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👋 Welcome to today’s edition of Build & lead (formerly the CTO blueprint), a newsletter by Appolica. Every two weeks, we dive deep into the tech, product, and leadership challenges that keep founders up at night.
In this week’s issue, we explore why T-shaped developers can be the key to building better products. Then, we dive into the challenges of continuous deployment for mobile, sharing strategies to manage the unique hurdles that come with it. From the archives, we revisit the pitfalls of building an overly ambitious MVP and how to focus on what matters most.
Today’s insights:
Why T-shaped developers build better products
How to do continuous deployment when building mobile
The pitfalls of building a big MVP
5 AI tools to make you more productive
Everything you need to know this week
Two years ago, 90% of our engineers were deep specialists. Each person was a true expert in their field, whether it was backend, Android, or frontend development. And while their expertise ran deep, we started noticing cracks in this approach. Workloads weren’t balanced. One week, the Android team was overwhelmed, while backend engineers waited for tasks. The next week, it was the opposite. We had the expertise, but we were missing the flexibility.
So, we tried something new. About a year and a half ago, we asked some of our Flutter developers to help build an Android-native app. Paired with experienced Android specialists, they quickly got up to speed, the product quality stayed high, and the team was excited to be learning something fresh. This small experiment got the ball rolling on a bigger idea—transitioning from specialists to T-shaped developers, who could maintain their core expertise but also contribute across different parts of the stack.
Today, over 80% of our team has expanded into new areas, and our workflow has become smoother, faster, and far more adaptable.
Continuous deployment (CD) is second nature for web and backend systems, where updates roll out instantly, and users see new features without delay. But in mobile development it’s a whole different story - from app store reviews to user-controlled updates, mobile CD comes with unique hurdles that demand a different approach.
This article dives into the challenges of mobile CD, the strategies we’ve used to overcome them (based on experience from a range of industries), and how we’ve managed to make it work effectively.
Getting the minimum viable product (MVP) right can make or break your success. However, many founders fall into the trap of building a big MVP, which can be detrimental to the growth and sustainability of their ventures.
Having spoken with over 100 founders over the last year, I've gathered valuable insights that highlight the risks of the big MVP approach. In this article, you can have a look at my four key takeaways.
✅ Feta.io: Run efficient meetings and capture actionable insights with AI-powered documentation for product and engineering teams.
✅ Codeconvert: Effortlessly convert code to a new language in seconds with AI-powered accuracy.
✅ Convo: Gain the depth of interviews at the scale of surveys with AI-moderated qualitative research.
✅ timeOS: Capture, organize, and access your day’s insights with an AI productivity companion that delivers the knowledge you need, right when you need it.
✅ Aptitude: Conduct and analyze conversations with hundreds of customers using AI.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT with web search: OpenAI has introduced a real-time web search feature to ChatGPT, allowing users to access up-to-date information directly within conversations, closing a gap with competitors like Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini. The search function, powered by a blend of technologies including Microsoft’s Bing, is accessible on all ChatGPT platforms and is tailored through a fine-tuned version of GPT-4.
OpenAI’s full o1 model leaks ahead of release: OpenAI’s upcoming o1 reasoning model, expected to launch this year, was briefly accessible through an unintentional leak last week. The o1 model, which takes extra time to reason through problems for enhanced accuracy, was initially previewed in scaled-down versions (o1-preview and o1-mini) within ChatGPT.
GitHub expands Copilot with multi-model support: GitHub has enhanced its Copilot tool by integrating models from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, giving developers the flexibility to select the best model for their coding needs. The update includes Spark, a new AI tool that enables web app creation using natural language and offers live previews, making it accessible for both novice and experienced developers.
Google’s Project Jarvis to bring AI agents to Chrome: Google is reportedly preparing to launch Project Jarvis, an AI-driven feature in Chrome that automates everyday web tasks like research, online shopping, and booking flights. Expected to debut in December with the Gemini 2.0 model, Project Jarvis represents Google’s vision of AI agents—intelligent systems with reasoning, planning, and memory that act under user supervision to complete tasks across software.
Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet adds PDF analysis: Anthropic has upgraded its Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI model to support Visual PDFs, enabling users to analyze not only text but also images, charts, and graphs within PDFs—a feature already available in OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This functionality is accessible via a paid professional subscription or the API, and comes with limitations, such as a maximum PDF size of 32MB, 100 pages, and no encryption.
At Appolica, we build the technology that powers startups at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages. Specializing in these crucial phases, we've helped over 75 ventures scale rapidly, with $500M raised collectively. You can learn more about partnering with us here.
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Thanks for reading & until next time.
Best,
Martin & the Appolica team
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