Being Tech at Crehana: fail, but learn fast
What I learned in my first three years as a Frontend Developer at Crehana — failing fast, believing in what you build, and why people matter more than anything else.
In the next few paragraphs I'll give you a short summary of my experience and some of the lessons I picked up during my first three years working as a Frontend Developer at Crehana.
Who am I?
Yes, Nexus. That's what they call me. Is Nexus my real name? No. It's not. I'm Giancarlos, but Nexus is a childhood nickname, so I've been called that for years.
At Crehana, the Technology area currently has three teams: Backend, Frontend and Mobile. I lead the Frontend team. What is frontend? This post explains it perfectly.
I've always been drawn to e-learning startups. I personally believe education is an incredible tool, not only to empower people but also to improve the society we live in. That's why it matters that knowledge is accessible to everyone, anywhere, at any time.
Crehana is the third e-learning company I've worked at; the first two startups ended up pivoting their product and eventually left the education sector. Crehana gives me the chance to make an impact in this space, so I hope to contribute to the education revolution we all want on the team.
Now let me share some of the things I learned during my first three years at Crehana.
Fail fast, learn fast
No, I don't mean desperately shipping features you came up with the night before. Plan, execute and measure.
Measure the success!
Measure your successes and your failures too. Fail! But be sharp enough to collect all the information from the failure and use it in your favor later.
Believe something deeply
Believe in something so strongly that it pushes you to your limits.
If you're not confident about the feature you're about to build, say it! Talk to your team and review the project until everyone is confident it will succeed.
There's no point in working on something nobody believes will work. Believing in something raises motivation and productivity, and as a result, the quality of the product ends up being the best it can be.
Focus on the problem, not on the solution
First, focus on solving the problem and don't worry about finding the perfect solution. Perfection is the result of constant iterations over time.
Don't be a perfectionist. You'll burn too much time trying to build the perfect thing; instead, invest all that time in figuring out how to improve the current product.
Premature optimization is the mother of all problems.
Remember you're at a startup: the problem you have today won't be the same one you have tomorrow, so your perfect solution will have to be changed or, in the worst case, thrown away.
Solve the problem and improve the solution as you go (note that I said improving, not perfecting).
Motivation won't always be there
Motivation is a feeling and, as such, it won't always be there. What will keep you moving forward, in the moments when it's absent, is the plan you created at the start.
One of my passions is the personal projects I build in my free time. The hardest part of these projects isn't starting them — it's finishing them. I've noticed that every project I've actually finished was one where the full planning was done from the very beginning.
I apply this lesson daily at Crehana. Having a path to follow lets you keep moving forward even when there's no motivation to lean on.
The most important thing at Crehana
Finally, let me tell you what I believe is the key to Crehana's success.
Over time I've learned that what matters about Crehana isn't how good the product is right now, or how much innovation there is in the technology behind the application, or whether you have the most expensive equipment on the market. Everything else takes a back seat to one thing: people.
Having people who believe in the final impact of the product helps it evolve safely and naturally over time.
I believe a big part of Crehana's success comes from the amazing people on the team. Every single one of us truly cares about the end goal: "Revolutionizing education in Latin America". In the end, that focus translates into continuous, agile improvement of the product. Worth mentioning: this is something very hard to pull off inside a startup — all the credit goes to Diego and Fico.
And that's as far as Nexus's story goes for now. It's been short, but I hope it helped you understand why and how we're revolutionizing education in Latin America.
If you have any questions or feedback about Crehana, don't hesitate to write to me on Twitter — I'm @NexusZGT.
And that's it. That's how it ends.
Giancarlos Isasi, Nexus to my friends — that's me. Someone trying to build incredible things alongside incredible people.