TechCrunch Newsletters - How do you select the right tech stack?

Welcome to TechCrunch+ Friday

Early-stage entrepreneurs who are eager to ship usually spend more time calculating their startup’s monthly burn rate than selecting an optimal development environment.

As a result, technical debt starts to accumulate. And accumulate.

TechCrunch Senior Writer Romain Dillet interviewed Jill Wetzler, VP of Engineering at Pilot, and Preeti Somal, EVP of Engineering at HashiCorp, to learn more about how they evaluate third-party vendors, select open-source components and think ahead with regard to engineering capabilities.

“All you’re doing that sprint is working off your tech debt backlog,” said Somal. “I think the really key thing is to recognize it, find a strategy to work with it, and don’t let it build to a point where it just feels like you’re going to take a massive hit on productivity.”

Their discussion, which took place at TechCrunch Disrupt, also addressed the value of using test suites and selecting a reliable continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) framework.

“What are the things that can help our team move really fast and ship really fast?” asked Wetzler. “Because I think that is the name of the game when you’re talking about a startup. It just comes down to how you can get your code out the door as quickly as possible.”

Thanks very much for reading TechCrunch+, and I hope you have an excellent weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
@yourprotagonist

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Working to understand Rent the Runway’s IPO valuation

Offering consumers affordable options for high-end clothing and accessories is innovative, but Rent the Runway’s recent IPO filing makes the company’s “overall business profile” look “unsteady,” writes Alex Wilhelm in today’s edition of The Exchange.

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TC Sessions: SaaS 2021

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Gain insights on how to scale B2B and B2C companies from CEOs who have done it themselves.

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Lessons from founders raising their first round in a bull market

The tide is high for startup founders who are looking to raise their first round in October 2021.

But easy money can create special pressure for early-stage founders, according to Lightup.ai founder Manu Bansal.

“You can’t speed up GTM with more money. If valuations go up astronomically, I remind myself that I have to deliver performance,” he says.

“If I cannot show traction, sooner or later this beast will come back to haunt me. I’d rather avoid the price runners.”

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My co-founders and I have an early-stage startup. We’re having a really tough time recruiting engineering talent, but we’re open to hiring internationally.

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Fintech in Latin America is on fire, and nowhere more so than in Mexico — startups in the sector roped in nearly 20% of all capital invested in the region last year.

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Technology should enhance customer service operations, but automation can risk making the experience feel a little robotic.

Joyce Lee, Alorica’s chief culture officer, shares four actionable steps companies can take to foster a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce:

• Start with an inclusive onboarding process
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“The more diverse your people are, the more they can relate to a diverse customer base,” she writes.

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Plug & Play Ventures’ Noorjit Sidhu highlights mission-driven ventures like the Long-Term Stock Exchange, First Women’s Bank, and Upsolve, which “which demonstrate that the quietest efforts often have the loudest impacts.”

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