Fueling startups with smart engineering

^{Written by the Samaipata Editorial Team}

This is the sixth episode of "No-Filter Talks," where our Operating Partners candidly share their expertise, offering founders invaluable lessons and often challenging truths for achieving success.

In the fast-paced environment of startups, ensuring that engineering and product teams work seamlessly together is essential for driving business outcomes. Stephan Lagraulet, currently the Director of Engineering at N26 and an Operating Partner at Samaipata, brings deep experience from his leadership roles in rapidly growing tech companies such as Privalia or Fnac. At N26, Stephan has been instrumental in guiding engineering teams to balance technical rigour with the need for swift, impactful product development.

In this episode, Stephan delves into strategies for optimising engineering productivity while keeping technical debt in check. He emphasises the importance of fostering collaboration between product and engineering, maintaining a focus on business value, and using key performance metrics to drive continuous improvement. If you’re a startup founder or engineering leader, Stephan’s insights will provide you with practical tools to elevate your team’s performance and drive success.

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Samaipata: How do you unify teams for product success?

Stephan: Engineering exists to ship products, not just to create the best technology. Ultimately, the product is what matters most, and everyone should contribute to its success. Creating boundaries between product and tech, with each side claiming issues belong to the other, leads to failure. You can't afford to waste effort when resources are limited. Focus is crucial. You need smart people who not only help you but also bring a product mindset from an engineering perspective. This demands a smooth, continuous process of discovery and delivery.

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Samaipata: How do you ensure business continuity?

Stephan: In my company, we use the acronym KTBR, which stands for "Keep the Bank Running" or "Keep the Business Running." This refers to the time not spent on shipping your product. If you're spending more time fixing issues than delivering business value, that’s a problem. It indicates insufficient investment in reducing technical debt. For instance, if every shipping attempt fails and engineers are preoccupied with fixes rather than building the product, you may need to slow down development to address fundamental issues.

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Samaipata: How do you maximize engineer productivity?

Stephan: One major productivity killer for engineers is context switching. The anxiety of not being confident that your code will go live when you deploy it can lead to constant verification, diverting focus from the actual product. Instead of extensive end-to-end testing from a user's perspective, it's more effective to conduct smaller, reliable unit tests. These help evolve the software and speed up iterations, rather than maintaining a lengthy suite of tests or relying heavily on quality assurance teams.

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Samaipata: What would be the key metrics for evaluating the productivity of engineering teams?

Stephan: To measure my engineering team's success and overall productivity, we look to research conducted by Google, now known as DORA metrics. There are four key metrics: deployment frequency, lead time (the time from code commitment to production), mean time between failures, and mean time to recover. These metrics distinguish elite companies from the average, emphasizing the importance of failing and learning quickly, particularly in startups.

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Samaipata: What would be your top three pieces of advice for a startup founder looking to improve their tech?

Stephan: First, finding the right people is more crucial than choosing the right tech stack. The mindset must align with your company's current stage. Second, if a problem has already been solved by major companies like Amazon, Google, or Azure, you probably don’t need to reinvent the solution. And third, focus on what you’re selling: your product. Invest in your product to drive success.

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