

Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO

Interesting Insights

Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:

Will AI be taking EVERY job? Read what McKinsey has to say on the future of AI as it delves in to different AI terminology and what it all means. 🤖

In his publicly available book The Nature of Code, Daniel Shiffman, takes a look at phenomena that naturally occur in the physical world and figures out how to write code to simulate them. 🦅

If you’re still confused about how LLMs (Large Language Models) work, allow this article to explain it, without the complicated maths. 🧮

Meetings are out and asynchronous working is in: The makers of Basecamp have shared their principles on how to best communicate in a start-up. ⏰

The job of the software engineer is not to produce code, it’s to solve problems. Embedded in Google’s software engineering culture is the use of Design Docs for defining the design of a software system. 📖

Forfeiting a work-life balance for that San Francisco energy - if you’re a founder who’s raised $500k+, you can live in one of London’s founder houses too. 🚀

Let’s team up instead of managing up: Managing up enforces hierarchy hence the introduction of a new, egalitarian and more collaborative way of working called Teaming Up. 👪

Are behavioural interviews a waste of time? Don’t ditch the behavioural questions in your interview just yet. This article shows you how to make the most out of them. 🎤

Is your CTO a walking red flag? The gaps among different CTOs beg the question: are CTOs really valuable? 💰

Big updates were announced at Google’s I/O event. Anticipate new features on Google Music, Photos, Gemini and more! 🌐

You can’t always get what you want. The Disappointment Frontier explores the gap between your team’s desires vs what reality offers. The bigger the gap, the bigger the disappointment. The good news? You can always bridge it. 🌉

Atom CTO Podcasts

Crafting Effective Surveys: Asking the right questions 🙋🏽‍♂️
Bhairav talks to Nadine Lewis, from DMSA, a data analytics and research company about the power of employee feedback and how to craft an effective survey.

The Power of Self-Awareness: Unlocking Your Potential as a Business Owner 🙆

Self-awareness is an underrated trait for founders. Beyond knowing where your strengths lie, being self-aware can improve your decision-making, make you a better leader and increase productivity.

Podcast Series: Understanding why tech projects fail 🤷🏾‍♀️
From the dawn of IT, tech projects have failed and seem to keep on failing. In this podcast series the MD of Atom CTO leverages his years of experience to describe why he believes that tech projects fail and what you can do to ensure that your project delivers on time, on budget and gives you what you want.

Part 1: Communication
Part 2: People
Part 3: Oversight
Part 4: Planning
Part 5: Success

Do you have a tech or project management challenge?

We’re opening our (virtual) doors to two online clinics, just book your place and drop in and chat with our experts. Find out more about the Atom Tech Clinic, and Atom Project Delivery Clinic. 🩺

Atom CTO’s new partnership

We are pleased to announce a new partnership with Siya Tech which means we’ll be able to serve more startups from idea to launch and help them realise their tech potential. If you’re a founder with a big idea, keep an eye on the Atom CTO website for more information.

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Keeping in touch ✉️

Connect with Bhairav on LinkedIn
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Send us an Email: info@atomcto.com