Avoiding a site hijack

My perspective is as a consultant and advisor who works with tech startups, helping them get to market. I watch what's going on from an outside, more objective point of view. Once I saw a trend of tech hijacks, where non-tech founders get sidelined or held up by their dev team at key points, I started talking to the experts in my network for practical advice to help startups prevent a website or product hijack.

• Hire a CTO if one of the founders isn't from a tech background. This, everyone is agreed on.

• Understand that when it happens, it's rarely malicious. Be generous in trying to resolve an impasse; if there's a personality clash, consider asking someone else to negotiate on your behalf.

• Don't let your files reside on a server under someone's desk. Instead, move everything to a cloud server that's solid, secure and leaves you in the drivers seat. 

• Hire design and development work as needed, so that projects aren't open-ended, and you're hiring people with specific skillsets. This makes it much easier on the team.

• Get advisory help to clarify what you need next; I often hear about clients asking for functionality and stuff they don't actually need. 

• Take advantage of all the incubators, accelerators and startup collaboration and support groups there are out there. They're great communities that love to share knowledge and networks.

These seem to be pretty universal and can apply to startups involved in technology in any sector. It's not a definitive prescription. 

Hijacked

I'm at this intersection where I'm looking at the specific needs of startups right now and the deluge of trends covering everything from how startups are bulding and iterating to consumer behaviour and expectation. While there's a lot of traffic flowing in every direction, I'm starting to see one theme pop out prominently: startups being hijacked in design and development.

At the start of this week I saw the hijack trend fitting startups that didn't have tech founders, and now that I've started talking about it with more people, I see it happening where founders have a tech background too. So I've officially labelled it 'Trend'. As one founder explained to me, the hijack happens for a whole personality-driven range of reasons that go beyond what's written in a contract. So let's shelf the 'why'.

What does a hijack look like? Basically, it seems to include some or all of these:

• Calls and emails aren't answered.

• Requests for changes go unanswered; or are acknowledged but not acted on.

• Key dates are missed.

• Features/actions/stuff promised isn't done.

• Project scope isn't as promised (less funtionality or allowance for feedback etc).

• Deployment doesn't include the revisions and/or testing as promised.

Any of this is incredibly common, as it turns out. And it's not limited to startups either. Every founder I begin to share this with, just to tell them they're not alone, gets all excited with recognition and wants to add to the list. 

The crisis point of the hijack is when the founder can't get access to his or site. When the files are in the hands of one person 'with the keys', as one founder said. Who isn't answering calls and won't hand over the site to the founder or another team. If I keep following this I'm sure Ill be able to write a book about it. I've seen a key sales season get missed for one startup which had an impact on everything for the business going forward. Another client gave up the chase for their files; even after hiring a lawyer and pursuing the legal angle, they lost all their data and ended up relaunching with a new site. Yet another moved ahead with sales despite having a product that wasn't as evolved as it should have been.