Our inspiration for building project : DABL came from wanting to help founders and small teams make a difference with as few technical distractions as possible. To my surprise, we were often asked a lot more about what it meant to start a healthy company than to ship good code.
I was always proud to try to help, but I couldn’t help but worry that I was presenting a narrow, biased point of view — my own!
When we started Digital Asset, I didn’t have a wealth of experience or knowledge to help guide my decision-making — especially in the early days. There’s no shortage of great books and posts from others about how to think about starting a startup, but I found that they often fell short. Too often, they were told through the rose-tinted nostalgia of success and distance from the early days.
Where were all the stories of the chaos from the first 100 days of Facebook? The struggle to organize the first 50 engineers at Google? How did all these behemoths get their very first customers? And where are all the honest retros about strong contenders crashing and burning?
I craved an honest review — a raw and uncut view into the reality of the early days. Were our expectations within DA realistic? Woefully incomplete? Looking back on the past (almost) six years, we have learned a lot — more than I could ever have imagined — and I have really enjoyed returning to some of these thornier issues from the beginning of the company.
This short series is a humble attempt to present a range of views on some of the things you need to consider when starting a new team, product, or initiative. My hope is any type of entrepreneur can read through the jargon and think about how these points of view apply to starting any new business.
Given I am a singular, opinionated point of view, I wanted to make sure to give the reader a perspective well beyond my own. With this series, we will share the perspectives of a range of founders that are still in the midst of their own journeys.
In coming weeks, we’ll wade into these high-level topics:
- What to consider before you even get started
- How to pick co-founders
- Acquiring early funding
- How to think about the first hires
- Thinking about life beyond the early startup phase
Each post will comprise a short set of questions that explore a specific topic. Our participants will offer their own views and we encourage you to add your voice to the discussion.
Do you have your own questions for Digital Asset’s panel of entrepreneurs? Please write to us at community@daml.com.
Daml has also a new learn section where you can begin to code online or try DABL here:
Learn Daml online
Try DABL for free
If you are interested in Daml smart contracts too, you should also read:
by Eric Saraniecki, Co-Founder & Head of Network Strategy
April 29, 2020
