https://leegold.com/tags/startups/ Recent content in Startups on Lee Goldsworthy Hugo en-au Tue, 05 May 2026 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-is-not-vibe-engineering/ Tue, 05 May 2026 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-is-not-vibe-engineering/ The Register This isn’t a Technology story about the dangers of AI, this is a Risk Management story about the dangers of overconfidence. For the last week, we’ve been inundated with hot takes about how “Claude deleted PocketOS production database”. Of course Claude deleted their entire production database (or something similarly damaging), it was just a matter of time. The way this is being discussed misses the point entirely. https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-proof-of-concept-prototype-then-hire-an-engineer/ Mon, 12 May 2025 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/vibe-coding-proof-of-concept-prototype-then-hire-an-engineer/ Original post on X So which is it? “The next generation of billion-dollar software companies will be built by Vibe Coders”, or “Vibe Coding is only good for producing billions of security flaws”. X and Linkedin are riddled with both takes, and neither are terribly useful imho. Both have elements of truth, but while I think Danial’s take of “Be careful which Vibe Coder you trust” is more nuanced, it still doesn’t tell the story for me. https://leegold.com/posts/two-hours-two-days-or-two-weeks/ Tue, 04 Feb 2025 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/two-hours-two-days-or-two-weeks/ “Can we drop what we’re working on and focus on this URGENT thing please?” …is a phrase all Engineering Managers and Tech Leads hate hearing. The reflex is to say “We don’t have time / we’re too busy for that”, but it’s an antipattern. The strong pattern looks like this: “Here’s three approaches to what you asked for: 2 hours (20% of the value), 2 days (40% of the value) and 2 weeks 80% of the value). https://leegold.com/posts/effort-size-and-fidelity-three-definitions-to-agree-on-day-one/ Tue, 17 Dec 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/effort-size-and-fidelity-three-definitions-to-agree-on-day-one/ When I land in a new startup/scale-up, I want to have fast and deep conversations with their product and engineering teams, and have everyone walk away with a highly converged understanding at the end of the chat. In service of this, there’s a few types of information I always find useful to get a handle on right at the start: Their internal naming conventions for foundational concepts that product and engineering rely on every day. https://leegold.com/posts/the-20k-a-month-aws-bill-with-no-revenue/ Tue, 30 Jul 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/the-20k-a-month-aws-bill-with-no-revenue/ “I had $20k/month in AWS bills and no revenue” Do product engineering types have a responsibility to first time founders that goes beyond build and deploy, or is this a case of “It’s everyone’s right to set their own money on fire?” I’m reflecting on how this year I’ve now seen seven examples of how entities within the Australian tech industry have happily taken significant sums (think $250k) from founders to build lavish MVPs, without feeling beholden to take even basic steps to check if the founder is ready to be building an MVP, like have they: https://leegold.com/posts/before-you-start-your-mvp/ Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/before-you-start-your-mvp/ The Dream Link to heading You’ve worked in the field for 10 or 20 years, you’ve lived the problem first-hand, you’ve got this idea for a product. You know you won’t be a millionaire overnight, but your early revenues from the product will guide what features you build next. You just need to find “someone who knows tech”, and you’re ready to start building… …is a fantasy we tell ourselves as founders. https://leegold.com/posts/non-tech-leaders-champion-security/ Mon, 27 May 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/non-tech-leaders-champion-security/ Park your car in a bad suburb, leave your laptop on the passenger seat, leave your keys in the ignition. What happens next? The above is akin to what I often see in tech-enabled early-stage companies with respect to their security and privacy practices: Dangerous sh*t that’s going to result in loss and sadness if some changes to skills and awareness aren’t made. Here’s a real-world example of what I consider to be some of the best “everyday security culture” being put into practice by a non-tech leader at one of my clients: https://leegold.com/posts/aws-bill-like-servicing-car/ Tue, 02 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/aws-bill-like-servicing-car/ Shovel cash into the furnace that is AWS/Azure. It’s fine. For a while at least. Don’t do cost optimisation Link to heading I encourage early stage tech companies to not even think about their AWS/Azure bill until it reaches $10k/y. At that point, it wants a timeboxed 1 hour sanity check, with perhaps a few hours of tightening up unused services, then don’t look again until it reaches $20k. https://leegold.com/posts/junior-devs-stand-out-interviews/ Tue, 12 Mar 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/junior-devs-stand-out-interviews/ What can I do? Link to heading I regularly get asked by aspiring devs still studying, and recent graduates who are still looking to land their first job as a software engineer for useful ways to continue to grow while job-hunting. How can I do it? Link to heading Below are great small things any skill level dev can contribute to just about any codebase of any maturity! ✅ Simple Bugs (e. https://leegold.com/posts/real-full-stack-developer/ Fri, 26 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/real-full-stack-developer/ Have you ever met a REAL “full stack developer”? I have. Once. Just recently. During job interviews for a client, one walked in and (to my surprise), had no distinguishing visual features (no unicorn wings or horn, not even a faint glow). We explored the usual interview topics, but it only took one sentence for them to convince me they were the real deal. It was weird the preternatural calmness with which they shared how their current employer would sometimes ask them to head out to the warehouse and stack pallets when there were no others with a valid forklift license currently on shift. https://leegold.com/posts/morning-startup-why-not-how/ Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0800 https://leegold.com/posts/morning-startup-why-not-how/