1. 10 random things learned being a
startup CTO +Coder

2. Who am I?
www.muehlemann-popp.ch/de

3. What startups was I involved?

4. tilllate.com – Nightlife portal with 2Million visitors

5. Quelle: Schweizer Illustrierte, im 2006

6. Sobrado – Broker Workflow tool

7. Wishlist
www.wunschlischte.ch

8. 10 random things I learned…

9. Disclaimer
 It’s not scientific
 It’s not well-structured
 It’s my own opinion

10. 1. Log everything.
• Log pageviews
including GET and
POST variables
• Log every activity of
background tasks in
log files
Debugging is much easier

11. 2. Start simple.
• Keep the system
simple.
• Simple = easy to
understand
• You can always
refactor later
 Make your code friendly
to refactoring (Unit Tests,
Method Names)
If your kid wants a
helicopter, he will be
happy with this :-)

12. 3. Involve your team.
Let the team decide
about technology,
architecture AND
features
Benefits:
The team is more
engaged
More people -> better
solutions
Team discussions M&P Style

13. 4. Don't follow trends too quickly.
Before you choose a
technology, make sure
that it will still exist in 5
years
Tests:
How many books are in
Amazon about the
technology?
How many commits does
a project have?
8-Track players were once top
technology.

14. 5. Keep your code clean an tidy.
• Remove unused code
• Rename methods if the
function of the method
does not correspond
anymore to what the
method does
Cleaning is Fun!

15. 6. Defensive programming!
• Think of everything
that can go wrong and
be ready to handle
those cases

16. 7. Pay attention to security!
• Use the OWASP Top-
10 to check your code
security
https://www.owasp.org
• Filter and validate
incoming data -> only
clean data in your
system (DB, code etc.)

17. 8. Your code will live longer than you expect!
• Be nice to the people
who will work on your
code after you left the
company. They are
engineers like you.
• If you find a mess,
clean it up
• Bad code is not an
excuse to add more
bad code
Even at 80 years old, your code
should be able to do skateboard tricks
:-)

18. 9. Choose your symbol names carefully!
The code should replace a
documentation, so:
• Avoid mistypings (it
looks unprofessional)
• Don’t be afraid of long
names (your IDE will
autocomplete for you)
Be careful as an artist when coding

19. 10. There should always be fun tasks!
Developers which enjoy their
task …
• …are more focused
• …think about the project
even after work
• …will stay longer in your
company
 When choosing projects,
always ask yourself whether
your engineer will enjoy doing
it

20. Thank you!
Silvan Mühlemann
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/silvan.muehlemann