Posts by Scott Barstow

In this, the first episode of the Scott Barstow Show, we talk with Jared Pelo, CEO of iScribes, about how he and his co-founders conceived of and built their product...

This is the last in a series of posts where we're talking about some of the most common pitfalls that un-technical founders face when starting a technology company.  I've called this...

This is the third in a series of posts where we're talking about some of the most common pitfalls that un-technical founders face when starting a technology company.  I've called...

In my previous post entitled The Un-Technical Founders Death Spiral we talked about three mistakes that many un-technical founders make in the early stages of starting their company that, when compounded, usually...

You've got the next great idea for a killer app, but you're not a developer and you've never built a technology product before. However, you're in luck because you have...

This past Sunday night I was working on a bike with my son. We're disassembling an old bike and are going to build a new one from scratch on the...

If we were driving in New York City and we wanted to get to the Empire State Building, we wouldn't say "Let's go to latitude 40.74844, longitude -73.98566." We would...

In a previous article entitled "What Is Technical Debt?", we talked about nuts and bolts of technical debt. I've since come to the conclusion that, although what I presented is...

Every now and then I like to bring in guests to address topics that I consider to be as important as the nuts and bolts of building your product. I...

This post originally appeared on Linked In. A good friend of mine recently published a book on raising money called Get Backed. One of the core principles of the book is that...

There are lots of ways to manage the process of building software. Some of the more popular ones today are Scrum and Kanban, both specific implementations of the Agile methodology. It...

This is the last in a 4-part series on using auditions, or test projects, to hire technical talent. In the first article we introduced the idea of auditions, why they are...

We've been talking about using auditions, or test projects, in hiring technical talent. In the first article, we talked about why auditions are important, and reviewed at a high level...

In our last article, we covered the three goals of an audition and the basic guidelines for using one to hire technical talent. If you happened to miss it, do...

Without a doubt the topic I get asked most about is hiring and managing technical talent.  Whether it's your technical co-founder, a key early hire, or a contractor, a key...

"The borrower is a slave to the lender" - The Book of Proverbs It's going to happen to you. It's inevitable. You're going to take on technical debt as you...

Do you ever have those moments where you solve the same problem again because you didn't write down how you solved it the first time? When you're running hard, particularly...

Whether you're using contractors or you have your own development team, chances are you're going to wonder at some point whether or not the quality of your code is up...