Nav Rao

After 11 years of running a software engineering company, particularly collaborating with clients who had their own engineering teams, I realized that clearly defining how you add value and how the client perceives that value is crucial—especially when that value drives the growth of both companies. In March 2013, we began working with an Australian client that had its own internal engineering team, which we needed to collaborate with. At the time, we were two years into our operations—young, Black, fresh university graduates given a big opportunity. Since then, we've worked with large telecom companies, banks, startups, and Fortune 100+ companies. At this stage of our business, doing things just for the sake of revenue without delivering clear value no longer works. For example, one way we add value is by being equally invested in the client's product because we see a commercially viable opportunity for both of us. Another example is helping to significantly reduce the client's overall capital expenditure. We've put together a list of strategies that can assist engineering teams from different firms. You can find the link in my first comment. Please feel free to share your experiences to help us or others in the community.

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Feeling lost in the sea of no-code/ low-code tools? I’ve been there! After trying to find a single "magic tool" that could handle everything—from building versatile software to managing complex integrations—I realized there’s a better way. Here’s what worked for me: Instead of relying on one tool to do it all, I found that using ChatGPT as a guide made all the difference. My custom assistant now helps me map out each project step-by-step, directing me to the best AI, automation, or no-code tool for each specific task. ChatGPT even generates ready-to-use code for each step. One key insight: don't prompt. ChatGPT understands intent communicated through human language better than it understands scripts, so explaining your project as if you’re talking to a colleague yields better results. If you’re exploring no-code or low-code solutions, this approach could save you countless hours of trial and error. Happy to elaborate further if anyone needs help to get moving.

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Thanks to everyone that came to see my talk at ServerlessDays ANZ yesterday! Here are the slides. For those that missed it, here are the main lessons I shared: ✨ LLMs are not magic, they're just another useful tool in a builder's toolkit ✨If you want to be build with LLMs quickly and cheaply, see how far you can go with prompts and RAG. ✨If you need more control than you can achieve with those, you'll likely need to do fine-tuning, tuning or even training, all of which are much more expensive comparably. ✨Plan for your models to change all the time - use Artificial Analysis to navigate the changes ✨Plan for your prompts - version your prompts and construct them independently of inference ✨Getting LLMs to behave consistently for your use case is super challenging, but there are tools like the Seed and Temperature features to help ✨Hacking LLMs to behave outside the intended behaviour is easy, but you can architect around this using techniques like prompt proxies (thanks to Tomasz Tunguz for sharing great design patterns) If you have any questions about building using these tools, feel free to reach out!

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NEW: Internal Threads Internal threads allow you to spin up conversations in Slack from Pylon. It's great when you want to start a conversation with someone, but they primarily use Slack (e.g. engineers, product people or anyone who isn't living out of the support system). Common internal threads we are creating at Pylon: 1/ #bugs to report a potential bug 2/ #project channels to ask a team a question about a specific feature 3/ #feedback to report product feedback to the team It's been one of the most game-changing features we've released and we're so excited to share it with everyone. Enjoy!

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I’ve been eyeing Appsmith as a replacement for Flutterflow. Does anyone have any experience with both these platforms? How do they compare? I’m curious about Appsmith because it’s open source. My backend is now completely built on open source solutions - Supabase, n8n, Mautic etc. If my front end is also open sourced then I’ll be truly unstoppable. #lowcode #startup

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Very often, the main thing the higher priced developer is better at is: Being less expensive. Assume you hire a $20/hour developer to handle web page, and after a few back and forth interactions, he gets the approval, ten hours of work. $200. You hire the $70/hour developer, who has done it before, knows exactly what is needed, and gets the approval in an hour. $70. Hourly rate is only one factor. Ability to get the desired result efficiently is really the gold standard, at least to my clients. #dallas #value #softwareengineers

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18% of all folks who engaged with the Supabase project, made a contribution somewhere in open source. On top of that, they average about 32 unique open-source contributors weekly. We are standing on some business at OpenSauced, shipping faster than we are announcing publicly (we will fix that announcement cadence soon). In this video, I walk through some new insight features of the project. Let me know if you find it useful. #opensource #insights

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Monitoring usage for Canopy AI has been interesting. Some people frame things super well and get great results. Others ask a four-word question, and somehow still get some okay results (just because we have a lot of content + I categorized everything for the RAG), but not always. We do some prompt augmentation, but we should do more. Currently, we inject things in certain scenarios or when it fails. Ideally, we would have a two-pass system for every request, where everything goes through a prompt improver. You can't assume users will ask the right things. All kind of obvious things I had already considered but left for a later version after initial usage. The cool part is this would've been hard to do last year due to speed/cost; now you can just "pipe" things multiple times using the same high-quality model you call at the end.

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If you’re tired of wasting time on the wrong hires, read this. Tech hiring isn’t just about speed; it’s about precision. As a CTO/hiring manager, you don’t need another agency promising "top talent." You need one that delivers the right fit—technically and culturally. Before you sign the dotted line, ask these 7 critical questions: 1️⃣ Experience with your roles: Can they find specialists in [software dev, infra, etc.]? 2️⃣ Fit beyond skills: How do they align candidates with your culture? 3️⃣ Hiring timelines: Can they meet your deadlines? 4️⃣ Clear communication: What’s their process for updates? 5️⃣ Measurable success: Do they track time-to-hire or retention rates? 6️⃣ Commitment to DEI: How diverse is their pipeline? 7️⃣ Guarantees: What happens if a hire doesn’t stick? The right agency should feel like an extension of your team, not just another vendor. Protect your hiring ROI by choosing wisely. Want help? Let’s connect.

