What apps do you recommend for time tracking, accounting & project management?

If you're not technical yourself, then you might not be able to gauge the efficiency of a candidate's algorithms or critique her code. But there are still some higher-level, more behavioral things that a non-technical interviewer should be looking for in a strong development candidate: 1. What are some tech blogs that you follow? Explain an interesting article to me that you read from one of them. The software development world changes all the time. Best practices are constantly evolving and new libraries are regularly released which make developers more productive. If a candidate doesn't keep up with the latest software news, that might be a red flag that they're not curious or trying to improve themselves. Also, having them explain a technical concept to someone who's non-technical is a great way to gauge their communication skills. Do they seem like someone you could work with and understand easily? Do they care about pausing to make sure you understand, or do they just drone on with jargon? If you feel overwhelmed while they're explaining this answer, imagine how you'll feel when they're telling you why the product has bugs or isn't going to be done on schedule. 2. Tell me about a time you ran into a big roadblock with something you were building. How did you get past it? It's inevitable that a software developer will get tripped up or have to solve some Gordian Knot. Everyone has to bang their head against the wall from time to time. Maybe an API didn't have the data they needed or some function was running too slow and they weren't sure how to speed it up. You're looking to see how they are as a problem solver. Did they come up with a clever but hacky solution? Were they methodical or did they fly by the seat of their pants? Did they go back to the stakeholders and see if the feature's requirements were flexible? Did they work on it for hours and hours trying new things? Did they ask for help from colleagues or on the internet? No right or wrong answers here, but you want to get the sense that this isn't someone who throws up their hands when they hit some friction. 3. Tell me about your favorite project that you worked on. What work are you most proud of? By asking them about the project they're most proud of, you'll get to see what it is that they value most. Maybe one candidate is most proud of a side project they built, even if it wasn't that technically complex, while another candidate is proud of their esoteric PhD project or some specific algorithm they improved. Again, no right or wrong answers, it really depends what type of candidate you're looking for. But it lets you see into their mind a bit, and get at some of the aspects that can make someone a strong development candidate. If you want to talk more specifically about hiring for your team, I'd be happy to do a call!

Whenever you assign them a task, break down the task into small chunks. Make the chunks as small as you can (within reason, and to the extent that your knowledge allows), and tell your devs that if any chunks seem large, that they should further break those chunks down into bite size pieces. For instance, for the overall task of making a new webpage, _you_ might break it down as follows: 1) Set up a database 2) Make a form that takes user email, name, and phone number and adds them to database 3) Have our site send an email to everyone above the age of 50 each week When your devs take a look at it, _they_ might further break down the third step into: A) Set up an email service B) Connect it to the client database C) Figure out how to query the database for certain users D) Have it send emails to users over 50 You can keep using Asana, or you could use something like Trello which might make more sense for a small company, and might be easier to understand and track by yourself. In Trello you'd set up 4 columns titled, "To Do", "Doing", "Ready for Review", "Approved" (or combine the last two into "Done") You might want to tell them to only have tasks in the "Doing" column if they/re actually sitting at their desk working on it. For instance: not to leave a task in "Doing" overnight after work. That way you can actually see what they're working on and how long it takes, but that might be overly micro-manager-y At the end of each day / week when you review the tasks completed, look for ones that took a longer time than average (since, on average, all the tasks should be broken down into sub-tasks of approximately the same difficulty). Ask them about those tasks and why they took longer to do. It may be because they neglected to further break it down into chunks as you had asked (in which case you ask them to do that next time), or it may be that some unexpected snag came up, or it may be a hard task that can't be further broken down. In any case, listen to their explanation and you should be able to tell if it sounds reasonable, and if it sounds fishy, google the problem they say they encountered. You'll be able to get a better feel of their work ethic and honesty by how they answer the question, without worrying as much about what their actual words are. Make sure that when you ask for more details about why a task took longer, you don't do it in a probing way. Make sure they understand that you're doing it for your own learning and to help predict and properly plan future timelines.

Take the # of hours it takes you to do it and charge $50/hour. That's the price. Eventually you can charge $100/hour but that will require a bigger customer. If the customer is small < $1M in gross sales per year - charge $50/hour If the customer id medium < $1-5M / sales - charge $75 Over $5M - charge $100 The challenge you'll face is clearly defining the expectations and handoff so that you're not stuck doing stuff that you can charge for and always getting interrupted from past customers.

A generalized question can only get a generalized answer. The most significant accomplishment is validating that the product you have built is a fit with your target market. This is demonstrated primarily by engagement (the people who sign-up or who previously visited, continue to return) and secondarily by growth, ideally based on word-of-mouth or viral growth but effectively converting paid traffic is a great second prize. Other significant accomplishments include: Not running out of money Recruiting and retaining great talent who believe in the founders' vision. Your loved ones not thinking you're as crazy as they thought you were a year ago. I'm happy to talk to you in a call to give you more specifics about what you want to set as your goals more specific to your startup.

We use Salesforce for CRM, so we implemented Financial Force PSA. This has been an excellent solution for us, but it definitely requires a lot of customization to represent your business processes (like any holistic solution would).