mooders

I'm interested in how much technical documentation startups generate during the pre-launch phases. I'm particularly interested in YC invitees as they are in a very timebound context.

In my one-man setup, I generate enough documentation to sketch out the main user flows through the app; a broad technical architecture and a feature roadmap. I do not document detailed technical and functional spectifications, nor do I write detailed test cases.

I guess the question I am asking is whether I am storing a world of pain for x months / years hence by adopting such a lightweight approach...

http://www.bzplnr.com

The first step toward creating what I am calling an ecosystem of startups - broadly related, semi-dependent startups that together will form a comprehensive whole covering a wide range of market segments.

Thanks in advance for the comments!

I'm looking for opinions on whether an implementation detail on my website home page is reasonable or not.

I want users to sign up initially and subsequently login when they visit the site. I am gathering the absolute minimum of data - an email address and a user-generated password.

I figure rather than have a login form and a sign-up form I would instead use the same two-input box form for both functions. In the back-end I check for the existence of the credentials against the Db. If they exist, log the user in. If they do not, sign the user up and log them in. Seems like the simplest possible method, to me.

I am uncertain on this simply because there seem to be no other examples of sites doing this, so I wonder whether I have missed a major usability point here.

I am looking to schedule a slew of events to get onto the 'startup circuit' and know my way around the network. I'm UK-based, but mainland Europe and USA also of interest.

So what are the 'do not miss' events a pre-launch tech startup ought to be attending?

I've been doing some self-evaluation recently, mainly as a consequence of talking with some very smart people about coming onboard with me on a new venture. I realised that I am very much a generalist potential CEO - I know a reasonable amount about marketing, sales, technology, finance, operations, business law and contract law - but can offer no deep, astonishingly insightful commentary on any of these.

What I seem to be able to do is tie these functions together coherently, run a team of smart people and get them pushing hard in a given direction and communicate a vision, or a strategy, or an idea, or a requirement in terms which appeal to the person on which I am focusing my attention.

But is that enough? What does the broader community think? Would my soon-to-be-real company be better served by having a specialist (Ops, Technical, Marketing) in the CEO chair? Is there a natural lifespan before either the generalist or specialist founding CEO needs to step aside?