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Apparently, I'm meant to post here more regularly than every four years. Schema Markup It is surprising how many NZ sites haven't gotten onto this, have used an out-of-the-box implementation (which they didn't review and improve), or just implemented incorrect schema. Key culprits include: - Newspaper sites (EG www.stuff.co.nz), although they may have fixed this after I pointed out errors. - Real Estate sites, there's a dedicated schema which very few seem to use. - eCommerce sites, the now defunct themarket.com completely missed the boat on this. If your using WordPress https://rankmath.com/ schema markup features are good. And if you need something enterprise grade for a range of CMS's, https://www.schemaapp.com/ should be your destination. https://www.schemaapp.com/ also has some great resources to get you started on rich snippets, generative AI search etc.

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Building a product for the 1st time has been a 🎢 , but here’s 4 key Aria updates: ↪️ Domain secured & waitlist page soon to be launched ↪️ We’re adding another staff/principal FS engineer to the team (DM me if you want to join an engineering 1st culture, cause GTM without an excellent product is nada) ↪️ We’re building the product alongside our pilot customers & appreciate everyone’s support here (DM if you want to 6.5x your recruitment productivity) ↪️ Have spoken to VC’s & seed investors these past months, and I’m open to this pathway (DM me if you’d like to learn about investing with us). We’re bootstrapping till now. Btw, I’m all in: nearing the end of cash reserves, selling stocks next (even my Nvidia 🫣), selling 🏠 after if needed (homelessness here I come haha). Beyond excited, Abdullah

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I often get asked about tech stack recommendations and I'm always quick to point out that I don't really know this stuff like a dev would. BUT... As a start-up, part of your future success relies on scaling quickly with people who can hit the ground running. Certain tools are going to make that task extremely difficult for you, and that's something to bear in mind. - Angular (all versions) - Ruby - Flutter Three tools that I would steer clear of at all costs if you're building a tech start-up of your own. Candidate availability (particularly those with start-up experinece) is just NOT there in this country. With Angular & Ruby, it's getting worse with time. Most candidates with experience want to move away from both tools and pick up things like React and Node or Python. With Flutter - it's supposed to be killing off React Native, but it's just not, and nobody wants to use it for Web. Maybe that'll change in time but for now, it's not the tool for a fast growth start-up. Just my 2 cents 🤷🏻‍♂️

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I love Ken K.'s mindset of building a founding team of engineers as your starting 11. ⚽ The number isn't 11. Software teams aren't the size of a football team. But it's a great analogy to find your best starting team. For Devika, it was building teams in blocks of 4 and keeping the total engineering team at a mid-size of 24 -28. That way they could ensure they weren't too big and focus on quality of delivery. Focusing on quality and finding the best engineers for your starting team is the foundation for any startup/scaleup. If you are seeking to find your starting team of founding engineers or the next Principal Engineer to lead the growth and coding habits of your team, click on the "View My Website" link on my LinkedIn bio. To hear Ken's story of scaling Devika and helping build some of the country's leading tech companies listen to Episode 7 of ScaleUp Soundbytes. Link in the comments. #startups #techrecuitment #foundingteam #foundingengineer #football

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State of 404 by the numbers I summarised my findings from this Dune dashboard: https://lnkd.in/g8re-BbH 1. 404 is exploding Guess how many 404 projects there are on eth, base and arbitrum? 1810! That’s a lot in such a short amount of time. 2. ERC404 and DN404 numbers Base is the fastest growing 404. At current rates, base 404 will surpass eth based 404 as dominant play. ERC404 and DN404 are different implementations. ERC404 v2 is a new version that just came out that should be replace v1. ERC404 v1 projects Eth - 697 Base - 404 Arbitrum - 88 DN404 projects Eth - 310 Base - 173 Arbitrum - 52 ERC404 v2 projects Eth - 43 Base - 32 Arbitrum - 11 3. Rise of solana 404 The dune dashboard doesn’t account for solana projects building on SPL404 or Blast. It will be interesting to see their growth as SPL404s are performing well and leading the trading volumes on magic Eden. Hope you enjoyed this! I think this one is worth a bookmark to check back in a few months to see the growth.

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Had to reshare this gem from Albert Mao 👇 That first tip about explaining your startup in the simplest terms possible? It's surprisingly hard to do, but makes such a difference. For anyone thinking about YC W25 (runs January-March in SF), this is probably one of the most practical posts I've seen.

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I wouldn't want to managing engineering teams at Atlassian, Canva or Xero right now... Easygo are doing something I've never seen before & offering $100,000 SIGNING ON BONUS for any Tech professional who is working at the above companies to jump ship and join them. They also pay 20% above market on salaries... The majority of briefs I take from scaleups usually ask us to headhunt from these sorts of companies on the sly - but this is the first outward marketing/incentive and blatant talent grab I've ever seen. Anyone managing teams at the above, my terms of business are in your inbox, along with 10,000 floated CV's I've sent in the last 10 years... Engineers head over to: https://lnkd.in/g7eseqjW to claim your sign on bonus! #Wow #EasyGo #Recruitment #SigningBonus #Atlassian #Canva #Xero

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The spot-on take of all spot-on take. I have seen people becoming product leaders with absolutely zero prior product management background, for various different reasons (domain knowledge being the most common one). Does it actually work? Probably for a feature-factory type of org … #productmanagement #productleadership

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