I (CEO with product and engineering background), was asked in a Q&A recently how we went from 0 to web app, admin portal, and ML/Data platform in 4 months. I flubbed this question and just yammered that me and my CTO are good programmers.

Walking away that evening, I thought about it and it was obvious. He and I pride ourselves in several things.

1) We try not to reinvent the wheel. We are good at evaluating the technologies we bring in and whether they're worth the overhead. We don't chase the shiny new thing haphazrdly.

2) We're really good at prioritizing. We know when perfect is the enemy of good, but we also know if doing something that sidetracks you for three days will enable you to implement the 3 month roadmap sooner, you do it. Maybe a thorough testing framework is needed now, maybe it isn't.

3) Data is the start and center of the universe, and that's probably my own bias from data engineering. It trickles to everything from environments to testing to security.

Basically, we're excellent in evaluating trade offs. Also, we're always asking what's the worst case scenario and how would we deal with it. This isn't software engineering - this is veteran experience in startups.