What I've learned about startups

Posted on 10 Sep 2025 by Claudio Santini

What I've learned in +15 years as a consultant for startups:

  1. Figure out what your clients desperately need and only build that, or you're going broke. Easier said than done

  2. You need a sales person/team. Talk often to paying clients

  3. Just use Postgres

  4. You probably don't need Kubernetes

  5. You can serve millions with 1 Hetzner server

  6. You don't need most things, just focus on paying-client satisfaction

  7. Bad code is a sign of quick iteration cycles, so it rhymes with profitability. High code quality is a bad sign for startups

  8. You will have to rebuild anyhow the features that are very used by users

  9. Type-safety doesn't help nearly as much as they say

There are exceptions to these rules, but they are pretty rare and usually don't happen in startups. Opinions are mine, not my clients'.